US—The United States declared a national emergency Tuesday after intelligence agencies confirmed what had long been whispered in dimly lit basements and suspiciously active comment sections: the country has run out of conspiracy theories. All of them. Every last one.

The tipping point came late Monday when the long-awaited “Epstein Files Phase III” drop—unredacted court documents, flight logs, financial trails, and what one archivist described as “several terabytes of extremely specific party Polaroids”—finally landed in the public domain. Within hours, federal investigators, independent journalists, and at least three separate Telegram channels simultaneously declared victory: the final holdout theories had been vindicated.

Gone were the last lingering questions about who really visited the island, what the “Lolita Express” cargo manifests actually contained, who the unnamed “prominent scientists” and “philanthropic billionaires” were in the visitor logs, and whether certain high-profile suicides were, in fact, suicides. The documents didn’t just confirm suspicions—they included notarized receipts, timestamped security footage stills, and in one particularly damning appendix, a color-coded spreadsheet labeled “Client Satisfaction Survey – 2015–2019.”

Panic buying has erupted at surviving conspiracy supply stores. Customers are hoarding vintage Alex Jones DVDs, unopened bottles of nascent iodine, and “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” merchandise that has suddenly become historical memorabilia rather than protest gear. One vendor in Austin reported a run on black permanent markers after patrons began furiously crossing out items on decades-old “to-investigate” whiteboards.

In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump sought to calm the spiraling panic with what he called “tremendous reassurance—the best reassurance.”

“Folks, let me tell you something,” Trump said, gesturing broadly at a row of empty conspiracy-theory bingo cards propped up on the Resolute Desk. “We have plenty of new conspiracies coming. Tremendous conspiracies. The best conspiracies you’ve ever seen in your life. Nobody does conspiracies like we do—believe me. They’re huge. They’re yuge. And they’re coming very, very soon. We’re talking next-level stuff. Deep, deep stuff. The kind that makes the old ones look like child’s play. We’re going to make them so big, so beautiful, you won’t even know what hit you.”

When a reporter asked for specifics, the president leaned into the microphone. “You’ll see. You’ll all see. It’s going to be fantastic. Or catastrophic. One of the two. But either way—ratings through the roof. The fake news won’t know what to do with themselves.”

In Chicago, 47-year-old Roger Underhill, a self-described “truth researcher” since 2008, described the emotional toll.

“I don’t know what to do, I’ve never not had a conspiracy theory to keep me going,” Roger Thornehill of Chicago said. “What am I going to stay up until 4 in the morning worrying about if they’re uncovering all the conspiracies? I’m freaking out over here.”

“I used to have a rotation,” he said, voice cracking. “Epstein didn’t kill himself on Mondays, 9/11 was an inside job on Wednesdays, adrenochrome Fridays. Now the Epstein board is full green checkmarks. I stared at it for six hours straight. Nothing left to red-pill myself with. I tried doom-scrolling for four hours last night and all I got was weather reports. I’m literally shaking.”

“Everyone just wrote these off as theories a few weeks ago. Now it’s coming to light that they really happened,” Underhill said, sweating profusely.

“What if they’re just exposing all these conspiracies to cover up an even worse conspiracy?” Underhill added.

_{Originally published June 3, 2021.}

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