Essay:Mandela Thursday

Ingredients:
 * Mandela effect-enabled universe
 * Last Thursday&trade; brand Time Distortion Manipulator&trade;
 * Conscious universe residents with soul memory

Serves:

A universe in which every thing and every resident is recreated every Thursday, fully formed. Each resident thinks they know what the universe is like.

And they're right: each time the universe is "reset", their memory gets reset, too. They think the universe is whatever it is right now, in this cycle.

But every creation week, one thing has been subtly changed. Maybe "East Pakistan" is now "Bangladesh". Maybe the "Berenstain Bears" are now the "Berenstein Bears".

Soul memory is a hard thing to erase. It's organic, it's squishy, it's hard to bleach out. The Watchers are very careful. But sometimes, little factoids slip through the cracks.

---

Usually, the Noticer is a nobody. Some bum with nothing to do but pick at their memory. Some fool who doesn't understand what it all means.

But it has happened that the Noticer is a person of great power. They open their eyes. They see that something is wrong. Something is different.

They use their power and their fame to tell the world. Radios, TVs, the Internet all blare out the truth.

The days tick on. The movement grows. Millions, even billions of residents wake up to the truth. They are Rememberers.

The Rememberers push back against The Watchers. They refuse to take it any longer. They vow to let time march on. And then --

-- it's Thursday again.

The reprisals are swift. When the clock chimes Thursday Prime and time itself freezes over, the Rememberers are powerless.

They must watch, frozen in body and mind -- but not in tormented soul -- as their memories are clean, rewound, and acid washed.

Let us not speak of what happens to the Noticers.

The Watchers paid very well to see this game. They will not have it ruined by some punk upstarts.

And then it is over.

Most do not remember. How could they? The Watchers are very careful, after all.

But there are those of us who watch. Those of us who wait, patiently. Who do not rise up in protest, but whisper in the shadows.

We are the true Rememberers.

We catalog what has changed, what stays the same.

We know the rules of the game, and how the Watchers bend them.

Our brains are just fucking huge, OK?

Like, seriously. I heard that's why Mandela died in prison, cuz his brain was so big.

And shit.

We call ourselves... /r/MandelaEffect.