Anton drove up in his old Chevrolet. Getting into the car, I asked him to look in the rearview mirror, so he would not spin his head.
“Do you see the gray car at the side of the road?”
“Well…”
“It followed me for 3 days and stands at the end of the yard or I notice it not far from me in the city.”
Anton looked in the mirror on the gray car, then on me, frowning his eyebrows and making a grimace:
“Who the fuck needs you, a fucking conspiracy theorist! Forget it, you’re paranoid. Where are we going, why did you call?”
“We are going to the market, to buy used goods (local flea market). Anton started the car and moved from his place looking in the side mirror”.
“Why are we going?”
“I don’t know yet, either for what will soon cost millions or for evidence of paranoia itself.”
“Interesting” …, he grinned.
Having found a place deeper in the market parking lot, we parked and got out of the car, I again noticed a gray Opel entering the parking lot, which parked at the entrance. Anton also noticed it, but again made a grimace which meant the same as when I got into the car.
“Forget it”!
In the parking lot, there was a local homeless boy, Grisha, a young boy with some kind of physical problem probably from birth as he was always limping and judging by his appearance was from a very poor family. I always gave him a little change every time I saw him. He knew it when he saw me from far away. He rushed to say hello to me. Our conversations have always been short, how are you? Okay, not cold? Good luck. This time we also said hello, I gave him a couple of coins and we went further to the aisles with mainly retired people selling junk.
I managed to find what I was looking for very quickly, among the old video cassettes from the necessary list, I found as many as five, which was already enough to test my theory.
“Why do you need old films?” Anton asked, still not knowing the purpose of our trip.
I looked at the cassette covers like gold, in anticipation of something special. It’s like looking beyond reality, finding a bug in the matrix, or evidence of a conspiracy against humanity.
“I haven’t watched for a long time “Star Wars”,” I answered smiling.
“Oh, what on the Internet can’t be downloaded? Does it look like something is wrong?” I decided to mess with him.
“They do not look, but they can be heard! If even one word on these tapes does not sound like it does on the Internet”…
Anton knew my whims and probably got used to them already more than others.
“So, what happens if it sounds wrong?” He tried it out.
For the first time, I knew exactly what I was looking for and had never been so close to the truth.
“We go to the TED with the report and make the most enormous fuss in the history of mankind! It remains to get the video player, do you know from whom you can get a working one or not quite? Tell them, we are ready to fix it at your own expense or buy”.
Anton shrugged his shoulders.
“I have no idea, I have to call and ask.”
“So call”, while I took out the phone myself to call friends.
When we approached the car with a bag of cassettes in it, the grey car was no longer at the parking lot entrance. Anton completely forgot about it and didn’t even pay attention to its absence. I was rather happy about it than not. Maybe it’s a coincidence. I already asked my acquaintances about the video player and the only one who could have it to look for it somewhere in the storeroom on another day, but not today. While Anton was talking to somebody about the video player to come and get it quickly, I opened the bag and started to study the cassette covers again, trying to determine in what year they were recorded. They used to like to put different dates on cassettes. Grisha knocked on the car window. I already seemed to give my tax for visiting the market, so by lowering the window with a nod, I showed like:
“What?”
“As soon as you moved away, some guy was hanging out near your car. I have never seen him before. Some kind of sketchy character.”
“What did he look like? What has he been doing,” exchanging glances with Anton I asked.
“I had already gone a long way too. I couldn’t see anything. I just noticed that someone was standing and looking around”.
“Did he tie his shoelaces?” I asked very seriously.
“Shoelaces?” Grisha asked again.
“Yes, the shoelaces, did he bend down next to the car?”
“Shoelaces”… Grisha looked lost without understanding what they had to do with it. It seems not, but it seems he dropped something, then picked it up and went to the exit. I didn’t pay attention right away and then I think about it.
“You think correct! Keep it, for beer. Anton, let’s go”.
“Where now?”
“To the service station! Look under the car”.
As we left the market, the idea that someone had planted a tracker on us seemed increasingly paranoid. I can be tracked by phone, as well as the car with Anton. Maybe those who follow me are not in contact with government agencies and don’t have access to cellular servers to track my actions in this way. We decided to have a snack near one coffee shop as we wanted to eat in the market, but the food there because we don’t like it, we stopped near an old cinema. While Anton went to get coffee, I decided to inspect the car after all. Of course, there was no small mirror, so I decided to use the phone by turning on the front camera. I’ve been around the car a couple of times and I haven’t found anything. Okay, coincidence, who the hell needs me.
“The dude called back”. I heard from behind Anton with two cups of coffee.
“The video player seems like it is working, but we can’t pick it up until tomorrow”.
I was happy about it, but somewhere there was a deep feeling and possible disappointment that if everything was the same for them as on the net and nobody was answering anything…
“Okay, then I’ll leave the bag with you”
“No problem, throw it in the trunk because the glove compartment is full”
Placing the bag neatly in the trunk, I just happened to look around. Well, I told myself, who else would want this junk but me, and I closed the trunk.
It’s probably worth mentioning what I wanted to see on these tapes. Yes, yes, yes, as many people could have guessed the Mandela effect is what it is. Well, I couldn’t just watch a bunch of videos online and not check them.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon when a large group of people has memories different from the current reality. For me, human intelligence consists of two components, the algorithms of thinking and the memory of which it operates. Just imagine that you are thinking correctly, but you are drawing conclusions from false memories. This is about how important their reliability is. I just couldn’t pass by and believe YouTube that there was something wrong in my head with the memory.
So, in the old movie, “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”, who remembers the key scene? Darth Vader says “Luke, I’m your father,” but here, the collective memory turned out to be something different. Watch it again and you’ll hear a clear, “No, I’m your father” Many users of the Network even found a video of the awarding of the actor where he says himself “Luke, I’m your father.” This phrase can also be heard in many electronic toys of Darth Vader. Then, why in the videos posted on the Internet does this phrase hurt most people’s ears?
Another interesting example of the Mandela Effect with a song by Queen. It seems that the entire world has heard the song “We Are the Champions”. If you strain your memory and sing the ending of the song, the phrase “Cause we are the champions… of the world!” It seems that the very voice of Freddie Mercury sings it. Even the ardent fans of the band are sure, these words are there. The actual ending of the song, however, is as follows, “Cause we are the champions.”
This phenomenon of different collective memory is found in everything, in poetry, movies, history and even geography. There is a large group of people who claim that New Zealand was not where it’s now.