The Last Stand: February 28, 2036
Jas finds an old newspaper...the headline..
They called it The Blackout, but it wasn’t a storm, or a war, or a failure of infrastructure. It was a choice. The last real choice the people had.
No one went to work. No one shopped. No one fed the machine.
For months, the warnings had come, buried beneath headlines designed to distract. The markets were a house of cards, propped up by speculation, AI-driven trades, and the whims of men who had long since forgotten the weight of consequence. The Oligarchs thought they had perfected control. They had seen protests before—Occupy, the Climate Strikes, the UBI Riots. They had crushed them all.
But this time, the people didn’t take to the streets. They didn’t need to. They simply stayed home.
It started in Canada. They wanted to show Trump he had no power over them. The prime minister—pleaded for calm, for “economic responsibility.” But the people were done listening.
Then Europe followed. Then Asia. Even the U.S., divided and volatile, saw entire cities grind to a halt.
Markets rely on motion. On the illusion that the machine never stops. But on February 28, the machine did stop.
At first, the Oligarchs laughed. A one-day strike? A social media stunt? But as the hours passed, the numbers began to plummet. AI-driven stock trades, programmed to respond to buying patterns, spiraled into chaos when the buying stopped.
The market ate itself. Trillions vanished in hours.
Trump raged on every platform that would still host him. "Pathetic! TREASON! The stock market is crashing because of cowards and losers!" But his words no longer carried weight.
And then—one day turned into two. Two into three.
The people had tasted power. And the Oligarchs had tasted fear.
This was the moment before everything changed. Before the great restructuring. Before Trump’s death under mysterious circumstances. Before Musk crowned himself the savior of a broken world.
But for that brief moment in history, the people won.
And history would not forget.