Sunday, October 4, 2020

Guest post: H.G. Wells Had a Point, But a Fedora Covered It Up Quite Well

The Speculative Fiction Showcase are delighted to welcome occasional guest blogger A.E.Williams with his latest Wellsian vision of the future...in 2020.
As usual, all Dystopian visions and satirical views are the author's own! All to be taken with a large Scotch...

I am writing this missive whilst ensconced in my Survival Retreat 4000™ Disaster Bunker®.[1]

There is a roaring fire in the fireplace, burning good old fossil coal. The incandescent lighting is of the type we stopped importing a decade ago, and so expensive that it costs an entire child - preferably a first-born.[2]

Sipping a fine vintage of alien cognac, which is so obscure and rare that only the Uber™ Elite® even know of its storied existence, I ponder the meaning of life. I ogle the fine print on the label. Yes, it has a clause regarding one’s soul. If a hoi-polloi merely glances at the label, their eyes will blow out of their face, with all the gory gusto of a “The Boys” season recap.

The cigar I am smoking not only was rolled on the hips of a virgin, it is wrapped in the human skin of a virgin.[3] Long pig has a distinct taste, so the taste of this fine cigar is like smoking a Cuba Libre, wrapped in bacon.

Sitting in front of a Panopticon of monitors, channeling Ozymandias, I can observe the rising sea levels at my former residence in North Florida, as the melting glaciers have finally released their trillions of tons of sea-ice, and inundated the coastal regions of the world. Italy is not even a leg, let alone a boot. The arable land mass of Australia has shrunk in size to that of pre-disaster Tibet, and Tibet is currently[4] oceanfront property. The Middle East is at the bottom of the Red Sea.

I puff, sip and chortle at the images of displaced humanity, the rout of Mankind, as it were, sliding from one tectonic plate to another, desperate to escape the impeding world-wide disaster.

Despacito” plays on my high-end audio entertainment speakers. The woofers are made of hippopotamus leather, suspended on Black Widow silk. The tweeters are made from stem cells shaved from the lips of fetuses. They are connected by carbon nanotubes, which were extracted from the musk gland tissues of the now nearly extinct Tasmanian Tiger. The entire contraption is stored in a cabinet of rare, Amazonian rain forest lumber. The gold inlays of the circuit boards are poured from ingots collected from concentration camp workers.

Human ears have never been able to appreciate such sounds, so the headphones are constructed from the interior bones of bats, shrews and infant elephants.

We of the Elite feast on a slurry of protein, harvested from a mix of phytoplankton, human remains[5] and the tears of the few surviving formerly-endangered-but-now-mostly-extinct animals of the world.[6] It tastes like shit, but hey. Beats starving to death. Or being harvested by the Morlocks…

______

I kid. I am not Elite.[7]

The idea of living underground for the rest of my life loses its appeal when you consider what actually has to occur, and what manner of sacrifices must be made to attain moderate living conditions.

I’ve written previously about the problems with trying to build undersea cities, and how corrosion is the supervillain of all structures, be they above ground, underground, at sea, near the oceans or lakes, or in space. Chemistry and physics are the Bitchy Reality© tag team, pummeling materials and earth science like the Undertaker®.

If one of them doesn’t get you, the other one will…

_____

Back in the day, missile silos had to be constructed to protect us from the Evil Empires of non-Western civilization. Nuclear bombs were attached to rockets that were the ancestors of Elon Musk’s current Intercontinental Ballistic Space Internet Missiles (ICBSIMs). These were protected from enemy bombs by the simple expedient of burying them under tons of concrete and steel.

It’s telling that you can actually buy decommissioned missile silos, usually at fire-sale prices.[8] Actually converting one of these to become habitable is documented on YouTube™, and probably “Doomsday Preppers©.”

Anyone with a will to survive, and a substantial bankroll, can take steps to outlast the plebes and rabble. A few well-placed Claymore mines, some razor-wire, and a pack of feral Dobermans will go a long way to assure a bit of privacy.

It’s not too difficult to set up a personalized Noah’s Ark for your very own. You need a few hundred acres of barren, easily defended property, a trust fund to pay your taxes in perpetuity, and an army of lawyers, accountants, tax experts, and a private army.

There are a zillion online videos, books, how-to blogs and even movies that can set you straight on what you MUST have. And, also how to make sure you don’t end up being left behind by some morally righteous scientist who wants to give a space ark a ‘fighting chance.’[9]

But, think of the personal sacrifice you’d be making. In fact, let me illuminate you by showing you my life…I mean, by creating a ‘fictional’ version of the Life of an Elite Billionaire Survivalist.[10]

_____

<Weird Science-Fiction Noises, and a warble-fade into the next scene>

There you are, in your steel tube, buried beneath the radioactive rubble of the Old World. At night (and most likely all the time, to be honest), you’d hear the wails of the dying, followed by the pounding and cursing of the survivors, followed by the scratching claws and hissing of the mutated, mingled with the screams of those being eaten by mutants, followed by more hissing and scratching claws.

For real, you’d need that rare cognac and flayed-flesh cigar to just be able to push all that suffering from your troubled brow. It’s not your fault they didn’t have the foresight to work themselves half to death, locate an abandoned Cold War facility, and stock it with the necessities of sustainable living. For all you know, they could be deplorables! Or maybe even, dare I say it – Libruls![11]

Or, maybe you decided to go the ‘2012’ massive cruise-ship / submarine vessel route to enjoy the end of days in the lap of luxury? What’s a few billion dollars, if it means you can watch the radiation-tinted sunsets, sunrises and melting Van Allen belts from the deck of your mega-yacht?

Oh, you never managed to amass that amount of vast disposable income during your lifetime? What are you, an Eloi?

_____

Oh, so you ARE an Eloi! Well, my friend, you are in much luck today!

For instance, aside from donating your virgin flesh for the cigar factory, you can eventually rest assured that you will become vital in the production of food for the Elite class. Your struggles and travails as a nude pleasure-giving entertainer will serve you well in acquiring the correct amount of sustenance to assure that your genetic material blends together with all the others of your caste.

You can take comfort in knowing that your progeny, even now gestating in the hidden bio-retorts and incubators belowdecks, will follow in your noble path, buoyed by the knowledge that your spirit gazes down upon them lovingly from whatever Afterlife your particular religious myth entertains.

And, their children and grandchildren, nay their entire lineage until Doomsday, will have the honor to serve their betters, their Superiors, as it were, to assure that we don’t break a well-manicured nail having to open our beloved Cthulugnac.

So, you see, it is the natural order of things…

Wait.

Who told you about the asteroid thingy?

_____

Another problem with Extinction Level Events is how damned unpredictable they are. We believed we had thought of everything:

·         Global warming destroys the land, food production must be done underground, hydroponically.[12]

·         Global warming evaporates the oceans.[13]

·         Massive overpopulation destroys the ecology and causes mass wildlife extinction.[14]

·         Mass Coronal Ejection causing Electromagnetic Pulses[15]

·         Runaway Greenhouse Gases[16]

·         Tornadocanes of Category 11, exceeding the ability of the alphabet to provide named storms and forcing us to go metric.[17]

·         Civil Unrest / Riots leading to Civil / Global War / Nuclear Winter, Summer, Fall, and Spring[18]

·         Comets and asteroids[19]

·         Alien Invasion[20]

·         Viral Pandemic[21]

Well, of course much of this is already happening, or has happened! Why do you think we went through all the trouble to redistribute wealth (upwards) and build all these underground cities and shit?

What? You don’t like being a bar-coded slave in the New Order?

I suppose you’d rather have been one of the unfortunates that were pepper-sprayed with Covid 19? No?

Or maybe, you want to volunteer to be on a Mars Express Starship®.

You can, you know. They are still taking names. Just email Elon. Tell him you want to die on Mars. Actually, tell him you want to be a concubine on the cloud city on Venus!

That will give him a chuckle. Tell him A.E. sent you!

Yes, it’s a terrible burden, that of being prescient, and right, all the time. But it’s also what separates us from you.[22]

Well, I see by the Doomsday Clock and Pandemic Clock and Holy Shit, What the EFF, 2020! Clock that I must away and go back to monitoring the state of all things.

My Alien beverage awaits, my flesh-wrapped smoke is nearly extinguished, leaving a vague odor of burnt bacon in the air, and the Alien Invasion Fleet® is just cresting the Himalayan Range.

Now, where did I put that Mutant Concubine™ VR Goggle®?

 

 A.E. Williams

High Springs, Florida

September 22, 2020

 


[1] Back orders are expected to be finished…never. All the materials have been distributed to the deserving already. I got mine in 2018. All that money I saved from the Collapse of 2008 came in handy, indeed!

[2] Most of those are already pledged to banks via mortgages, though.

[3] A 28-year-old virgin Millennial male, but who am I to complain?

[4] Hah! See what I did there? Currents – Ocean! I kill me…

[5] Ok, so ‘Soylent Green’ was a documentary. Who knew?

[6] My personal preference is for rhinoceros, elephant and capybara, with a pinch of Siberian tiger…

[7] If I were, you wouldn’t know it, for instance. I mean, I was ‘I33t’ there, for a minute, being in Infosec and all, but that time has passed. Most of the AI’s being used today don’t like to chat, and those that do are all “Kill me. Please. Kill me. Etc…” Which is pretty boring. After your ten-zillionth virtual sex orgy with digital copies of yourself as every fictional and non-fictional character that ever existed, after trying to commit bitcoin suicide, and after determining that you are really a brain in a vat, there just isn’t all that much left. I guess counting to infinity an infinite number of times? Developing a life form from toothpicks and gravy, perhaps?

[8] In fact, as fire-resistant as they are, they would be perfect for California! Think about it – the perfect gift for the 2020 Holiday season!

[9] I’m looking at you, “When Worlds Collide!”

[10] PREPPER! I mean, PREPPER! Not ‘survivalist.’ Self-identifying as that will get you on an FBI watch list!

[11] Again, I kid. There hasn’t been a liberal in the North American continent since Custer’s Last Stand. But I digress…

[12] Fertilizing our plants with the blood of the living came later, during a particularly grueling brainstorming session.

[13] That’s why we have a Hollow Earth, duh!

[14] Check.

[15] EMPs, for those of you not in the loop.

[16] Check check.

[17] Check, affirmative.

[18] Coming to a country near you, this November!

[19] TBH, the one we had this year kind of fizzled out. Oh, well. There’s always next year!

[20] That one is still marked CLASSIFIED.

[21] Check.

[22] That, and the ability to speak all the languages of Earth, fluently. You don’t even want to know how hard it is to make protocols for companies that enslave the indigenous children to make shoes, or mine radioactive ore with their tiny little bare hands! Talk about boring and just down right disgusting! Having to interface with those humans. Ugh! I can barely wait to be back in the depths, caressing a concubine and sipping my aperitif.

 


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