[ WP ] You accidentally discover the sentence of death ( a sentence that kills anyone who hears it except the speaker ) when you say it over national television .

I was n't sure exactly what had happened- well, not at first. When the words came tumbling out of my mouth, I figured it was just the typical stuff you'd expect from a guy who'd had one too many tequila shots on his graduation party. I remember I was prancing around the house, one arm locked around the waist of my then-girlfriend while the other was busy leaving a trail of angry looks and curses as the drink it held flopped around, spilling its contents everywhere. There had been cameras that caught everything that happened, of course - saved for posterity on YouTube, LiveLeak, and all kinds of other social media hotspots. 
 
 I'd been easily exonerated since the jury had agreed with my family's lawyer that the evidence was purely circumstantial anyway. But after having watched the tape a thousand times, and at least as half as many in the courtroom, I knew the truth. I knew what happened. And I knew I was fully responsible for it.Especially when everyone in the courtroom met untimely demises of their own over the next week. 
 
 My alibi was air-tight- I was halfway across town drowning my sorrows at a bar when the first call came in. The judge for my case had been on his way to visit a relative when his car had lost control, sending him ( rather, his corpse ) straight into the media for the next 72 hours. And the cycle had just begun as jurors, family members, friends, anyone that had come to my trial began dropping like flies, but never to the same thing. One cousin died when she was scalped by a blender whose top had fallen off in the midst of a smoothie binge. My best friend Jake was killed when his bicycle gears seized, sending him spilling into the path of a semi. My mother choked to death on a baby carrot at a wedding rehearsal; my father died when he broke his spine trying to give her the Heimlich maneuver after. 
 
 But it did n't stop there. With every'Like' on Facebook, with every curious click that came to pass, another person dropped dead in the most unlikely of scenarios. The counters skyrocketed as millions of people flocked to see the most dangerous video ever created. I wanted to just hide myself in a corner, wait for it all to end. People pounded down my door, demanded that I show myself to face their form of vigilante justice for the unspoken horrors I'd visited upon their lives. 
 
 It was all my fault, after all. And once the genie was out of the bottle, there was no stopping it. Wave after wave of death thinned the herd every week. A couple of times the guilt had finally pushed me over the edge, but every time I'd tried to kill myself, something always got in the way. The rope snapped when I jumped from the chair, the vehicle sputtered and died as it ran in the closed garage, my wrist clotted after the deepest of cuts. I grew in despair, desperate to find my release. 
 
 The video has taken over the world, invaded every facet of everyone's lives. There are the Innocent, a loosely-organized group of people who strive to scrub the Internet clean of its infection, only to have it spread again just days later. Another cult popped into existence, calling themselves Judgement. They use the video as a threat, a way to control those around them by threatening to play it. You see, they learned that it was n't the video, but the audio itself that triggered the chain reaction. That alone was enough to break the world. 
 
 I remember glancing at a newspaper as it blew past, catching the headline for just long enough to realize how far this had gone. Some idiot senator had decided that he would be a martyer, sneaking a handheld mp3 player and speaker into a closed UN Security Council session. The result mass deaths of all the leaders of the largest nations of the world simultaneously triggered a panic unlike any other. Countries broke apart, alliances were made and lost, and everything had become uncertain. Wars raged, even more people died, and everything organized eventually fell into ruin until only the stragglers, like myself, are left. 
 
 That is the world I leave to you - a world where a simple phrase uttered can change everything. To you, my son, I trust these words, the most forbidden of those ever uttered in the course of humanity. I give you these, so that you may one day right what went wrong so long ago. That you may use them wisely to herd what little remains of the humanity I knew, and build them into the great civilization once again. 
 
 Edit: I had no idea where I was going with this, so it kind of got rushed at the end badly. Sorry! 
 
 

