[lit-ideas] It all begins with mad cows.
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 01:46:00 +0900
John Wager used to (maybe still does) have a wonderful signature line to the
effect that one should never blame on malice what is likely due to
incompetence.Wired columnist Lor Sjoberg does a wonderful riff on a similar
theme.
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*2007:* A biotechnology company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, breeds cattle
that are immune to mad cow disease. A relieved beef industry pours funding
into the lab.
*2008:* Mad-cow-immune cows become the standard for livestock, but it is
discovered that their prion-resistant brains have given them a primitive,
sinister intelligence. Farmhand kickings, rodeo clown gorings and milkmaid
stompings rise 400 percent. A few of the cows escape into the wild, making
capture difficult. The government decides to sow biogenetically engineered
grasses in their grazing areas, grasses that will release deadly spores into
their systems.
*2009:* The genetically engineered grass spores fuse symbiotically with the
musculature of the cows, giving them enhanced strength, increased endurance
and possibly X-ray vision. These evil veg-cows begin to harass South Dakotan
suburbs. Deciding to give genetic engineering a rest, the Department of
Homeland Security instead creates a small army of cybernetically enhanced
cougars to track and hunt the super-cows.
*2010:* The cybercougars are able to take out nearly all the veg-cattle
except for a few pockets of resistance. They then turn their attention to
the human population. Cybercougars spread throughout Montana, Wyoming and
Nebraska. Omaha is evacuated and falls to the cougars, and all major cities
in Wyoming are abandoned, to the extent that Wyoming has major cities.
Government forces are unable to restore order, and the president orders
non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse bombs to be fired into much of the
Midwest, hoping to disable the robotic predators.
*2011:* The electromagnetic pulses take out only about half the cougars, but
interrupt the electric grid from Utah to Kentucky. Half the population of
the United States is in darkness, and the cougars prey on those who dare
leave their homes, batting their bodies around for hours in a grim mockery
of adorable kitten posters. The military authorizes the construction of tens
of thousands of units of exoskeletal battle armor, the most powerful
personal armament ever constructed, in order to take back the Midwest.
*2012:* The battle armor is stolen from a secret research laboratory by a
well-organized group of militant swingers, who use it to take over the state
of Nevada, rechristening it the Progressive Republic of Swapovia. The
cougars spread into Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The government reveals the
existence of a secret cloning and neurotransfer program designed to
replicate important celebrities. A special forces unit made up of clones of
Dr. Phil is airlifted into Nevada with the goal of talking the Swapovians
into a life of monogamy and weight loss.
*2013:* The Dr. Phil clones, on the verge of a negotiations breakthrough,
suddenly contract a virus to which they are all genetically susceptible. In
a desperate move, they are all given an untested super-antibiotic.
*2014:* An antibiotic-resistant form of the Dr. Phil virus assails the
general public. This disease affects not only Dr. Phil, but any professional
advice-giver. Columnists, life coaches and bartenders alike fall to the
virulent disease. Without sound advice, wives are unable to leave their
deadbeat husbands, teenagers are not warned against drunk driving, and
nobody knows how to fix that knocking noise their '87 Grand Am makes when it
gets rainy. American civilization collapses. Chicago is in flames. Boston is
reduced to rubble. Los Angeles is somewhat less pleasant than it used to be.
*2015:* Aliens stop by Earth because they heard the Western Hemisphere was a
good place to pick up a burger and a microbrew cheap. Disappointed in their
quest, they extinguish the sun on their way out of the solar system,
partially because they come from a vindictive planet, and partially because
one of them got a sun extinguisher for his birthday and wanted to try it
out. As the Earth enters an eternal freeze that no form of life will
survive, America's global approval rating goes down by another 4 percent.
-------------------
Something for everyone here.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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