The Supermarket

In the future people needed somewhere to take their mind off things. More so, than in the present as now was about thirty years in the past. These places were called Supermarkets.

They had food of every description. Staples to luxuries, Bread and butter to the finest chocolate truffles. However, because of the psychosis phenomena affecting the world they had all manner of facilities. The Supermarkets of the future have activities that give people exercise and a feeling of community. So not just food but activities to provide a feeling of belonging and keep the community fit.

The psychosis phenomena meant that social interaction was not safe as in small numbers as small groups or individuals could turn into psychopaths with a very simple pattern of stimuli. People were disappearing and being found dead in horrible circumstances.

The medical fraternity think that large groups of people did not tend to manifest in a psychosis breakout, because the bandwidth upon which the messages travelled was far less than the absorption rate of the larger crowd.

A group, or gang of relatively docile people could be whipped up into a violent frenzy simply by an antagoniser throwing psychosis through conversation at the “wrong” (or right, depending upon your perspective) member of the group. By “pushing” his or her buttons. Sometimes illegal drugs, as shall be explained later, were distributed first to get the group in the mood for their frenzy.

It had been happening for a while, it started suddenly about 10 years ago. One day things were as calm as they had been for a while then overnight the thoughts started overloading certain people who were more susceptible to suggestion of a wrong type. Some thought that the rise of social media caused the phenomenon until someone found the formula they were using.

The scientist, a professor, that found the drug in a blood sample which was sent for a routine Diabetes testing. They thought the drug they found was an isolated case, then they found a way of testing which showed mass deliberate poisoning of the human food chain.

Who was behind this attack on civilization? Was it a foreign government, or governments? Whilst that was the initial thought it became less likely as the drug finds became so widespread. Finally, the scientists and investigators decided it was a group of anarchists living in London. They were left over from the Punk music era and had become mainstream enough to blend in more with society and found ways of scientific involvement in the design and distribution of the drug. We were sad to realise they had such a worldwide following of similarly disillusioned society destroyers.

The drug was an amnesiac performer and caused psychosis without memory of what acts were performed when administered. As it happened the drug tended to only affect some proportion of those “spiked” with it.IT was not isolated to one country. The entire world was affected. The drug culture has got so out of hand and the people within it so organised and so devious and so greedy that they wanted to take the world and what it had to offer for themselves. They wanted control. They were everywhere, workers, management, government. They had devised ways of placing the drug without anyone apart from their “group” knowing, and they did on a prolific scale. If you got “spiked” a sleepless night followed by stomach issues and then random behaviour tended to occur. During the random behaviour stage psychosis would cause the subject to want to release energies the subject had no control over. Their instincts would react in a heightened state and caused actions that could be either creative or violent depending upon the character of the person in question.

Bill and Gemima used to go to the supermarket every day to take advantage of the various offerings. Sometimes they would buy food and sometimes they would partake in the activities. Normally Bill wanted to be more involved with the food side, and Gemima wanted to be active.

Today they met at the Garage on the corner, as usual, a few miles from the Supermarket intending to get a bus to the hub. The bus stop had some broken panes where someone had smashed them. There was also some minor tagging, or graffiti daubed behind the shelter on the wall of the building. It was mindless graffiti without any aspect you could call artistic.

Bill wanted to buy some shoes and both Bill and Gemima wanted something to eat. Bill wanted to buy some shoes and both Bill and Gemima wanted something to eat.

They came from different directions because they did not live together. When they met, Bill kissed Gemima on the cheek friend fashion. They would be lovers one day when Gemima was ready. Bill looked over her shoulder and frowned, “Don’t look now Gemima but there is a suspish type staring in our direction”. She did not look; however, her concern was noticeable and the vibe she projected was tangible. He linked her arm in his and they walked towards the bus stop. A rather strange thing happened. The bus did not stop when he indicated that they wanted to get on. Despite being the only ones at the stop he was quite perturbed. Especially as he was thinking it might be to do with the suspish type over the way. Gemima did not seem too worried, although Bill remembered the person he saw when they met not so far from this place.

“What do we do today, Gemima?”, Bill asked slowly so she understood. He always asked her, because her understanding of what should happen in any one day was far more than hers.

Bill had learned to clearly define his conversation with Gemima, or she would misunderstand. She had previously been diagnosed by a Doctor with Bipolar effective disorder. The bipolar mind processed much more information than that of someone without the diagnosis, I may call these people normals. If allowed to complete the thought process they embark on at certain points, the bipolar mind can deliver a far more accurate result for the improvement of the consensus. This is another way of describing the incredible ability of the Bipolar mind to work a pattern in order to gain a community success quotient. The bipolar person is a significant contributor to the truth within a community. They are undeniably brave as they navigate the community in order to correct the pattern that is the community.

It is not patronising to say that speaking slowly is due to Bipolar people having a disability. Bipolar is classed as such because “normals”, as throughout history, would use the Bipolar group in a discriminating way. The fact is a disability tends to be when there is a minority situation and to be Bipolar these days is becoming more the norm. The disabled label is so that they are “protected” from abuse. Gemima told people this when she felt it necessary or when she thought the person she was talking to was worth explaining some of her more heartfelt reasoning.

“I want to play Bonker Ball, Bill. I need to reduce some frustrations”, said Gemima.

Bonker ball was a simple strategy game played in a zero G room with some other players. There are three teams who could play independently of each other, or join forces against one of the others. In fact, the triangular nature of the game allowed several permutations and mechanisms. The players pushed off from the side and glide towards the objectives. There were several permutations and mechanisms. There were several Balls and the word Bonker was there to describe peoples inept abilities in Zero G, especially those new to Zero G. In some ways it was a funny game as people tried to work out how best to win when being in such undignified physical positions. There were a variable number of balls, tending to be 50% of the number of players. Not all supermarkets had Zero G rooms so the one in Battenburgh must have been a good one. Not all Supermarkets had Zero G rooms so the one in Battenburgh must have been a good one. Bill did not like the area the Supermarket was in, however, he was loyal to the Supermarket itself. This was often the case with Moderns, a type of person who loved the technology of the shopping centres that had been built up to socialise the peoples of each district within the old borders separating areas in the world. They used to be called countries.

There were shelves being stacked by hover droids and Security Guards carrying thunderbolts; semi powerful stun guns which if used carelessly could kill a person. Then with the psychosis phenomenon flourishing, anything could happen in the massive, crowded building. Everything was inside in the Supermarket whilst the ceiling was suspended about 50 feet above the walls were only 15 feet or so high and were often just separators. The zero G area was a full 50-foot-high wall and the walls quite strong steel compared to the plastic of the separator walls. The Bonker Ball arena was very busy when they arrived, and they got into the queue for the equipment. It consisted mostly of armour which would prevent them hurting themselves if they hit each other during play. The helmet and armour were made of Tevlar a material quite recently invented and concocted from Teflon and Kevlar, the material helped reject the walls floor and ceiling so they kind of floated. However, the most fun part of the equipment was in the boots and consisted of a small propulsion device.

Bill suddenly stopped and looked at Gemima. Then he looked behind himself and then back at Gemima. Then he turned and confronted the man that he had noticed earlier when he kissed her on the cheek at the bus stop. Other crowd participants were milling about around them. However, it seemed as though everything else was moving very slowly as if he was hypnotised and able to notice everything. He was watching the man carefully. He did not know the man; however, he knew when someone was not handling their personal psychosis. He was walking quickly towards Bill, and Bill knew he was going to have words. He sensed Gemima’s discomfort as she also had noticed the man approaching them. “Is that the man from earlier?”, she asked on an inhale. Bill saw the man’s lips moving but did not hear what he was saying the blood was coursing to his head and he was frozen when the side of his head connected with the man’s fist. Bill reeled backwards and he caught himself from falling, however the sight and vision that he has was of stars. He could hear Gemima shouting not with fear, but with anger. He had never heard her so angry before. Then he saw her do it. She closed her eyes, her forehead furrowed and she became rather red faced. Then her eyes opened and calm appeared once in her expression. However, around Bill and Gemima was a very great commotion as people ran away and some looked like they were about to intervene. Only problem was these outbreaks often ended in terrible blooshed, so caution was being exercised by the majority. Then they looked at the man who was stood still seemingly paralysed with what must have been fear, his face ashen.

Gemima was looking for security, but none were in the immediate vicinity. So, she went over to the man and kicked him harshly on the back of one of his knees so he fell to the ground in front of Bill who was rather stunned. Of course, all this happened in the to the ground in front of Bill who was rather stunned. Of course, all this happened in the space of about 15 seconds.

Finally, security appeared. Gemima shouted at the Guards, “Where did you come from? Didn’t the scanners pick him up?”. They looked at her and laughed, as they recognised her as Bipolar on their forearm personal computers, Bipolars often did not get taken seriously. It was best to be quite around their mocking laughter, Gemima knew they would have reason to arrest her if she started to complain about their attitude. The scanners would have picked her up as being Bipolar as every person born after a date 30 years previous have a microchip with their bio on it injected at birth for reasons best know to the control. The control being the organisation which oversaw the population and human and livestock breeding pattern.

Somehow, Bill was thinking this was some sort of setup to try and get Gemima to do something with her abilities. They were always testing parts of the system to try and predict psychosis outbreaks and understand them to better protect the majority. Either to assess her, or to criminalise her so they could lock her up and study her abilities in a more controlled environment. This was odd as there were rules in place to protect all citizens who pull their weight in this strange world, we live in.

That is the moment she knew she could do it. She did not look for these moments, needless today they arrived at the right time always though. Nobody knew she did it, except herself. It was personal to her own belief and ability matrix. She could manipulate time and change the future from the present. How far into the future she could change things was relative to the situation. She knew Bill was for her then and needed to protect a point in the future when they would be tested as a couple. She travelled using a technique which was based on her DNA and allowed her to transpose her mind into others to inspect their understanding of now to extrapolate the future and find the manipulation point. All of this was happening real time and in a fraction of a few seconds as her amazing mind calculated the jump, executed it, performed the insertion, and returned to the present.

A singularity needed to happen in time for her to be able to influence the future. These happened when she is being abused in some way. People would work a pattern on her to give them an ability to commit a crime (not a man made law crime, a Universal crime) within her sphere of influence. Her sphere influence would fluctuate although might be having a circumference of about 75 miles. Quite remarkable for any Bipolar mind. A Universal crime is one visible to other beings in the Universe, not always humans.

Bill was looking at her quizzically nursing his head somewhat, he had seen her facial expression and her eyes close momentarily before. He always felt very close to her when that happened as if she had done something for him which was more incredible than he would ever know.

Gemima was tired suddenly and another superior security office had appeared. They were going to have to explain themselves. He was scanning them with a portable were going to have to explain themselves. He was scanning them with a portable device which was making some beeping noises.

He looked at the scanner with a frown saying, “Nothing abnormal we thought you might be an anottin”, he said to Gemima. An anottin is a drug infested person who is then susceptible to psychosis. “We see you are a Bipolar, we might need to call you in for questioning to make sure the psych services are happy with your social behaviours”, the security operative said to Gemima. Gemima said nothing as she was used to this treatment and knew that what she had just done, manipulating the future, was more important than any of the bureaucracy.

The superior gave them a small letter asking that they come into the security office to make a formal complaint about the man, who by this time had disappeared.

The drug normally stays in the blood stream for about 3 days. And the Psychosis wears off sometime on day three.

“I want to go home to your house Bill”, Gemima said. I want to make sure you are alright tonight. Bill said “OK, but you have to remember my house is very lived in, also I feel a bit numb still from the fighting”.

Bill looped her arm in his and lead her from the Zero G room through some passageways into the massive food area towards the exit.

He could feel Gemima vibrating next to him. Like shivering only, a high frequency. She always did this after one of her strange (to some people, and Bill, but not to her) “episodes”. Gemima knew she was receiving psychic energy which was her reward for completing the future manipulation.

10 years later another man approached Bill as if to hit him, however, this time as he held his arm out it was not to hit Bill it was to shake his hand. Bill made his first anottin cure business deal and went on to become very well off.

Gemima loved the way this happened happily remembering the strange event 10 years previous. She loved Bill.

The cure was for psychosis and did not involve chemical conditioning. It involved technical therapy, communication and timely responses and actions to therapise historical anomalies in a person’s life. The technical cure meant he had to code a solution into a computer and research the reduction in psychosis which occurred when relevant and timely communications were made, and actions met.

All for now, and one for all.