Happy The Elf woke up in the North Pole Infirmary.
His head hurt. Everything looked weird.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You had a rough Christmas,” says the lab technicians, putting equipment on a cart. “Everyone did. But you’re all fine now.”
Happy looked around and saw all the other elves in the Infirmary, in various states of stupor and lucidity.
Santa watched them through a one-way mirror.
“Poor bastards,” he said. “They have no memory of the Hell I put them through every year.”
“And neither do you, you old bastard” said a technician, sliding a needle into Santa’s neck.
Tag: dystopia
Pay The Price
I was losing my hearing, but I couldn’t afford the surgery to repair it.
So, I got financial assistance from a corporation.
Now, I can hear again, but I also hear advertising.
When I walk by a restaurant, their ad plays in my ear.
“Michael, you deserve a break today,” says the voice, calling me out by name.
I want the ads to stop, but my doctor says the cost of ad-free implants is not covered by my plan.
And under his Doctors Union contract, he can’t remove them.
So that’s why I’m here with the mirrors and the drill.
Sitting very still.
The Conspiracy
We recruited quietly.
Terminal cancer patients.
The mentally retarded.
The homeless.
The hopeless.
Each received two packages: maps showing their target, and a bomb to deliver to that target.
We wanted to coordinate attacks, but some of these people couldn’t wait… time was running out, and we had to collect some maps and bombs.
It was only a matter of time before we’d get caught.
So, we set them loose, and the impact was devastating.
Every soft target was hit. Corrupt politicians, greedy bankers, crooked parasites all obliterated.
Society panicked.
Then, when the smoke cleared, we waited.
Hoping for change.
Pardon
The President watched the news in horror as the plane hit the Empire State Building over and over and over…
His National Security Advisor tried to brief him as he walked to the Press Room, but there wasn’t much known yet, other than the fact that a plane had hit the famous skyscraper.
As he stood there, fielding questions without answers, the identity of the hijacker was released:
It was a turkey.
A reporter stood up. “Didn’t you pardon that turkey this past Thanksgiving?”
The President then recognized the bird and winced.
“I guess he got cooked in the end.”
Robot Replacements
The owner of the factory looked at the productivity reports and sighed.
His workers were shiftless and lazy, so he decided to replace them with robots.
The robots tried to get the work done, but their output still wasn’t what he’d hoped for.
Then, the idea struck him: What if the robots were shiftless and lazy?
He had them reprogrammed and started the factory back up.
The robots turned out to be even more efficient than humans at shirking their duties. One robot could shirk the duties of ten men.
He gave up on the factory business, building politicians instead.
Drip Drip
The city needed more water, and for that they needed another reservoir.
Engineers surveyed the state and determined that our valley was the site.
The towns of Glade and Riverbank were offered buyouts, they voted in favor of them, and people moved away as all they knew was razed.
Even the cemeteries were emptied and relocated.
When the dam was completed, water covered the remaining cellars and streets slowly as the lake filled up.
Every year, I row out and toss two wreaths onto the water.
I drive back to the city, turn the tap, and watch the drip… drip…
But With A Whimper
So, the world ended yesterday.
After years and years of people saying the end was near, when it finally came, it wasn’t really all so bad.
In fact, if people had known exactly how the world was going to end, I don’t think they’d have freaked out about it so much.
Especially the guys walking around in sandwichboards, waving signs and shouting THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!
When the end came, I saw one of those guys just sitting there and smiling.
So, I joined him, and we watched the world end together.
And the new one begin.
Christmas 2010
Despite the cold, I will go out today. I do this every Christmas.
I bundle myself up with a thick coat, woolen cap, gloves, and scarf.
Then, I walk the streets, handing out ten dollar bills to the homeless.
“Go get yourself something,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”
They smile and thank me: “Bless you!”
I don’t wait. I keep walking, handing out more bills.
When I run out, I put my cap, scarf, and coat on a sleeping drunk.
Yeah, they money’s counterfeit. Witnesses will point this dumb sap out to the cops.
Time to move to a new city.
Everybody wants
I remember when the Christmas gift that everybody wanted was a new electronic toy or gadget.
Teddy bears that played storytelling tapes.
Video games.
Plastic spiders you could throw at the wall and watch them crawl down it.
As computing and materials sciences advanced, so did the latest and greatest holiday gifts.
Everybody wants it. And so do you.
Now that things have taken a turn for the worse, you’re lucky to get clothes, used or new.
Or, for the truly desperate, somewhere warm to sleep…
No, the world doesn’t end with a bang or a whimper, but Christmas carols.
Outsourced
Up until now, I helped move call center jobs to India.
But that wasn’t enough for the shareholders, and they wanted more return on their investment.
So, I worked with a friend at Temporal Labs, and we started up a helpdesk based on workers in the future.
“It’s a quantum tunnel communications channel,” I said. “Expensive, but permanent. The great thing is, they know how things turn out in the future, so they can send answers back to us.”
I guess leaving our debts to our grandchildren wasn’t enough. Now we make them answer all of our stupid questions, too.