Mitigation

Interviewer: “October 19, 2050. I am in a location that will remain undisclosed and using an encrypted voice recorder. My interviewee’s face will remain obscured. This in my first interview with Mr. X about his experience as a Google street view driver and subsequent fallout.”

“Mr. X, thank you for agreeing to speak with me. Can you tell our viewers how you came to be a Google street view driver?”

Mr. X: “It was 2020, the year the pandemic started.  I had been laid off. I needed to pay the bills, so I decided to look for other work. I saw an ad for “city view driver” on Jobless, answered it, and was contacted a few days later. Once I got to the interview, I found out it was for a Google street view driver. They kept it all pretty hush-hush. They did a background check, researched my license, and gave me a blood test to see if I had antibodies (I did). I had no points on my license either. I passed my drug screen and was given one of their cars and was told to map my area.”

Interviewer: “Take us back to your first week on the job. Did you notice anything unusual or criminal?”

Mr. X: “This was back when everyone was supposed to shelter-in-place. The streets were quiet. Some people were out, walking dogs or doing yardwork. I was warned I’d be mooned or flashed but I wasn’t. The only weird thing that happened is that my neighbor disappeared”.

Interviewer: “Can you tell us more about that?”

Mr X: “One day I slept in late, so I started around 10 in the morning. At the corner, there were a bunch of high school girls hanging out, dancing in the middle of the street with their red plastic cups, blasting music. Not out of the ordinary for teenagers, but you weren’t supposed to be hanging out with other people then. I honked to get them to move; I think one flipped me off but most moved over and kept dancing. One tried to take a selfie with the Google car. It wasn’t my problem. I came home at the end of my shift and my wife practically jumped on me when I got in the door - “wash your hands, I’ve got to talk to you”. Oh – we couldn’t keep our phones on us when we were driving. You got a company phone; personal calls were forbidden. You’d deposit your personal cell in a box and get it back at the end of your shift if you worked close to the office, or you left it at home. She couldn’t text me when I was working. She told me that while I was working a van showed up and guys in hazmat suits got out; gathered up all the kids in the street and put them in the van and took off.”

Interviewer: “What did you make of that? Did your wife have any idea who they were? Did she contact police?”

Mr X: “She didn’t call the cops; our town didn’t have its own police force then, you had to call the staties. Everyone minded their business. By the next day, everyone had forgotten about it. All anyone watched was the news, or latest song parody. Most people weren’t outside then, so it was a few days before any of us realized we hadn’t seen the Brinkmans. Their cars were there, but no one came out to walk the dog. I think we all just chalked it up to maybe they were sick and quarantining for 14 days, or in the hospital. But weeks went on and no sign of them. I certainly wasn’t thinking that my job as a driver had anything to do with it”.

Interviewer: “You said in your previous communication to me that after several weeks, other families started disappearing. How did you make the connection between the disappearances and your job as a Google street view driver?”

Mr. X: “Well, miss, the thing about people is, they talk. There was an online group for drivers and a few started talking about neighbors or relatives who had get-togethers or went walking together who just disappeared. No one ever saw them again, you couldn’t get a hold of them. Same as mine – guys in protective gear came and took them away. People started getting scared, and didn’t go out at all. My wife, she got deliveries of everything. I swear UPS or Fed Ex was showing up every day with some new brown box. (No wonder why we were losing money). That, or Instacart was dropping off groceries. But you’d still hear of at least one group a week getting taken away. You know what’s weird? Other than my work group, I never saw anything about it. Nothing on Facebook or the news. Like, everyone knew, but only whispered about it. But then maybe that’s because all anyone ever wanted to talk about was tests and numbers and how many died. And then the prisoners”.

Interviewer: “Facebook, was that an early social media app? By numbers, you’re referring to Covid cases? Daily updates? What happened with the prisoners?”

Mr X: “You’re too young to remember that, but yeah, Facebook was a big thing for a while.  Some college kid and his buddy made it up and made billions off it. And there were multiple updates a day. This many cases, this many deaths, etc. Suicides and domestic incidents were increasing. Mom and pop shops were closing up from being shut down. You probably don’t remember those, maybe your parents told you about them. None of them are left; just big chains. Nursing homes and prisons started having cases increase. They kept folks confined to their nursing homes and forbid outsiders, but the staff was still going in and out. To stop whole prisons from being infected, they released the ‘non-violent offenders’. You know, drug charges, theft, menacing. They let ‘em out early. Supposedly they were the ones that were close to release anyway, and weren’t going to hurt anyone else. But that’s not how it happened”.

Interviewer: “Can you tell everyone what did happen?”

Mr X: “Well, first there were two guys. One carjacked someone 40 minutes after he was let out, can you believe it? 40 freakin’ minutes. Then the other guy, he set nine fires less than a week out of prison. And those were the non-violent guys!”

Interviewer: “What happened after that? Were violent offenders released?”

Mr X: “You know what it’s like to get a “Get out of Jail Free” card? It snowballed. They all started committing crimes. That was another reason people stopped going out – they were afraid of the virus and of the prisoners. Wanna know why everyone you know owns a gun? That’s why. There was a run on guns just like toilet paper. Turns out the guns were much more useful. Not everyone had one at first, but now they do. There were some violent dudes let out, yeah. They were on some list, California or New York? One of those big states with big prisons. They ended up on there, something about “underlying conditions”. Underlying conditions, my ass. Somebody f-ed up. One of ‘em broke into a home, like a home invasion thing. He held up the mom and dad at gunpoint but the 10 year old son was able to hide. He went to his dad’s gun safe, opened it, and shot the dude in the back of the head. Some lady who tried to off her ex-boyfriend’s new girl in the past tried to off her again. They caught her, but not before the new girl ended up in the hospital with a head injury. You saw a few more stories like that, but then…nothing. Like the prisoners just vanished. Last story was they were rounded up and taken back to prison. But I know what really happened”.

Interviewer: “Can you tell us how you gained that knowledge?”

Mr. X: “Sure I can – they got taken away by the hazmat guys, see? I gotta back up a bit. Remember my Google driver group? One day one of the guys wanted to see our footage that was posted. He started looking at all of ours in the group. He was a smart guy…he started making connections between our footage and the addresses of the disappeared. So you see? We were unknowing informants. Our footage showed them the ones who weren’t following guidelines, see. Then they could come along and collect them.”

Interviewer: “Who are you referring to, Mr. X?”

Mr. X: “Well, the government, of course. Don’t you see? They started rounding up anyone who wasn’t listening, who could be spreading the disease. They had to stop it because the public was in an uproar, saying the government dragged their feet and now everyone was unemployed. A few nutjobs started protesting about 5G and losing their freedom, they needed a haircut, blah, blah. You better believe those people were taken care of real quick. Those prisoners they let out? They made them disappear too”.

Interviewer: “Are you saying…that Google and the government are in collusion? What further knowledge do you have of the disappeared?”

Mr. X: “If by collusion you mean working together, yeah. You’re too young (how old are you anyway, about 20, 21?), but once upon a time Google was just a search engine. Then came Gmail. By the mid-2000s Google started buying other sites, like GoogleTube (it used to be called YouTube) and Waze. They’ve got Google Docs, Drive, Hangouts, Photos, Chrome and Chromebooks, Wifi, Google Store – once upon a time Amazon was the place you went to get stuff online but now it’s Google Store. The list goes on. What do you think they’ve been doing with all of that over the years? Collecting your data. Google knows everything about you, and then some. When the coronavirus mutated and more people got infected, the government had a hard time with their “mitigation” controls. Guess who they turned to for information? The government gave them a nice payout, not like Google needed it. Us drivers? Our video gave the government the information they needed to crack down on the ones breaking the rules.”

Interviewer: “Mr. X, I just want to come back to my previous question. What further knowledge do you have of the disappeared?”

Mr. X: “Well, miss, I know you know the answer to that, since we’re doing this interview. But I guess you want it for your viewers. The answer is…I am one of them”.

Interviewer: “Mr. X, how did you become one of the disappeared?”

Mr. X:  “That online group I was a part of? It was found and shut down. I was let go from my driving job. It was supposed to be temporary anyway, but it was kind of out of the blue. In my time off I started looking for another job and was reading a lot of articles about the virus – what they found out about it and what treatments they were using. Doctors started using plasma from the ones who recovered. But then then found out the virus mutated. It had become stronger and more people were getting infected. What the public didn’t know was that there were other treatments being researched other than drugs and vaccines that were more…controversial.”

Interviewer: “Do you need a break?”

Mr. X: “No, we should keep going. We’re hidden here, but you never know how much time you have. One night, I was sound asleep when I was woken up by two guys in my bedroom. I never heard them make a sound. It was the men in hazmat suits.  They took me and my wife, told us to be quiet, and blindfolded us. We could feel guns pointed at our backs, so we did as we were told. We were put in a vehicle; I don’t know how long the ride was. When we stopped, they marched us into a building. I ended up in a room without my wife where I got my instructions”.

Interviewer: “What were those, Mr. X? Did you know where your wife was?”

Mr. X: “I was told I had been chosen to be part of a top-secret government project. I had to keep everything secret, and once the project was over I would be “rewarded handsomely”. Remember that blood test I had to take as part of the hiring process to be a Google driver? The government had been doing research on those who already had antibodies, and how they could use that for treatment or get rid of the virus. I was told it would take a month, and I would be donating plasma. My wife, I was told, was going to be undergoing the same as soon as she was tested for antibodies. You won’t remember this, but when the virus first came out there was a shortage of tests, so lots of people were sick and thought they had a really bad cold or upper respiratory infection. It was definitely suspicious to me (why didn’t they just ask for our help?), but I didn’t feel as though there was much choice about participating. Plus, for someone unemployed, hearing that both of us to get a nice yearly sum (more than I’d ever make in a lifetime at the hardware store), plus not have to pay any taxes for the rest of our lives, felt like it was worth it. I didn’t know…”.

Interviewer: “Are you sure you don’t need a break?”

Mr. X: “No, I’m almost done. Let’s just keep going”.

Interviewer: “When did the experiment go wrong?”

Mr. X: “The place they took us was actually really nice. Every amenity you could imagine – gym, pool, spa, massages at will, large rooms, gourmet food, nice outdoor area - privacy fenced and guarded, but nice. The first week I donated plasma. No big deal. The second week I was told I now had a more important purpose. I was going to be a Breeder.”

Interviewer: “Can you explain to us what you mean by being a Breeder?”

Mr. X: “The secret research that the government had been doing? It was on stem cells. They needed “new life to obtain them” – babies. The people who had what were termed “super antibodies” or an extra strong immune system, were chosen to be Breeders, to pass on their genetics. My wife…she was not part of this. I had two choices. Either breed with another “super”, a woman with super antibodies, or I could “provide a sample”. My choice was easy, I wasn’t going to cheat on my wife. I chose to provide a sample.”

Interviewer: “What happened to your wife? Did you see her after her isolation period?”

Mr. X: “I saw her, several months later. She was pregnant, there were so many…The women, you see, they needed more of them because they knew it would take months for them to have the babies. That’s where some of the teenage girls (and younger) went, once they found out they weren’t infected or had already been infected and developed antibodies. They gave them fertility drugs, things that would be illegal in the general public. Some women got pregnant with 9, 10 babies and they had to have a “selective reduction”. Many had triplets or quadruplets. As soon as they were medically cleared, they made the women get pregnant again. You can imagine the toll that took on their bodies, not to mention their minds.” 

Interviewer: “Mr. X, what happened to the Breeders and the babies? What happened to you?”

Mr. X: “The babies, once their stem cells were harvested, were cared for in another part of the facility. After a few years, they were adopted by childless couples who had received treatment. I never bred with another woman. I provided, I don’t know you how many samples. Whenever it was required. As you can imagine, Breeders outlived their usefulness. They were released from their duties…but not through the front door.” (Large sigh) I escaped, with my wife. She arranged it, when she was separated from me. She found a guard who could be paid off. No, not in money. She paid the ultimate debt. We escaped together and went into hiding. But that experience, it changed us. What we had before was destroyed. We never did have our own children together. We each went our own way; both of us had learned enough survival skills by then. It’s been 28 years since we escaped, and I’ve been in hiding since. I’ve been looking for the others, but that’s hard to do living off the grid (as much as possible, anyway). Even though society has sort of gone back to normal; I can’t be found. I don’t want them to find me again. That’s why I started looking for vodcasters on the dark web. Ones who want to expose the truth.”

Interviewer: “The others? The ones who “disappeared”? Who do you mean?”

Mr. X: “Those disappeared I talked about? The rule-breakers and prisoners were kept together to infect each other. They became the test subjects for any treatment initially, until they died or were taken care of another way. They were never released. The others I am talking about?  My children, of course. All of the samples I provided (they froze some of them you know, to use for later infections), all of the babies I’ve had and never met. There are so many of them.”

Interviewer: “One final question, Mr. X. You’d told me in a previous communication that you had been in contact with several vodcasters in about this interview. Why did you choose me?”

Mr. X: “The children I had and never met? Miss, you’re one of them”.