"I remember the outbreak. I remember it well."
It came on subtlely at first, as it crept into our lives disguised as one technological advance after another. And, surely, it was. But it went too far.
Humans will always go too far.
And they did...
It started long before the computer, the cell phone or even the internet. Automation they called it. Making life easier and in the process removing the human element. Dependency, slowly became a crutch, nay... An addiction.
By the late 2000's human interactions become damn near non-existent. People sitting next to each other didn't even know the other was alive. Everyone was plugged into this devices staring endlessly at a screen.
I was guilty of it myself. I realized just how bad I had become when I noticed a woman that seemed to be giggling out loud in her cubicle after everything I posted into the ether. A girl that hired me some years before, but I couldn't even tell you her name. I only knew her by her screen name...
"Pono"
I am sure she was good at what she did or she wouldn't have worked for this company, but never the less, I really hadn't any clue. None of us did. I often wonder about "Pono" and if she made it... But, that's another story for another time.
It was the reports of jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that truly set the alarm bells ringing in my head. Jobs were down by forty-two percent. And not the jobs, mind you. The labor force itself was becoming extinct.
People were not working. Hell, they weren't doing anything but sitting there and staring at their screens and waiting for the next post to come through their feeds.
The Zombie Apocalypse become all too real.
These were not, however, the zombies that we all grew up seeing in the movies or on tv shows, and they damn sure didn't run around chasing and eating people. They were really quite harmless from what we had been conditioned to expect from a Hollywood Zed.
They were still no less effective at being a plague spreading detriment to humanity, they just did it in a whole different manner than what anyone ever expected. And that is how it snuck up on us, and by the time we figured it out, it was too late. The avalanche had already begun rolling downhill.
The Techno-Zeds were mindless content hoarders. They lived until they died one link click at a time until they quite factually sat there wasting away until deceased. And the national mortality rate was rising, and quick!
Something had to be done...
This is when myself and a handful of other talented individuals were recruited into the organization known only as "Magic 16." To this day we still do not know the full scope of what Magic 16 is or even fully understand what they do. All I can tell you is that the team I worked with was tasked to eradicate the Techno-Zed.
We were headed up by two phenomenal men. Dr. Marin and Dr. Chong botanists of the nth degree. Their plan to battle this plague was simple and really boiled down to just one word... Sativa.
That's correct. Cannabis. In what I personally call the greatest ironic page of the human history. It was good ole Mary Jane that government's ultimately turned to, to save the world.
Doctors Marin and Chong were steadfast in their convictions that the planets best hope was to create a strain of cannabis that would be so amazing and potent that it would pardon the pun "raise the dead itself."
The team comprised of Hippies, growers, stoners, breeders, light techs, soil freaks, hydro fiends, nute nuts, toke-hacks and anybody/anything else associated with growing and or smoking/delivering cannabis into the bloodstream by any method possible.
We were locked away behind closed doors for two years. Crossing this with that, and that to this, and some of those to some of these until BINGO!
We had the cure. The eradication of the Techno-Zed.
A truly Eureka moment and to see it happen first hand was nothing short of amazing. See, we had a room of test subject "TZ's" that for two years would not budge. They sat there playing with their gizmos and gadgets barely grunting an audible sound let alone feed themselves. Some of us on the team had all but given up until...
One toke, one dab, one vape, one mg of tincture... The whole control group was all given just one. Suddenly the color comes back to their face, they started looking around the room as if they just woke up from a bad dream and then, here's the kicker. They all audibled their first understandable words in years and they all pretty much said the very same thing.
DAMN, THAT'S SOME GOOD SHIT!
It was shortly after this that the strain got its name after they leaped from their couch-locked existence and made a B-Line straight for the kitchen and SMASHED like the Hulk!
Fruity Pebbles EVERYWHERE!
That’s some good shit right there [emoji1303]