Tag: dystopia

Puppet Regime

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We watch the enemy’s soldiers march into the capital.
Buildings burn. The Resistance is crushed, strung up from the castle walls.
Not by their necks, but by their hands, feet, and joints.
It is one things to be forced to follow the command of a puppet regime, but being told to bow to a marionette regime is even more humiliating.
The old Prime Minister is pranced around the massive stage with a club in his hand.
“WHERE’S THE BABY?” shrieks the enemy from the battlements in his best Punch falsetto.
Fiendish monsters! We will prevail, and make hand-puppets of them.

Punchy

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Twenty-two years ago, The Champion died in a plane crash.
The Boxing Association had enough of his DNA on file to let us grow and train a copy.
But not before Fights Incorporated got their own samples.
After a generation of hungry contenders, the Boxing World was taken by a storm of Champions.
Evenly matched in the ring in all ways but one: their training.
We had trained him before, so we knew his weaknesses.
Our champion came out on top, and he held the belt over his head in triumph.
We made sure he and the belt flew separately.

The Betting Man

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Governor Stack begins each sentence with “If I were a bettin man.”
Which everyone thought he was.
Tickets and race forms poked out of his jacket, and you could always find him down at the track, sipping a martini or a mint julep.
“I just come here for the drinks,” he says. “Best mint julep in the state.”
Which made no sense at all, since the racetrack made horrible drinks.
So, while he’s getting drunk on bad liquor and wasting his money on the horses, we run the state.
We run it better than Stack.
You can bet on that.

Catering

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Usually, when there’s a big company-wide conference call, they bring in pizza or boxed lunches.
However, this time, they brought in crates full of glowing ham-sized seed-pods to put on every employee’s forehead.
“Hell no,” I said. “I’m not going to let you mess with my brain like that.”
The secretary put the pod away and handed me a box lunch.
The box had T on W written on it. Sure enough, inside was a turkey on wheat with a side of coleslaw.
Of course, the bitch didn’t say anything about the nanoprobes.
I mean, Unit Seventy regrets any insult.

Make the monkey whine

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Once upon a time, I had a habit of molesting chimpanzee babies.
There’s just something wrong about me. Broken.
And the poor, innocent chimpanzees suffered my sickness.
I’d have gotten away with it, but one of those chimpanzees wound up in a language experiment and they taught it sign language.
The moment that chimpanzee saw me, it signed BAD MAN! and RAPIST! and EVIL BANANA HURT!
My lawyer said that the monkeys were trained to sign these things. The monkeys meant to sign NICE MAN! and FRIEND!
We sued the researchers for defamation. And won.
But in my dreams… CHIMPANZEES!

The Viking Attack

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It was around two in the morning that Mike the security guard got it in his head to protect the office building from Viking attack.
Maybe it was his medication, or it could have been the booze.
Probably both.
He didn’t have a backhoe to dig a moat or pile up earthworks, but he did manage to park the golf cart in the lobby to block the doors.
Soda machines were far too heavy for him to move, but couches from the lobby were perfect.
When he was fired, he disputed the termination with: “Well, no Vikings got through, right?”

Sealed with a kiss of death

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At first, we thought that Stanley was being attacked by flesh-eating bacteria, but the bacteria turned out to be the mailman.
It seems that the Postal Service is forcibly retiring as many of its older workforce as possible and replacing them with less-expensive cannibals.
“They don’t need a lunch break,” said the Postmaster General, giggling with glee.
Bastard.
Because of the danger, I pay all my bills online now.
Christmas is 8 months away, but I’m already thinking ahead for the Christmas gift season.
Just leave the packages on the doorstep and back away, Chief.
Otherwise, I’m firing my blunderbuss.

Miranda Rights

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If you want your Miranda rights, you’re going to need this fruit hat.
You’re also going to need a Brazilian band backing you.
These maracas might help.
Sure, you have the right to remain silent, but when you hear that Latin beat, you’re going to sing and dance.
Sure, call a lawyer. Just make sure he has a suit and shoes for dancing, and you can dance with him.
The cameras in the court room will be the paparazzi, and your trial will be in all the tabloids.
Anything you say will be used against you.
That’s why you’ll sing.

Olympic Medalist

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Sally trained hard for years, dreaming of the day that she’d win the gold at the Olympics.
Her family sacrificed so much for her, giving up so much so she’d have the best trainer and the best equipment.
They paid off the Board Of Education so that her training would count as school credits.
No need for math and science when there’s a medal to be won, right?
Which, that summer, she won.
And promptly then fell off the medal podium, shattering her leg.
No endorsements. No career.
Nothing.
For years, she used that medal to scratch off lottery tickets.

The Right Religion

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After thousands of years of praying, sacrificing, killing, maiming, and suffering through gospel music, mankind had finally determined which of all religions was the right one.
The Global Address System, normally reserved for planetwide emergencies, was turned on as the researchers revealed their findings.
“We have determined that the Supreme Being is the 2917k5b Asteroid,” they said. “This mighty rock may not be the creator of our universe, but it will certainly be our destruction.”
Riots and chaos spread across the globe, and billions of people died.
“Nice joke there, Dr. Walters,” said a scientist. “Solved that pesky population problem.”