Remedy Z: Solo Read Free Page A

privileged to live there and have family property at the South Coast and at Tantangara in the Alps. With the cataclysmic events of the Great Change, the capital was untenable and destabilised quickly, spreading to the satellite communities around. 
    Around Canberra, many people lived in the so-called satellite communities and commuted into the metropolis via very fast rail. Towns popped up everywhere, with one rare town being built out of a need for infrastructure rather than just space. “Tantangara,” I whispered with love and hate. I had fled to that town when things in the capital had collapsed. 
    The town of Tantangara, despite more recent horrors, held a special place in my heart. Tantangara was where my grandfather had worked as an engineer, as had my father, in two of the many careers they had had in their dynamic working lives. Tantangara was built on the need to expand the dam that had been there, to supply additional water to the massive population of the region and, more importantly, the capital. The government had renamed it Lake Tantangara and had created a niche for tourism in the beautiful New South Wales alpine setting. Even if people spent most of their time looking into holographic glasses or at devices, the view and air was something even the most hyper-consumer could not deny. It was almost an appeal to what little natural sense humans had left.
    Once technology and communication began to crumble and people turned, supply chains followed. Canberra had had a population that demanded more than local regional supply could afford: this meant doom. But Canberra was not alone and it fared as badly as many cities had worldwide. The aftermath of the Great Change of 2028 was a dark time globally. What had caused it? Greed, selfishness, corruption, laziness and materialism were all at the heart of it. Shame was on all of us.
    The cause and catalyst for the Great Change was the virus-cum-drug “Divine”. Divine was the driving force in a new-age renaissance of drugging-up and dropping out. The pharmaceutical firms and doctors were complicit, no leading, in it all. They legitimised people opting-out and gave them a crutch to get by when things were too hard for them. The medical and pharmaceutical fraternity wanted captive, controlled and dependent consumers. What was scariest was that Divine was no secret; it was advertised as a feature in a product and its positives were sold as benefits. The worldwide marketing machine and distribution network preyed on people’s belief in decadent freedoms and it worked too well. It was all about maximising pleasure, minimising pain and, unfortunately minimising effort to do anything at all except consume. Timothy Leary and a similar movement many decades before would have been proud for 5 minutes until they realised it was the worst example of capitalist greed, not to mention it all went to shit.
    The initial distribution network for Divine was flawless. Whether antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic or antacid, Divine was part of the prescription for a few dollars more. You would get high, feel good and desire more. The after effects of exposure to Divine were guilt and the typical addictive response to need more of the drug. This latter side-effect was a flu-like symptom that made you feel lousy with an instant turnaround if more Divine was consumed. It delivered the intended high and a following low by the virus. It worked well, too well. In fact what it achieved was nothing short of remarkable.
    “Divine indeed,” I thought, shaking my head as I did my work. Divine’s intent was to captivate and control consumers, giving them a high and driving them to buy and consume without abandon as the ultimate in consumer addicts. It worked. It worked better than anyone’s sick mind could have dreamed.
    The corporations had planned all this; to subjugate people through a clandestine drug and pharmaceutical syndicate that leveraged people’s dependence on medications and