The Annual Decode Event

 (Even more fictional than normal for gematria.)

Lydia was late.  Rushing through putting on a fresh set of clothes she left the house headed for the town square, anxious for the big event.  The Annual Decode winner would be announced within a few hours.

Everyone, literally everyone from the smallest and youngest child to the oldest and most feeble adult would be present.  Most of the town would have a decode ready, but if you didn’t or couldn’t you would be assigned a default decode.  Something basic like a Pi reference from the old days, from a list in a dusty old tome.  Something picked by Gregory, the town mayor.

Lydia was truly excited for this particular event.  She had prepared a lengthy decode, complete with her own personal synchronicities.  Her town, Raiders, normally did football decodes, and her decode was heavily skewed toward their previous season where they nearly won the league championship.  And as she was runner up for the privilege of The Dunking last year it just seemed, well, just …right…fitting that she would be tied in with that with her own personal runner up status.  The nearest neighboring town, Newcoin didn’t have any bragging rights as their personal cryptocurrency did a nosedive last year, throwing the whole town into what’s sure to be a decades long recession.

She arrived just slightly late, only having missed the preliminary festivities where the townspeople shared their excitement, decodes held in hand.  Consuming alcoholic beverages and eating rich food.  The party before The Dunking was great fun.  Some even seemed to enjoy the party more than The Dunking.

All the maintenance for the Dunk Tank was carefully and thoroughly completed during the week, Raiders never having had any problems in their history with the actual Dunk.   Lydia had heard of the village of Eclipse from three years ago and how the Dunk there had gone wrong and federal funding had been pulled for the following year.  Lydia and the town could be sure no such indignity would happen to Raiders this year.

The town clock chimed 2:02 pm.  (2:02 being close enough to the approved time of 2:00 pm and well within federal guidelines of 2:00 plus or minus six minutes).  It was time to start the selection process and the crowd noise quickly quieted as Gregory prepared the annual speech.

During the next two hours all the decodes were put in The Box.  A large and quite unassuming box painted in a flat green color.  No one knows why that shade of green was chosen, it just…was what was appropriate for the Box.  Our Box.  The Raiders Box.  A sort of holy relic and part of the Annual Decode event.

With the last decode safely tucked away Gregory began his carefully prepared speech.  That is carefully prepared from his first year as mayor decades ago.  The speech never changed.  Every syllable carefully recited.  As he finished Gregory stepped close to the box and prepared to draw at random this year’s winner.  Who would be getting dunked this year?  One by one, following the checklist prepared by Gregory, the townsfolk would be called to draw a gematria decode from the box.  The last decode left would be dunked.  The person who authored the first decode drawn would be the first to push The Button on The Dunk Tank.  The first to get the chance to set the computerized random number generator in motion for when the floor of Tue Dunk Tank would drop into the cold water filling the bottom portion of the tank.

Last year, Lydia was the person who pressed The Button just before Arnold who had the honor of being the winner.  Sending Raul to the bottom half of the tank to the raucous cheers and applause of the waiting crowd.  She momentarily thought about how much she missed Raul and his bright eyes and wide smile.  But the excitement of this festival soon overwhelmed and thoughts of past glory soon were swept away.

The first name drawn was Talia, a vapid and shallow woman who couldn’t decode worth shit (at least in Lydia’s opinion.  Talia would be first to push The Button.  The first to get the chance to dunk on this year’s tank occupant.  The first to dunk on their sloppy, contrived connections, their misspellings, their forced narratives, whatever the community could symbolically use The Dunk Tank water as explanation for their poor gematria decoding skills.

As the afternoon wore on Lydia realized, quite anxiously, that there were only 17 names left in The Box, and her decode still remained within.  Slowly, agonizingly (Gregory always dragged the ceremony out as the end neared to maximize the tension) there came the time with just two decodes left out of the hundreds that initially had been inserted.  Who would be getting dunked was either Robert or Lydia.

And breaking from tradition Lydia, gripped with a fear unlike she’d ever known before leapt forward to Gregory’s podium and shouted at the mob.  A mob that wasn’t used to this sort of display.

“STOP THIS FARCE NOW!!”  Lydia screamed.

“It must be Robert you dunk, my decode took weeks of painstaking research.  Everyone knows Robert is lazy.  He even copies from the rest of his friends!”

After a few moments a few giggles interrupted the stunned silence.  Lydia’s first plea for some kind of sensible guidelines was ignored in place of the standard arbitrary results.

“What is wrong with you people?  You are even prepared to dunk children!! Children with their whole lives ahead?!”

“Oh Lydia,”, said Paul, someone has to be dunked and the rules are the rules.  Live with that.”

“But they are stupid rules.  Philip showed me how he decoded that Gregory should be dunked despite the mayor being the only exemption.  Surely his death threat to our mayor means he should be dunked!!”

Silence.

“Annette does cryptocurrency decodes every year!! We’re a sports town!!”

Silence.

“My own mother was dunked just four years ago.  Surely the odds against me being this close to being dunked prove this is all a farce!”

Finally after letting Lydia blow off some steam Gregory established himself as master of the ceremony.

“Hush Lydia, it’s just some cold water and light hearted ridicule.  Let’s see if it’s you or Robert who has been standing silently and behaving like a grown up instead of the child you’ve proven to be.

Robert’s decode was picked from the box.  The last decode remaining WAS Lydia’s.  Lydia would be dunked.

Her previous outburst was nothing compared to the comments she spewed forth as she was forcibly placed in the dunk tank.  The ridicule started as her decode was read allowed, every townsperson taking their chance in turn to press The Button.  The mob making fun of all her painstaking research.  Her pleas of how unfair about how random and pointless the entire process is being met with more ridicule than the actual decode.

Until finally seven year old Timothy pressed the button, and the few seconds of the sound of gears grinding and machinery coming to life signaled Timothy was this year’s winner.  Lydia was dunked.

And as the icy water filled her lungs and she drowned her protests finally ceased.

——————————————————————

If I were a YouTube gematria decoder this is the point where I would beg you to subscribe to my Patreon.  Which I won’t do.  Instead I’m giving credit to the real author.

https://americanliterature.com/author/shirley-jackson/short-story/the-lottery/

Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery quite some time ago, a tale of “conformity gone mad”.  A tale that plays out like a Twilight Zone episode focusing on mankind’s often stupid beliefs of how to act as a social group.  Gematria is a fitting modernization. Everything is so completely arbitrary in a confirmation bias based scam.  One day people who are allied turn into bitter enemies.  One day Joe Biden has the same gematriot that was used for Trump years ago.  One day you drop zeroes, the next day you don’t.  The only consistency is the lack of critical thinking just for the sake of a little attention thrown your way by the cult leader.

Globally morale is epically low.  When the internet came to life all the people who wished to spread their grift and propaganda learned all the old tricks at the same time.  Gematria may have roots in sports betting scams but spent an extensive period as a dissemination of right wing propaganda during the Qanon heyday.  People who have purposefully not been educated have a difficult time dealing with contradictory information.