Tuesday August 18, 2026 [8/8 +10]
Chicago, United States of America
Matthew McBride was very busy.
Ever since the Coma phenomenon hit, the Daily Post and Register was in the global spotlight. Matthew’s paper was the first to identify the reason behind the phenomenon: killing another human being puts you in the Coma.
Ever since then, the publicity enabled the paper to have access to data from all over the world to further put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Overwhelmingly, the major pattern was in the jails. Inmates convicted of murder, manslaughter, DUI, and negligent homicide were all hit by the Coma. Strangely, there were fifty-seven convicted murderers worldwide (and counting) who did not fall into the Coma. Law enforcement authorities worldwide were digging into these “Coma Cold Cases” to try and see if these prisoners were in fact innocent. Matthew’s paper (via his co-worker Yvonne) was inundated with data from prisons from all over the world.
There were mysterious Coma cases where seemingly innocent people were struck down. One example was a man in his fifties from Quebec, Canada. He was hit by the Coma, completely mystifying his relatives until a girlfriend from his high school years came forward and said that he had admitted to her long ago that he had drowned a fellow classmate during a fishing trip when he was very young, and sworn her to secrecy.
Matthew tilted his head back, rubbing his forehead. This thing strikes back from the past… any killers with long buried secrets get their comeuppance with this… this THING…
And then there were the tragedies that were averted due to the Coma.
Prior to ‘8/8’ (what everyone was calling the day that the Coma hit), approximately 11,000 murders occurred in the United States every year, and many more of course worldwide.
In the ten days since 8/8, there have been exactly zero murders committed in the United States.
Matthew did not expect this to last, but he had written about how the Coma had already saved lives. In the past ten days, 300 people did not get murdered because the Coma was the most powerful deterrent to homicide the world has ever known.
Matthew knew that the world kept calling this thing “the Coma”, but he felt that something was missing with the moniker. The phenomenon not only struck a person comatose, it also punished them. Punishment… Imprisonment…
Matthew sat upright in his chair. That’s it, he thought. We’re going to call this thing the Coma Imprisonment.
