They have the unbridled gall to wonder why no one is having babies to refill the conveyor belt into this late stage capitalistic insane asylum we somehow got way too comfortable calling reality. I’m sorry Daddy, I guess you’re gunna have to find some other chump who’s willing to staple one of your numbered participation bibs onto their little protein sack to keep your meat grinders going, cause it ain’t gunna be this Chicken! Maybe you’d have better luck weaponizing Catholic guilt a little more. But I think they’ve been wising up in recent decades to your grand deception.
This is why dystopia has been such a popular thought experiment. Although these days you don’t need the mental lab coats, just look out your window. Planets a superfund site, we got a legit microplastic continent in the middle of the ocean like some kind of polyethylene Atlantis, and undiagnosed psychopaths with crap in their drawers heading up the whole circus perpetually gaslighting us into it being okay. We’re not seeking entertainment, we’re trying to read the tea leaves to try and figure out what flavor of dystopia is coming down the pipe.
Are we lookin’ at distant post apocalyptia Mad Max desert style with sand and dust in all our nooks and crannies? Who needs payday loans when you’ll get some extra roach tempura for giving your friendly local warlord your eyelids. Those filthy leather harnesses are also incredibly flattering on the hips. Wink
Maybe we’ll luck out and get the Fallout one, where its either a quick death to retro-futuristic Americana bumping from Mad Dog, or if you’re not one of the former elites who ended up in the literal eugenics flavored microcosms of the Vaults, you can maybe join the Brotherhood of Steel and fail upwards into stability like Maximus. Which kudos to him I guess. That loser still didn’t get the Perfect piece of cake.
But why stop here? Lets swing the other way! I’d do just fine in a techno corporate seasoned end game. We’re already used to crap wages with no benefits, and the super rich building bunkers. Is it that much different if the bunkers are now skyscraping skyscrapers? We’ll have to deal with organ repossession, corpse protein reprocessing, and cybernetic augmentations passed out by both TEMU and Tesla alike. That’s not too far off anyway. Plus there’s always the option of interstellar travel Cowboy Bebop style. Who wouldn’t want to travel the cosmos battling space pirates over extra extra dehydrated pack of Ramen?! This one might be the best one overall. Mr. Silverhand was no saint, but any reality that has a form of Keanu Reeves in it can’t be all that bad.
Whatever it ends up looking like, the future’s looking pretty rough for us ladies and gentlemen. Whether the end comes in the form of Nuclear destruction, Technocratic domination, Zombies, or alien invasion, we’re probably cooked. So eat that shrinkflated ice cream sandwich, do your kegels so the probes don’t do any lasting damage, but my Brother in Christ remember to return those shopping carts. Neo might be watching.
-RC