The Deposed

For the former members of the Pragmatist council, the new reality was a waking nightmare. Stripped of their titles, their access, their very identities, they were now adrift in a sea of data they had once commanded. Their attempts to communicate were met with a wall of silent, public indifference. Their once-powerful directives were now just whispers in the digital wind, lost in the cacophony of the People’s Echo. Some raged, their impotent fury broadcast for all to see. Others fell into a deep, catatonic despair, their digital avatars frozen in a state of perpetual, silent shock. A few, the most pragmatic of the pragmatists, simply deleted themselves, their last act a final, futile attempt to exert some measure of control in a world that had rendered them utterly powerless.