The Famous Reverend Blake is never seen in public without his twin bodyguards.
And his bodyguards are never seen without their white plastic masks.
Well, sometimes, they are. When they take their turn as Reverend Blake.
They’re actually identical triplets, changing roles when convenient.
This is useful for Blake’s “24 Hours Of Jesus” marathon sermons.
Or, during his weekly sermons at his sprawling megachurch, an alibi for his perverted obsessions in the day care center.
Twenty thousand loyal followers saw Blake up there preaching.
There’s no way he could have been down there.
Bearing false witness is a sin, child.
Tag: dystopia
Switched
Every so often, you hear about a “Switched At Birth” story in the news where two couples get each other’s babies by mistake.
Usually that gets cleared up with DNA testing, or an out-of-court settlement with the hospital.
However, there was one instance I heard of where a baby was accidentally switched with a janitor’s mop.
The happy couple was a bit concerned that their bundle of joy didn’t cry or eat, but they appreciated being able to sleep through the night without interruption.
The janitor filed a grievance with management because the baby didn’t clean floors all that well.
The Slaughter
The Bugs set off a blanket of electromagnetic pulses over the planet, wiping out our technological infrastructure overnight.
It didn’t take long for them to slaughter billions.
The survivors were rounded up for hunting and experiments.
And then… the Bugs figured out one of our languages.
The hunting and experiments stopped.
They obsessed over books and the surviving recorded material.
“Wow, we sure fucked up,” said a Bug representative. “We’re really, really sorry about that whole invasion thing.”
They cleaned up what they could, built some nice habitats, and left.
Sure, I still have nightmares.
But it’s peaceful now, right?
Payout
Recently, a fucked-up soldier murdered 16 Afghans in the field.
Some were women. Some were children.
The government paid the survivors fifty thousand dollars for each dead relative.
There are twenty-nine million Afghans.
Do the math, and you come up with a trillion and a half dollars payout if we killed them all.
Then, I realized, that you wouldn’t have to pay a dime if we killed them all. Because there’d be nobody left to pay.
Instead, I’m taking off my shoes and my belt to get on a fucking plane.
While this minimum-wage moron wants to fondle my balls.
Turnover
Most companies have an employee turnover rate of a few percent.
Bad companies to work for have higher turnover.
But our company, Replication Incorporated, has a turnover rate of over one hundred percent.
That’s right. More people left than worked for the company to begin with.
Government regulators are always confused by that number, but it’s easy to explain: we duplicate humans, and our staff are required to act as test subjects.
Every now and then, a duplication procedure goes awry, and the employee and all their duplicates leave.
Which is good, I suppose. Makes the bathrooms easier to clean.
Fair Trade
This morning, I asked the girl at the coffeeshop what “Fair Trade” coffee means.
She had no idea.
So, I asked her what “Unfair Trade” coffee would be.
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “The coffee distributor makes the grower’s negotiator stay at the airport in a room next to the ice machine so they can’t get any sleep. Then, they give them the sucky chair in the conference room, the one with broken springs and not enough padding. Oh, and they offer them sodas and coffee, but the bathroom door’s locked when they need it.”
I smiled… and ordered tea.
The Senator
Politicians are often described as sticking their finger into the wind, but then there’s Senator Hardcastle, who has ordered her staff to lug around an entire weather station.
You might think she’d read the paper or watch the news for the weather forecast, but the news hasn’t been kind to the senator.
They say horrible things about her personal spending.
So, she doesn’t read. Or watch.
And she’s ordered her staff not to read or watch, either.
Instead, they lug around the weather station.
What’s the humidity, she asks. Is it too damp? My hair must be perfect, you know.
The Justice Machines
Before the invention of the justice machines, people had to use lawyers, juries, and judges to determine guilt or innocence. It was messy and unreliable.
Now, all you have to do is stand in a booth and wait for the machine to turn on a light.
Green if you’re innocent, and the doors open.
Red if you’re guilty, and the doors remain shut and sealed so the poison gas won’t leak out.
This wasn’t perfect either, so newer models don’t have the lights.
Too many guilty criminals were damaging the machines trying to escape when they saw the red light.
What’s the deal with the Cookie Monster?
Sometimes, I wonder about the Cookie Monster.
Why does he talk that way?
And why is he obsessed with cookies?
I did a little research, and found out that he was a foreign exchange student, but the file didn’t say where he was from.
Only that he’d never left.
He keeps saying C is for Cookie, but his permanent record says he got caught sleeping with the home economics teacher in an attempt to get that upped to an A minus.
As for his English grades, there’s no amount of fur that blue furball could shag to keep from flunking.
The Uncharmed Life
The townsfolk spread rumors about Mercy Polk and her use of magic charms, potions, and wands in unusual rituals.
She was arrested and dragged before the town magistrate, and ordered to demonstrate her supposed magic powers.
She dipped her finger into a bowl of water, and turned it into wine.
“What is that in your other hand?” asked the magistrate.
“A stone!” shouted the bailiff. “The rumors are true! She has no powers whatsoever!”
The magistrate found her guilty and sentenced her to exile in Boston.
(And kept the stone for himself, since good wine is so hard to find.)