Hello friend! Hello family!
OK, so here is the second of those three essays I did for writing class. The assignment was to write a satire:
Satire: 1. An artistic work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. 2. Irony or caustic wit used to expose or attack folly.
Here’s what I came up with:
Binary 101
Sirious and Elixir, romantically involved aliens (identifying as gender neutral and requesting gender-neutral pronouns) who just needed to “get away”, arrive on a lush but human-less earth. While Sirious immediately begins finalizing the ship’s landing-dock securements, Elixir takes a quick peek outside and finds what appears to be a written message. They open Guugle translator and begin reading:
…..
If you’re reading this, we all died. It’s unclear how it started but perhaps it was with Brexit, or Hawaii’s Hexit. Everyone telling each other what to do all the time must have played a role. Perhaps #meone contributed.
They were volatile times. Apartheid had rebranded as Aparthood and joined forces with the K.K.K., churchgoers were fighting over ownership of God, and social media was being called a social menace. Things were definitely getting bad by the time the twice-daily Olympic Blames coverage went viral. Which was also when World Trade-War 3 began.
Rifts were evident everywhere you looked. One of the biggest was the squabbling between once long-time allies the Roamin ’Empire (originating in the U.S.) and the Commonwealthiest Empire (from the UK). Political parties couldn’t have been more polarized. Written by Adolph Hipler and co-authored by Presley, Lenin, and Cash, Mein Komfort had burst onto the scene, influencing what happened next.
The Voting App, buried, deep in its Terms and Conditions a clause stating that elected officials could do as they please. And they did. In fact, the first thing they did was impeach all citizens from their role as electors of new officials. Citizens were, however, allowed to vote on Measure 101: the measure that built the walls.
People were on such opposite sides of the fence that each party got to vote on whether they wanted to be on the West side or the East side. For quite some time already opinion polls had revealed that a large number of people wanted to separate themselves from their counterparts with a wall. But until then, no one had pulled the trigger. No one, not even the doomsayers could have foreseen what would happen next: wall after wall after wall. “We were here first” people screamed. History and the planet rolled their eyes.
The Chinese were chosen to build and were recruited via a notorious pyramid scheme selling “greener pastures”, but once they boarded their transport they were chained, enslaved, and shipped around the world. However, even as the solutions (the walls) were rising, the fighting continued. Perhaps most noticeably between companies vying for the construction contracts. Although some deny it happened at all, the Outshvitsu Brick Factory apparently lured slaves from the Iron Curtain Co. into their “clay ovens”, from which, none reportedly returned.
Nonetheless, faction after faction, belief against belief, the divides got divided, and divided, and divided, and divided. Until eventually, each and every person found refuge from everyone else’s madness behind his or her very-own four walls. Finally, no one had to deal with anyone else. Boy oh boy was it great, and not just for the people
There was an immediate and dramatic decrease in humanities carbon footprint as all sorts of emissions were eliminated: animal farming ended, factories closed, and no one was able to drive. Furthermore, people’s health soared as they worked by the sun, building shelter and planting food. Population control also benefited, made possible by me time, all the time.
There were also unexpected advantages like decrease in global starvation. Because everyone was out of sight no one could judge anymore. So, if you suspected your neighbor had passed away, you just peeked over the wall to check, and if they had, you licked your lips, lit the barbie, and readied the salt. And though it’s not clear how they functioned during lock down, the Corona Food Company fed millions through their organic, human-cascass farming.
Unfortunately, however, not all was well. There was trouble in paradise because even though everyone had their own space, and no one to interfere with them, it wasn’t uncommon for people to throw diseased objects over neighbor’s walls to claim new land. Also, drone owners would crash into other people’s walls before acquiring perpetrator’s resources.
And there was a bigger problem too: The planet was going through withdrawals. Without the availability of sugar, fast food, alcohol, tobacco, prescriptions, drugs, pornography, sex, internet, phones, casinos, shopping, credit cards, other people, and the seemingly-endless list of other things people use to get themselves away from themselves, people were driving themselves crazy.
It’s the silver lining to the story though. Having nowhere to go and no way to hide from themselves, people were forced to contemplate, pray, meditate, and ponder on ways to settle their inner-beings. And life guided. Bit-by-bit, thought-by-thought, belief-by-belief, perspective-by- perspective, value-by-value, and action-by-action people resolved themselves for a change.
Understanding, compassion, empathy, consideration, and care for others ensued. Kamikaze huggers would jump from walls, trees and rooftops, catching their targets in embracing arms. There was a consensus brewing that life was better with each other after all, and with the help of the Germans the walls began to fall. Additionally, as a symbol of unification designed to reunite people with people, cats and dogs - named cogs - were bred and spread.
However, not everything was that simple: We may have been done with the past but the past was not done with us. As the walls came down we realized how firmly our stances had destroyed the environment. Our walls had torn apart roots - the earth was completely barren. Fortunately. Jeff Bezos saw it as a blank canvas and made good on his promise to give away his fortune before he dies. He had already bought all the seeds possible and used his vast delivery network to sew up the planet. And for a while everything looked like it was going to be OK. Having been set in motion decades earlier, and with divine cosmic timing, the polar caps melted. They watered the planet and created a brand new, worldwide Amazon.
Unfortunately, though, actions don’t always meet their intentions because it was around this time, due to our feline and K9’s genetic modifications, Mad Cog Disease started spreading like global-warming wildfires. Unable to eat the still contagious corpses survivors turned to oceans as the last source of food, but by that point the fish were 50% plastic and we couldn’t eat them. It turns out we didn’t eat enough plastic ourselves, quickly enough to evolve at the rate we fed the fish. So, here I am now, all alone, the last human being alive - full of lessons learned, alas, too little too late. If only we could have seen what was coming.
…..
WHAP! Sirious has emerged from the spaceship and found Alixir: “What on earth do you think you’re doing? I’ve been slaving away in the landing bay and you’re out here taking in a good read? I’ve had it with you! I’m leaving you. Gone. Bye-bye. Outa here! I don’t even want to see you again so keep your distance! In fact, remember that big river we crossed just before we landed? The one that looked like a snake? That side is yours,” they said pointing, “This side is mine. Don’t cross that line pal. Dont even think about it."
THE END
Funny, not funny. Hmmm. Life. I guess we live and learn. Hopefully. Even if it is the hard way.
Check out my next blog: March 2021 - August 2021
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