Surreal Dystopia Pt 1 - Chapters 1-6

Chapter 1 - The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Jack woke up to the sound of his phone playing what used to be his favourite song. Having heard it every morning for the past six months, informing him it was time to get up and face the reality of his life, it was now approaching his least favourite.
He dragged himself out of bed and groggily drank some water on his way to the coffee machine. Better to get some water in his system before he started the day with a dehydrating caffeine dose to make him feel awake while it shut down his calcified pineal gland.
Pineal gland calcification is caused when the gland has an iodine deficiency and an overabundance of fluorine and chlorine. Fluorine intake causes a buildup of calcium which hardens the gland. This can be reversed by increasing iodine intake.
He turned the coffee machine on and went back to bed, barely noticing that he turned on the news on the way.
As he dozed off again the news informed his subconscious about all the ways that people were disobeying the establishment. It subtly skipped over the fact that the provincial government was destroying the “Green Belt” surrounding his city, land it had set aside for rehabilitation of the ruptured natural world.
Ten minutes later he dragged himself back out of bed and went for the caffeine. Uppers helped him forget how exhausted he was and shrinking his pineal helped him feel a little more secure by diminishing the brain waves attempting to tell him there was something seriously wrong with the life he was living.
Meanwhile the news was discussing the latest public safety concern. There was a rising fear of gun violence as the number of public shootings increased. The government said it was going to reduce the number of assault rifles it produced for public use, preferring concealable handguns over the specific type of weapon used in the most recent shooting.
“Yeah, reduce the number of them,” he whispered to himself hoping no-one in his empty home would hear him. “There’s only that one kind of weapon causing danger, so just make them less available. Everything else is fine.”
He wondered how much money the government was making selling those weapons across the planet.
The news went on to the next topic. There was a serious homeless problem in the metropolitan area, people were unable to afford the cost of living and ended up living on the streets begging for change from a society that used apathy as a way to protect itself from the harsh realities of a thriving populace.
He brushed his teeth with fluoride, hoping that the small amount of it which couldn’t be rinsed out wouldn’t contribute to bone deterioration, pineal calcification or any of the other health concerns associated with fluorine intake. He’d been informed that holding a piece of fluorite mineral for too long was dangerous, thank god for that d replacing the t.
“Oxidation levels are so important, wouldn’t you say, kitty?”
The cat watched him with her usual malaise, wondering why he bothered doing anything but sit at home and hunt. “I think fluorine in general is unhealthy,” she meowed gently, “it’s too electronegative."
Understanding nothing she said, he shrugged and joined her on the couch for one last moment of relaxation before he turned off the propaganda device he recently paid for.
The news cut to commercials for its sponsors, all owned by the same corporate family that owned the news station. As a jingle sang Merry Christmas to advertise for single-use plastic lawn decorations, he sighed and turned the tv off.
“Time to go to work, sweetie,” he said to the cat on his way to the door.
“Can you bring back some real food? Meat by-products aren’t meat,” she meowed for the tenth time this week.
“Love you too, kitty. You be good today ok?”
He kicked a plant on his way to the car. “Damn weeds,” he muttered, “I cut the grass three days ago.” Native species attempting to repopulate the neighbourhood was the topic of a heated debate at the last meeting of the Home Owners Association.
As he started the engine he remembered he’d been running on fumes. Gas prices were outrageous, he wondered how he’d afford his mortgage if the government kept taxing petroleum to fund their fleet of private jets.
As he turned the corner he saw the local hoodlums selling drugs on their way to school. “Anything to dull the senses, am I right?” he laughed to himself.
A few blocks down he saw a set of three squad cars with flashing headlights, parked outside the coffee shop. Getting closer, he could see the police standing around a homeless man who’d been asking for change around the neighbourhood recently.
“Harassment and selfishness is taking unbelievable forms these days,” he muttered, “these homeless seem so dangerous. Get ‘em out of here, I say.”
He didn’t notice the man was limping on a gangrenous leg, or that the medical bills from his recent cancer treatment were the reason he was living on the streets. The price of being alive was too high for some people.
As he got on the highway he was distracted from traffic by the flashing lights of a new billboard created to permanently display an advertisement for Jesus. Apparently the world’s most widely known religion felt it necessary to advertise the fact that they still believed their bigotry was the only way into God’s love.
Being distracted by the lights, he almost rammed right into the car in front of him, who’d slowed to a near-stop on the on-ramp to the free way. Traffic was intense again. It had been getting worse since the new condos opened up a few miles away.
Rising property values were another popular debate at the Home Owner’s Association. Bringing more people into a flooded metropolis was making it difficult to afford basic necessities for the whole area.
He settled into a mind-numbing traffic pattern of slamming on the gas every five seconds, to slam on the brakes a few seconds later. Wasting gas was a national pastime.
Traffic would be like this the whole 20 mile ride to his office, which could take a matter of minutes at the speed limit, or less for those who disobey the law, but would take over an hour at this rate.
He passed by billboard after billboard, all advertising for something nearly purposeless and excessively priced.
“Obey Propaganda,” said an ad for the popular clothing brand for people who think they’re being ironic, like the drug dealing teen rebels he’d seen a few minutes earlier. Jack owned several pairs of their sweaters, quite comfortable.
He turned on the radio in time to hear the same lawn decoration Christmas jingle fade out and a news anchor say, “Well I for one am glad the UN officially spoke out against conspiracy theories. Yesterday a friend told me the CIA invented TV, knowing the frequency would brainwash people into believing the things they’re told.”
Radios on the other hand were military technology that are now built into every vehicle by default.
The attractive-sounding female co-anchor responded, “it’s crazy the things you hear these days. In other news, the provincial government has declined to reduce their taxations on the income of waiters and other food service workers, saying that tips should be enough to support their needs.”
The man replied, “I can’t believe people don’t understand how much damage is done to the economy by giving people more money.”
She laughed nervously and moved on. “A spokesperson for the industry said that customers are already paying for their food and are being asked to pay their attendants’ salaries instead of the employer, because the 40% taxation would be an unbearable strain on the restaurant owner’s wage budget. A Member of Parliament said that restaurant owners shouldn’t be expected to accept responsibility for their employees’ well-being.”
“Yeah I believe it.” Jack muttered miserably as he slammed on the brakes yet again. “Jeez, 40% taxation? That’s unbelievable, no wonder they won’t raise minimum wage.”
He finally got to work almost an hour late. His boss would be furious if he weren’t playing golf with his buddies from college.
He sunk into his cubicle feeling like the hinges of his coffin were creaking closed. “I am so tired, let’s just get this day over with.”
He looked at his University Diploma and the Professional Engineer certification that took almost 5 years to earn after his education was completed. Sighing, he opened his email to view the latest flood of absurd questions he had to answer.
He worked for a steel rack distributor, selling storage solutions to industrial warehouses. Consumerism requires substantial amounts of space for storing mass-produced plastics and other toxins that leech into the soil after being used for a year or two. Steel structures are the only way to provide this much storage.
One client was asking why he couldn’t install these racks on a wood platform. Jack sighed again and wrote the same answer as yesterday.
“As we discussed, your wood mezzanine has the structural integrity of a back-yard patio. It is suitable for personnel but cannot support the 6000 pounds-per-post loading you wish to set up in this space. Please reconsider installing the rack on your concrete slab.” He wanted to write ‘like everyone else does’ but didn’t want to seem rude, this client was harassing him enough already. “If you wish to discuss this in person please call my office and we can schedule a site visit.”
The client’s landlord was insisting that the concrete slab couldn’t be used because it would damage the reinforcement. The landlord also refused to hand over the architectural drawings necessary for the building permit he insisted on applying for, saying it was the engineer’s responsibility to produce the drawings he surely had on file somewhere.
The next email was from another client, who wanted to attach these systems to the wall holding up the ceiling and refused to accept that this was a bad idea, while also refusing to bolt them into the ground as he was instructed after declining to pay for professional installation.
This masquerade would continue all day. His education was put to wonderful use.
At the end of a grinding and life-draining waste of a day, he climbed back into his SUV and started the drive home. Traffic was even worse in the evenings, with everyone trying to go home at the same time and insisting their own need was urgent enough to outweigh everyone else’s.
Someone in a lamborghini gave him the finger while cutting him off without signalling and he slammed on the brake to avoid damaging the insanely expensive car. His mandatory auto-insurance wouldn’t cover a crash and the bus transit into his office would be outrageously time-consuming.
Trying to pretend he wasn’t on the verge of tears, he lit a cigarette and prayed that the artificial serotonin dosage would relax his joy-deprived brain.
He flipped on the radio and tuned into a classical music channel 96.3FM with the slogan, ‘soothing music for a crazy world.’
The sweet voice of the show’s host was saying, “everything has fallen apart around you but sometimes you just have to look ahead and pray, knowing everything will be ok. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
That was it. He dropped the cigarette on the floor of his SUV, turned on the parking brake and began sobbing uncontrollably.
The car behind him blared its horn but he didn’t even hear it.
His heart was pounding, his head felt like it might explode. Something inside him was dying and he couldn’t understand why or how, or what to do about it. And he couldn’t hold the tears in anymore.


Chapter 2 - Something Awful
Jack made it home and slumped in the door, not even attempting to conceal his tears from the neighbour mowing her lawn.
Halfway through taking his shoes off he gave up and laid down on the floor, wondering how many more tears were left in there. They couldn’t possibly keep coming much longer, could they?
The cat head butted him in greeting and meowed, “looks like you had a fun day. What do you do out there that’s so important it makes you leave all the time?”
He didn’t even move, he felt like one twitch of a muscle might cause a furious outburst.
After over an hour of laying there on the floor, sobbing intermittently, he got up and dragged himself to the shower, where the hot water would hide his tears from the empty space around him.
He spent the night curled up on his couch watching children’s programming. He didn’t bother making dinner. He couldn’t eat.
Around midnight, when he should have been asleep, his mother called him. They hadn’t spoken in months, since he asked her to respect his emotional needs and she accused him of being unreasonable, then criticized his driving habits.
He stared blankly at the screen for a few seconds, watching his phone buzz until it almost fell off the table.
He picked it up and answered. “Hey mom.”
“Hey, sweetie,” she sounded happy for now. She always did at the beginning. “How have you been? We haven’t talked in a while.” She trailed off, hoping he’d apologize for hanging up on her and ignoring her text messages for two months.
“I’m alright,” his standard lie. The truth never really mattered anyway. “How have you been?”
“I’m good,” the same lie was audible from across the continent. “I’ve been working hard at the clinic.” She worked for an organization that gave shelter to abused housewives and runaway teens who were told to be straight when they clearly weren’t. Her classic, textbook narcissism was the latest irony that went overlooked in a world attempting to eat itself to death at everyone else’s expense. “Hoping I can retire soon and enjoy my life finally.” Her aging body seemed to believe it would be happy after wasting its health working for soulless organizations pretending to help.
“Yeah, I bet that would be nice.” He felt something inside screaming in agony at the prospect of his own future. “You deserve it.” He couldn’t tell which of them he was lying to anymore.
“So how have you been?” She always asked this repeatedly, hoping to sound like she cared when she was really just hoping she hadn’t raised a waster of valuable air.
“I’m great,” he wondered if the steel-wrenching tension in his voice could be heard enough she wouldn’t ask again, then suddenly something else came out. “I feel like something awful is coming.”
“What do you mean, hun? We aren’t having a family get together until Christmas.” The irony was completely lost on her.
He almost started crying again. “I don’t know. I just feel in the dumps right now, I had a rough day.”
“Well maybe you should quit. You can come live with me for a while until you get yourself sorted out.” She fundamentally believed he was unable to function as an adult.
“I don’t know.” He repeated. “Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with the world.”
“Like what?”
“Well...” he had to think about it for a minute. “It’s like there’s this endless void that we’re all circling around, pretending it’s not there while we build a society around the need to attract people into it so it can consume us all and...” he paused, realizing she already thought he was mentally ill. “I mean, it just feels like there’s something incredibly wrong with the way things are and I don’t know what it will take to put things right again.”
There was silence for almost a minute. “Are you on drugs again?”
“Mom, I am so sick of your gaslighting.” He almost hung up again but wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of getting out of it this time.
“I told you, I don’t know what that means.”
“First of all, you’ve had three months to look it up, do you also not know how to use google?” He paused, then kept going before she could derail his anger. “You work at an abuse clinic, how do you not know what gaslighting means? Do you realize how insane it is that you think it’s ok to treat me like this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She sounded uneasy. “I thought we discussed this last time and moved past it, why are you still angry at me?”
“Because you still don’t know the answer to that question!” This was no time to avoid circular logic.
“Honey, I wish you would see a therapist. Your cousins are all talking with therapists and it really helps them.”
“Mom, most therapists are literally drug pushers being told what to do by the pharmaceutical industry. They just want lab rats who pay them instead of having to pay for human testing.”
“There are control systems to make sure things are tested properly. I wish you would get help, Jack. You sound like you’re high again.”
A million swear words from languages he didn’t speak erupted in his brain. “So you want me to go see a therapist who will prescribe me drugs, so I don’t smoke pot? You can’t seriously think that makes sense.” He wanted to hang up but also desperately wanted to win this argument.
“Jack, I have told you so many times that you need to get your shit together. You’re falling behind in your plans honey.”
Another moment of very heavy silence. He hung up. “Fuck you, too.”
The cat meowed, “they say that people with severe trauma are more likely to display anti-social tendencies.”
Jack moved over to lay on the ground next to her and stroked her belly. Her purring was the only part of life that brought him any real happiness. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one who will ever understand me.”
“I am,” she purred back.


Chapter 3 - Big Pimpin’ Spinnin’ the Cheese
Jill walked out of her mid-city apartment with her head held high. She’d psyched herself up with self-love affirmations and done a yoga routine to boost her self-confidence.
“I am a strong, empowered woman.” She said it out loud, not caring if anyone heard.
It was a full ten seconds before she heard someone say, “Mm girl you got that sweet ass!”
She spun around with a venomous bite fully loaded. “Excuse me, what was that?”
The dumb ass standing there with blood shot eyes didn’t seem to register anything unusual about this. “You workin’ out, girl? You got that yoga bod all day!”
She restrained herself from kicking his crotch. “Are you really this stupid or did the drugs corrode your brain?”
He didn’t seem to hear. “Well if you wanna cum real hard hit me up, I’m pimpin’ like a big mac.”
She laughed, “You mean a McDonalds meal? You know that’s not even food, right?” A perfect way for this retard to refer to his state of existence.
“I got that cheddar all day, too. I can take of all your needs. Buy you a big diamond and some dresses. Just lemme feel - ” he was reaching for her breasts and she grabbed his wrist to twist his arm around like her qi gong teacher taught her.
“Do you actually believe that a pimp is someone who knows how to flirt with women?” Not waiting for an answer, she pushed him away and sprinted across the street.
A cab driver honked at her and screamed, “I just spilled my coffee, bitch!”
On the way to her job interview she allowed her hips to sway a little extra. She’d been working on feeling truly beautiful inside and the feeling of empowerment it brought her wanted to swing out in public today. She deserved it.
She attracted a few more lewd comments on the way but ignored them all, she had better things to do than give her energy away to vampires.
She was on top of the world.
She arrived at the scene of an auto-accident. Someone had went through a red light while doing makeup at the wheel and was currently being removed from her door, while the man driving through a green light at illegal speeds had to be taken out of his windshield.
She wasn’t interested in gawking but couldn’t help noticing everyone at the intersection was looking intently at the scene, as if something interesting would happen, or they thought they’d win a prize for staring at the morbidity long enough.
Someone driving through the intersection was doing their own rubber-necking and ran straight into a streetlight post. The man next to her began laughing and she couldn’t help letting out a little snicker of cynical mirth before rolling her eyes and walking across the now empty intersection.
She walked into her new place of employment and spoke to the secretary. “Hello, my name is Jill, I’m here for a job interview.”
The male secretary looked her up and down thinking, ‘and you’re going in there dressed like that?’ He censored his thoughts into, “please take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”
Half an hour later she walked into the boardroom to find three men waiting for her, trying to look as if they were busy enough to keep her waiting despite being in the room solely for the purpose of this interview.
“Hello, Jill. Please take a seat.”
She tried to pretend she wasn’t getting stared at inappropriately as she sat down across from them and gave a big, business level plastic smile.
The one in the middle looked up from her resume with a thoroughly unimpressed look in his eyes. “So why don’t you tell us why we should choose you over the other applicants?”
She smiled confidently. “Well I’m overqualified. I have a Master’s Degree and I’m a PhD candidate, some day I’ll be running the department.”
His vaguely bored expression didn’t change at all. “You have no practical experience. Why should we believe you have more to offer than a bachelor’s degree?”
The one on the left was discretely looking at her breasts. “You could start at an entry level position if you had a few years but unfortunately you’re just starting off.”
“That’s what entry level means.” She replied, trying to conceal her spite. “You do understand, I’m a PhD candidate. I’m an expert in your field and I know I have exactly the qualifications you’re looking for and then some. The position I applied for is still less demanding than I’m capable of performing.”
She noticed the middle one’s pupils dilate at the double entendre.
“Ok,” he said, “well let’s start off with a brief description of your college experience.”
An hour of scrutiny later, she walked out with the distinct impression of having been mentally stretched on a rack by an inquisitor who believed himself a saint, or some business equivalent. The secretary smirked as she passed and she said, “don’t get many females in here, do you?”
“I don’t believe so, no.” He was clearly in the closet so he probably preferred it that way anyway.
“Don’t you think they’d be eager to change that? Surely there’s real evidence to support the conclusion that a diverse workforce is a healthy environment that increases business appeal with other companies.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. Please don’t make a scene, there are other applicants on the way.”
She seriously doubted that but moved on without a word.
How do people believe it’s reasonable to expect three years experience for entry positions, and still not see that over-qualifications are enough to make up for it?
She stepped outside and a truck driver was honking at a cab while a cyclist sped through traffic as if the whole world had to stop for them.
A tesla pulled up and the driver threw a plastic starbucks cup out the window as the passenger stepped out dressed like a millionaire’s lazy step son and threw a half-burned cigarette on the ground in front of her.
She heard the driver call out, “good luck” as the idiot stepped toward the building.
She felt the urge to break something but decided to visit her yoga studio instead. The smell of incense always eased her mind.
On the next block she heard a cafe playing the song, “you can’t always get what you want.”
‘Why?’ she wondered. “What could possibly make it so difficult to provide an opportunity for everyone to get what they want, when there’s so much availability of meaningless nonsense?”
Someone heard her saying it out loud and responded, “Life’s not fair sweetheart.”
“Why?” she screamed. “Are we really willing to let things continue getting worse like it’s glorious to just shrug and say, ‘it’s not fair,’ like that’s somehow a meaningful excuse for deliberately fucking things up?”
He seemed not to hear and just kept walking. A woman moved around her with a wide berth as if she was a raving lunatic about to cause problems on the sidewalk.
No one else even noticed what was happening. Half of them were on their phones.
Someone blew a massive cloud of nicotine vape in her face. She screamed, “What the fuck, asshole?”
He barely seemed to notice but somehow managed to shout back, “it’s not that bad for you.”
“Yes it is, it’s just not smoke!” she raved, “and how do people still think that makes it better?”
The city just kept on crawling past her, like an ant farm where everyone just kept their heads down and moved on, doing as they’re told in hopes they can some day become something meaningful, better than everyone else, instead of choosing to make the world more livable.
She got a deep feeling of being suffocated, as if there were an enormous weight pressing down on her.
She turned to continue walking and a business suit shoved into her saying, “watch out!”
She was beginning to feel a burning rage rising inside her. The self-love affirmations rang out like a lawn sprinkler trying to put out a wildfire and she wondered if smoke would come out as she grunted fury into the man’s back.
She was still fuming on the next block when another woman stopped her and held her shoulders gently saying, “are you okay, dear?”
She suddenly felt cold, empty and completely unsure what to say. She stared blankly back at the woman, searching for words.
The woman said, “It’s okay to be angry, but have you considered asking what your inner child wants? It’s so important to feel that inner child’s sense of wonder, excitement and joy.”
Jill felt tears welling up. She didn’t know why this woman was saying these things but she suddenly felt overwhelmed with gratitude and a deep sense of connection with this woman. She tried to say, “thank you” but it came out as a whisper that the woman probably couldn’t hear.
“How can you make what you want a reality, if you won’t look inward to ask what your inner child truly wants? It’s the only way to be really happy inside.”


Chapter 4 - Mechanical Bureaucratic Interface
By the time Jill made it home she wondered if yoga or qi gong would ever be enough to vent the fury she was feeling. The day had been grinding along in the same way since she left. One thing after another, ‘what the hell is wrong with people anyway?’
That woman’s kind words were the single highlight to include in her daily gratitude affirmations. Oh, scratch that, “Thank you for getting home in one piece,” she added while trying not to let her cynical mood affect her ritual.
There was a knock at the door. She pulled her bathrobe off the bed to cover the naked body that was still dripping after her shower. The water just couldn’t get hot enough to purge her anxiety about that abysmal job interview.
The redhead next door was in a mood of her own. “Hey girl, wanna hit the wine early tonight?”
“Oh God yes, thank you!” Jill swung the door open to let her in. “You’re a life saver, Zoe.”
Zoe tried not to notice the mess of clothes leading from the door to the bathroom, she couldn’t care less about the day Jill was having. She just wanted a familiar face to vent to.
“Oh god, work was a nightmare!” Zoe cried out at Jill’s ceiling. She worked for the Ministry of Transportation, another cog in the dehumanizing machine of government bureaucratic networks. “The contractor my agency hired to do the work has been looking for another contractor to get the job done but can’t get any responses. Meanwhile the warehouse manager whose supervisor spoke to me about the need for better storage facilities has been complaining all the way up the ladder that there’s nowhere to put the signs we made for the reduced speed limits.”
Jill had long ago given up on attempting to understand the way things worked with Zoe’s profession. Everything she said seemed to be just a string of people trying to communicate despite having no idea what was happening or why.
The left hand never knows what the right hand is doing.
Jill looked quizzical. “So whose responsibility is it to make this problem go away, again?”
Zoe didn’t register this concept as meaningful so she continued her rant. “My contact in City Hall says they’re trying to reduce carbon emissions by making traffic patterns worse.”
In a city where daily transits regularly took three times as long as they should and traffic on every highway was so frequently clogged that traffic reports on the radio were simply lists of where the biggest accidents were located, the municipal government had been working to make things worse, in the hopes that people would give up on driving altogether.
Public transit took even longer to get anywhere, and was regularly increasing their toll rates despite no apparent increase in performance.
Zoe went on. “They reduced the speed limits on major arterial streets and installed speed cameras and red light cameras in more locations to make sure no one is getting places faster than they should.”
Jill often wondered if Zoe ever even heard the ludicrous absurdity of the government behaviours she seemed desperate to vent her frustration with but refused to remove herself from.
Zoe turned on CNN for background noise. She found it calming to be exposed to global news. Constantly being informed of the latest health crisis, distant massacre or other such tragedies helped her feel a warm sense of humanitarianism that easily assuaged her practically non-existent guilt for doing nothing about it. She was a government worker listening to global news, surely that was good enough.
Zoe’s river of complaints wouldn’t stop anytime soon. “So now I have to deal with the budget constraints of printing over ten thousand new speed limit signs, and then storing them while we figure out who’s going to install the damn things all over the city.” This would surely take over a year to begin, and more to complete.
Jill was focusing more on opening the bottle of wine but managed to ask, “shouldn’t the city workers be doing that?”
“Oh god!” Zoe burst out, “No, we can’t ask the city.” The provincial government didn’t have the authority to request assistance from the city in ensuring the municipal government’s plans were implemented in reasonable time frames. “Anyway, they’re always busy restoring the roads.” Yet another reason for perpetual traffic clogs.
Jill finished her first glass and poured another. She looked at the label, the wine was made in Georgia. She laughed about the similarity in name between the U.S. state and the distant country in Eastern Europe where the wine was imported from, rather than drinking over-priced local wine made at relatively well-known vineyards in nearby regions.
She was totally unaware that Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008, or that no one cared about the minimal news coverage it received. The Western European bloc had raised concerns about the crisis but preferred to remain out of it, rather than risking war with Russia.
Shortly following the recent global pandemic, Russia invaded Ukraine to the tragic outcry of nearly the entire western world. CNN had been giving regular coverage of this crisis for over a year now.
Zoe’s phone buzzed and she ignored it, preferring to continue her rant as Jill poured her a glass from the second bottle.
Zoe was saying, “I deal with endless emails all day long and when I’m finally off work people text me. Can’t you just call?” She never answered her phone when people called, she felt it was an invasion of privacy.
Jill shrugged. She still had a strange feeling there was something she’d missed about the day’s events. Something felt wrong but she couldn’t figure out why.
Zoe continued, “The girl I’ve been talking with about the storage problem says there’s legal issues around the safety of our racking or something, we have to get a professional to come look at it and the contractor won’t finish his work until it’s officially signed off by an engineer. I don’t see what the big deal is, the things are barely used anyway but the contractor and warehouse manager are both insisting they have to be looked at before storing the signs. It’s just some scrap metal, what’s the big deal?”
Jill wasn’t listening. She was trying to make the new speakers she’d bought from amazon interface with her phone but there was some sort of problem. The phone said it didn’t have permission to access external devices and the speaker wouldn’t do anything without a connection to the internet, despite the fact that it only needed a signal from the phone. She wondered why it needed a WiFi connection.
“Siri,” she said and waited for the chirp of the robot that was listening to every word. “how do I give my phone permission to use bluetooth?” The settings menu claimed it was given permission and yet there was a problem.
Zoe had similar issues with her new vibrator, which used WiFi to sync its motions to music when she played spotify. “Ugh,” she grunted, “I hate talking to machines, it feels so off-putting. They can never produce any real results, they always just point to someone else to look for a solution. Like, why can’t we just go to the solution ourselves? Do we really need the mechanical middle man? It’s like this endless network of asking someone to ask someone else. Just give me the answer, already!”
The oddity of a government worker saying this, while working for a system described exactly the same way by certain anarchy-supporting parts of society, was completely lost on her.
Noticing that Jill wasn’t listening, Zoe turned up CNN and checked her phone. “Oh! Well the night’s looking up again.” She’d got a text from her ex-boyfriend sending out a booty call. ‘Won’t be dealing with that vibrator tonight,’ she thought. “Looks like I’ll be heading back home in a little bit.”
Jill tuned back in. “Oh, that’s ok. I have some stuff to sort out.” She planned to spend some time meditating and trying to figure out why the day seemed so bizarre. Something surreal had happened and she needed to get to the bottom of what it meant. What was the universe trying to tell her?
Almost two hours later, Jack pulled into the parking lot at the bottom of the apartment complex Zoe lived in. He stepped off the elevator just in time to hear Jill’s door closing and a very drunk-looking Zoe staggered up to him.
They kissed awkwardly. Jack was never sure how much emotion to put into their interactions.
They’d broken up months ago so he felt like he wasn’t allowed to have feelings for her anymore, which hurt a little. He still wanted her but she only seemed interested in speaking to him when she needed to get laid. And somewhere inside he believed that was supposed to be enough for him.
Being a man, he’d spent his whole life being told that he wasn’t really allowed to have emotions stronger than his sex drive. He should be grateful to be making love with this beautiful woman, and wanting to have intimacy with her made him feel like some kind of a sissy.
Maybe his childhood bully was right, he’d never really be a man after all. His father seemed to agree and he had a healthy relationship with Jack’s step mother.
They entered her apartment and she said, “Alright take your pants off, let’s get down to business.”
Jack felt uneasy, somehow cheap, like she only saw him as a sex object. “I was actually hoping to have some beers and catch up for a bit.”
She rolled her eyes and turned on CNN.
Jack was really only here because he needed someone to talk to about his experiences the day before. He had no friends and hated his family. Zoe was the only person in his life he could talk to about things like this, and she didn’t seem to care whatsoever.
Zoe’s limit for caring about other people ended when she left work. She’d just spent far too long barely pretending to care about Jill’s life and she had no more to give. But she knew Jack only wanted to whine for a little while and then she could get what she really needed.
The news was saying something about suicide rates in men but neither of them could hear it clearly. It was only on for background noise, they both felt they were too old to use music for that, and that maturity demanded listening to the news every day.
About ten minutes later Jack reached the subject of his mother. “She’s still telling me I need help.”
Zoe, who had barely listened to a word until now, suddenly spoke up. “You do need help, Jack. You look exhausted, are you snorting again?” She was actually hoping he’d say yes, she could use some coke about now.
Jack had never noticed the emotional abuse the women of his life always treated him with, it just seemed normal to him. “No, I didn’t sleep last night. I felt so fucked up.”
“Speaking of...” She gave him a sly sideways glance, hoping he’d pick up on the cue.
He pretended not to notice. “I was just trying to explain to her that I feel like there’s something deeply wrong with our society.”
“Oh god! Not now, Jack, please.” She was one of the majority of people who pretended not to care about the issues facing their world because they were too afraid to admit to themselves they were scared things might go sideways at any moment. It was just too much for her, while desperately trying to keep her own life together.
That never stopped her from learning more about it from CNN, though.
“I’m serious,” Jack continued, “I can’t shake this awful feeling that something terrible is about to happen.”
“Like what?” She screamed. “For Christ’s sake Jack, you seriously need to get your shit together!” Trying to avoid facing up to her own turmoil was all the emotional capacity she had right now.
Jack felt stuck. Maybe she was right, he could just be overreacting. After all, having spent nearly all of last night crying seemed like he needed help. Maybe he was having some kind of psychotic episode. They said on CNN one time that psychedelics have that affect on people years after the fact.
He shrugged and chugged the rest of his beer.
After a moment of silence, she got up and took her shirt off, sitting lightly on his lap with her breasts in front of his face.
He kissed what he never knew was her heart chakra and neither of them noticed the surge of emotional distress they both felt in that moment. They gave into the impulses of the moment and, like they’d been taught by a deliberately apathetic society attempting to fuck its pain away, they grabbed each other urgently to block out the tears that wanted to burst out of them.
After 5 minutes of this he still wasn’t erect.
“What’s the problem, Jack? Do you need some viagra or something?”
The sting of this question hurt more than he would’ve thought. He didn’t know what the problem was but now he felt an enormous amount of pressure to get it up. He was only 32, far too young to need pills.
She stood up and dropped her panties, dragging him into her bedroom. “Come on, Jack, let’s get this over with.”


Chapter 5 - Correctile Dysfunction
Jack woke up already knowing he’d be late to work. He rubbed himself against Zoe but she pushed him away.
“You had your chance last night,” she said while climbing out of bed. “Get out, I have to get ready for work.” She had a high-powered job with a huge stress level, and now she’d have to find a way to relieve this excess pressure so she wouldn’t explode in someone’s face.
As he got dressed he felt even more depressed than when he’d got here. Now his manhood was in question. He wondered what could possibly have kept him from performing his manly duties.
On his way out of the parking garage he almost ran into a van that was backing up around a corner. After slamming to a halt, he realized it would be best for the other driver if he went around. He almost hit another car that was passing the van.
He got in the daily line-up waiting to enter the freeway. A crazy lady was feeding birds on the sidewalk. He wondered how these people survive if that was how they chose to spend their time.
As the line began to move, a large truck suddenly appeared out of nowhere, butting its way in front of him instead of waiting in the line like everyone else. People tend to use the idea that no one is watching their back as an excuse to make problems for others, believing their own lives were more important as a self-defence mechanism.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and everyone tries to pretend that’s the way it’s supposed to be, so they don’t have to be the one to try changing it, lest they lose out on something important. Not that there’s anything important to lose.
He sighed and waited for the line to continue moving again.
Then an SUV signalled and he stopped to let them into his lane but they weren’t moving, so he hit the gas just in time for the yellow light to turn red and slammed to a halt.
For almost five seconds there was no movement and he lurched forward. He was already hitting the brakes when he ran into a woman who’d stepped out into the street as the light turned green for her direction.
“What the fuck, asshole!” Jill screamed. She straightened her hair and kept walking. “Unbelievable!” As she stepped onto the opposite block she wondered, ‘how do people like that keep their driver’s license?’
She knew karma would get him back for it. Some people just don’t know how to behave like civilized adults. Not once did it occur to her that karma might be getting her back for something.
Karma is always someone else’s problem, it’s never something that causes problems in our lives. That’s because everyone else is such an asshole. We’re just innocent people trying to live our lives. They’re all guilty as fuck.
Jack didn’t believe in karma. He was already getting cut off by the person who’d been behind him in line. Upset about having to wait for the light to turn green, the other driver had shot around him as soon as they got on the freeway and was now braking in front of him deliberately.
He merged into the next lane and the other driver followed to stay in front of him, so he kept going into the next lane over and almost hit another car, who honked at him furiously.
He turned on the radio. The usual pair of news anchors were discussing the problems of male infertility. Apparently the average sperm count had dropped over 50% since the 70s.
The male anchor was saying, “Well I’d bet it’s all the processed foods we eat.”
The female ignored him and continued her monologue. “We can trace these issues back to outdated pesticides like DDT, which were heavily used in the 40s. Although these chemicals are now illegal, their traces can still be found in northern regions but experts say that, as climate change continues, its effects will spread out to other areas as well.”
Jack was stunned. His mother told him she used to use DDT every day in the old family abode.
The anchor was saying, “this and many other chemicals are still known to be causing birth defects and infertility, along with many forms of cancer, despite being made illegal decades ago.”
No one said anything about the pesticides that are still being used today.
Meanwhile, Jill was having yet another man blow nicotine vape into her face. “Dude what the hell is wrong with you?” She screamed, “don’t you know nicotine is an insecticide? If you want to breathe poison that’s your business but don’t blow it in people’s faces, dumbass!”
Meanwhile there were toxic fumes spewing out of every car that passed her. She lived in a cloud of exhaust fumes that was slowly poisoning her lungs with every breath.
She passed a billboard advertising for cheetos, a popular snack loaded with pesticides and covered with dehydrated cheese powder that has other harmful preservatives in it, including having more MSG than nutrition.
MSG is a preservative that enhances flavours because, by mimicking neurotransmitters, it stimulates taste buds in ways that produce an endorphin rush. Thus, it’s a preservative that makes non-food taste better and causes mild intoxication, leading to addictive impulses. This particular preservative is a favourite in the mass-produced-food industry and is found in a shocking number of products.
Jack was now driving with his tail between his legs, afraid to change lanes or do anything other than tailgate the driver in front of him, lest he cause problems for the people behind him. The long series of near-accidents had nearly faded from memory and he was stuck obsessing about hitting a woman with his car.
The news woman was saying, “these banned pesticides are now being linked to infertility in men by causing lower sperm counts.”
The man chimed in, “In 2004 a medical journal reported that almost 22% of men in the U.S. have reported experiencing erectile dysfunction at some point in their lives, starting as early as 30.”
In fact the number of men affected by erectile dysfunction is in the hundreds of millions and begins in the early 20s for some, and even in the teen years if the boy has been exposed to large amounts of distorted masculinity causing performance anxiety and feelings of general inadequacy as a man.
Jack’s heart sank as he wondered if he’d ever get laid again. “Good thing I don’t want kids.” Who would, these days?
Jill was passing another billboard from an activist group defending the rights of Jews, claiming that anti-semitism had been on the rise. Historically, anti-semitism has been stirred up by christian rage but now that the church’s influence was failing, white national socialism would pick up the slack by pointing out that most Jews just aren’t ‘white’ enough.
Jack barely noticed the warehouse whose out-dated illuminated sign used to read ‘Self-Storage’ but now read ‘Elf Rage’ as yet another driver cut in front of him despite the fact that he was tailgating. Afraid to touch the brake, he just kept going.
Jill passed by her favourite take-out restaurant, subway sandwiches. They were famous for having very healthy foods, every sandwich comes with complementary GMO vegetables that were grown using the enormous amounts of pesticides necessary to reliably produce large amounts of sellable food. They also use MSG in their sauces.
Jill secretly liked subway because it made her farts smell like their bread. She never considered that this was because their iconic bread smell is produced by a chemical her trashed gut biome was incapable of digesting.
As she passed by the store, a homeless man asked her for change and she pretended not to hear. She wanted to help, she really did, but if she opened her heart to every tragic story she encountered it would tear her apart.
So she stayed closed to the pain of others, just like everyone else.
She wondered, ‘why isn’t the government doing something about this problem? Surely they could prevent this somehow?’
The economy had been in the toilet since the pandemic and everyone seemed to be trying their hardest to pretend they were doing well, when really everyone was scared, confused, and almost convinced we were on the brink of apocalypse.
Meanwhile, the number of people sleeping in alleys had skyrocketed, and the police were doing their due diligence to ensure the shanty towns were concealed from the public. The cluster of tents in the park near her home had recently disappeared overnight and parents felt safe bringing their children there once again.
No one wondered where they went.
As she passed the homeless man he shouted out, “faget! Bitch!”
Extremely offended, she stood her ground and looked him square in the face. His obvious insanity didn’t bother her. “Excuse me? That’s incredibly rude. You can’t say things like that, it’s offensive!” Not being politically correct was the worst thing a person could these days.
The last US president was overtly racist, sexist and homophobic, or at least pretended to be to get more support from the bible belt - the true America, according to his own statements.
“Ehh, fuck you!” the homeless man screamed out with the poise of the village drunk in an old Irish novel. It was unclear whether this was a response to Jill, or simply a continuation of the same outburst of directionless fury.
Mental illness was rampant in North America, the plague of madness was the true endemic sickness.
As another woman passed she muttered to Jill, “just ignore him, don’t get involved.” She too had closed her heart to avoid the pain of looking at the suffering of another human being. She only bothered saying this because she subconsciously envied the shape of Jill’s hips.
Jill’s stomach let out a small burp she managed to keep silent. It tasted like the wine she still had in her stomach. The fruity overtones masked the subtle taste of pesticides. Grapes are, on average, one of the most densely poisoned foods in the world.
Meanwhile, Jack’s preferred radio station was still in the middle of the news report on infertility.
The man was saying, “Researchers warn that infertility in women, often caused by irregularities in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, are also on the rise. Hypothalamic dysfunction is known to be caused by saturated fatty acids. The pituitary gland is associated with infertility in both men and women, due to a rare condition called hyperprolactinoma which affects around 30 people in 100,000.”
Jack was distracted giggling at the man’s trouble pronouncing hyperprolactinoma and didn’t think twice about the idea that 3 in 10,000 was being called ‘rare’ for a cause of reduced fertility. The greater metropolitan area he lived in had a population of almost 7,000,000 which added up to about 2000 cases within a 20 mile radius.
Jill finally made it to the University where she was working toward her doctorate. Outside her office she heard two co-workers talking.
Her office-neighbour Bill was telling someone about how most people didn’t know anything about his research subject, but thought they did, and how his work would redefine whatever it was he was talking about.
He did this every day and Jill couldn’t take it anymore. “God dammit Bill, stop mansplaining! I swear you have correctile dysfunction!”


Chapter 6 - The Virus
Three men with nearly nothing in common climbed into a truck to start what would surely be a very long day of hard work for minimum wage.
Claude, a middle-aged, quebecois, alcoholic homophobe, turned on the radio in time to hear the opening of a dialogue about the recent recursion of violence between Israel and Palestine.
The other two shifted uncomfortably, not willing to listen to the propaganda of the mainstream media for the whole ride. They both put on headphones and listened to music.
Andre was a black man who grew up in public housing projects and whose self-identity pivoted around poverty. Since childhood he had been raised to believe he was a victim, to see himself as impoverished and to be proud of it, as it distinguished him from the white man's greed. He turned on ‘The Virus’ by Tech N9ne.
Paul was a white anarchist punk rocker from a distant city in which even the nice areas were more bleak and depressing than Andre's neighborhood. He felt like a change of taste today and turned on ‘From the Cradle to Enslave,’ a song he hadn't listened to since high school by a band he no longer appreciated except during the occasional nostalgic frenzy of rage-fuelled revisitation of old emotional war wounds.
While neither Paul nor Andre was actively racist, they'd both been raised to subconsciously view themselves as being at odds with each other. In school and at home alike, they were taught that white culture was greedy, corrupt and violent. White oppressors extort and abuse black victims. That was the way it had been for centuries.
While neither viewed this as a good thing, they were both taught to accept it as the inevitable truth of the way things are.
They didn't hate each other, in fact each secretly thought the other was probably pretty chill, but they couldn't say for sure. The subconscious gap between them seemed so difficult to bridge and they were both working so hard to keep themselves on the level, they simply didn't have enough faith in humanity to reach out to each other for friendship.
Claude on the other hand was raised to view women as inferior to men, blacks as inferior to whites, and gays as disgusting. It wasn't his fault, it was just the way he was raised and he was never taught enough emotional maturity or honest self-awareness to have any conception of what it meant to reevaluate his beliefs and perceptions of others.
He'd simply lived his life the way he was taught, just like everyone else except that he'd been taught something radically different from the younger generation he was sitting next to.
In Andre's ears, Tech N9ne was saying, “got me a generation hemmed up with the virus.”
As a child Andre had heard his mother talking about a plague of madness in which the mentally ill and emotionally traumatized masses were deceived into embracing a way of life that was essentially poison to soul, causing a mass spiral into progressively deeper insanity.
The news was still talking about the most recent bombings in Palestine. This conflict was portrayed as going back to 1948. In fact the oldest sections of the bible describe conflicts between Israel and the Philistines, an archaic Hebrew name for the Palestinians.
The story of David and Goliath is the most widely known example of this ages-old feud.
The radio said, “Israeli officials said they have set aside a 4 hour cessation of hostilities for humanitarian causes.” An entire 16% of the day was devoted to peace between bombings.
They passed a bus whose headlights read, ‘Lest We Forget,’ in the spirit of the upcoming Remembrance Day on which the bloodshed of lost millions is honoured, in hopes that world peace will settle in as we learn from the mistakes of our ancestors and set aside the need for conflict.
Similar phrases have been used for tragedies like the Lusitania, a civilian passenger ship sunk by a German submarine in the first World War, which brought the U.S. into the conflict after years of refusing to be involved in external affairs. The U.S. has not stopped interfering in external affairs ever since. Fewer than 1% of Andre’s generation has heard of the Lusitania.
The similar phrases ‘Always Remember’ and ‘Never Forget’ were used in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, which still inhibits flight plans for thousands of travellers every day. Barely more than 20 years later, children no longer remember this loss either, it has been replaced by so many other tragic massacres, wars and plagues.
Paul’s music played the lyrics, “a fresh horror blows but ten billion souls are blind to see the rotting wood for the trees.”
In fact, very little about the state of North American society reflected any sort of conflict whatsoever. Everyone felt safe and secure, so far away from the bloodshed being perpetuated by the watchful hands of their own government.
The smell of cannabis wafted into the open window as they drove past a group of teenagers listening to techno and exhibiting the latest clothing fashion, including the logo ‘Obey Propaganda’. They seemed content with the way things were, only concerned about making sure they were popular enough to get girls and had enough money to stay intoxicated.
Andre’s music said, “but we don't need no medication for the sensation, just the marijuana lacin’. Let the music take your mind, press rewind.”
Recently, Andre had been delving into research on the history of the military industrial complex, which had been running strong ever since the extremely profitable second World War. In fact president Eisenhower, the head of the Allied war effort, warned his nation of the very concerning dangers of an economical model built around profiting from destruction and death.
Some people say that, following this period, the Cold War was mostly projected by the media under direction from the CIA during the mass-misinformation campaign known as Operation Mockingbird. Those who believe this notion will say that President JFK was assassinated by the CIA after learning this and threatening to expose and shut down the military industrial complex’s propaganda machine.
Tech N9ne was saying, “hella contagious, you been fair warned, I got a gang of radio stations makin’ me airborne.”
These days there was no need for lies to keep people in fear. The public had been polluted by fear during the past 30 years of endless tragedies and conflicts portrayed in the media instead of telling people about the rising efforts to save the planet from polluted oceans and deforestation.
The average mental health was so low, and the projected need for medical assistance with psychological problems was so high, that in 2021 North America over half of the people in their 30s were taking daily doses of prescribed pharmaceuticals.
Tech N9ne said, “You can buy this virus, come an’ try this.”
As Andre looked out the window he saw a homeless man yelling at a group of women. He wondered how many men there were who genuinely respected women, compared to those who openly disrespected them, and how much of the gender war on social media was really exhibited in personal interactions between day-to-day people.
He’d certainly seen and heard a large number of men saying rude or disgusting things to women but he suspected that these men were drastically sick in the head, and that they probably represented a relatively small percentage of men.
Tech N9ne said, “sick individuals that God see, and Lord knows they stay by me.”
Claude was raised in rural Quebec, stereotypically a forest wilderness. He’d had a comfortable life among the natural world except that his parents were drunks filled with anger they didn’t know how to process.
His father used to drive a 6-wheel all terrain vehicle across wetlands, leaving oil stains in beaver lakes all over the region, to hunt pheasants and deer for the sport of it. He gave nothing back to nature and frequently left plastic in the soil instead of carrying it back from camp.
His mother, an abused house wife, never knew how to process the fear and self-loathing that kept her trapped in a cycle of victimhood. She was already in survival mode before Claude was born and never had the courage to leave.
Paul’s headphones were screaming, “We should have cut our losses as at Calvary but our hearts, like heavy crosses, held the vain belief: salvation, like a promised nation, gleamed a claim away.”
In the 1300s the spread of the black plague coincided with outbreaks of war as the Mongolian Golden Horde reached into Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile the entrenchment of Christianity in Western Europe, having managed to politically conquer the continent a few centuries before, was beginning to deepen its roots by deliberately destroying spiritual knowledge and replacing all other religions with its own, declaring anything outside its explicit doctrine to be evil.
Thus war, disease and distorted truths were rampant pandemics coinciding to corrupt the soul of Europeans, a combination which still affects the white mindset to this day.
A series of ecumenical councils in the church, 10 of which occurred between 1100 and 1500 CE, was creating schism under the guise of creating unity, with the ultimate goal of forcing its dogmatic belief structures on the populace. This ultimately opened the possibility of colonizing Africa with the intent to bring the word of the pope to the southern continent as well.
Andre’s music was saying, “spreadin’ hella fast, kickin’ ass like Juve,” Jove being an archaic name for the Roman god Jupiter, whose name is etymologically related to both pater and deus, terms which have since been monopolized by the Catholic Church.
It seemed to Paul that the greatest and most absurd irony in human history was the amount of blood shed under the notion that Jews, Christians and Muslims are somehow so different they should kill each other, when in fact they all worship the same God in nearly the same ways and, in Paul's view, were literally the same religion.
Paul's headphones screamed, “read, then roared to a crooked cross and a Holy Cause, what else be whipped to frenzy for?”
The crusades were, if not the most violent series of wars, certainly the most absurd. The tug of war for Jerusalem between Muslims and Christians soaked the sands of the Holy Land with the blood of those who coveted the glory of the covenant they believed themselves to be promised.
In 1291 CE, just in time for the rise of the plague and the Mongolian invasion, the back-and-forth exchange of Jerusalem was brought to an end. Jewish influence in the Holy Land had dwindled long before that, and remained negligible until they were returned there after the holocaust.
For around a 100 years before this return, there was a rising sentiment of Zionist promises that Jews would be restored to the promised land.
People are frequently able to predict upcoming major events, subconsciously as it may be. Sadly, the extents people go to between glorious restorations such as this are rarely foreseen with enough clarity to be avoided.
Andre and Paul both knew, deep inside, that things were going to change in their society. Neither of them was particularly concerned about the details because they both knew in their heart of hearts that everything was going to be far better, sooner or later.
Society might plunge into turmoil. More likely there would be a collapse of what the ‘powers that were’ wanted people to think was the only relevant aspect of civilization.
The media seemed anxious to distract people from the grass roots movements of returning interest in spiritual development and taking responsibility for healing one’s own mind and soul, and for healing nature and the planetary biosphere.
Rising activity to save the planet was something very rarely seen in the media, yet both Paul and Andre knew it was increasing and they were glad for it, like so many others in their generation.
And if it required a little revolution, perhaps some turbulent tear downs of the establishment, neither of them saw any real problem with that. If the government deserved its own authority they wouldn’t be botching it on the daily.
Something rarely remembered about the fire of revolution is the purification it can bring when it’s handled with care.
Andre’s headphones said, “Mr. President look around, I got a sea of anarchists to shut this mother fucker down. The virus!”
Now at the end of the segment, the show host said, “Well that's all the time we have for this story. Tonight at eleven: why men are neglecting their health, and why they shouldn't. And now for the sports recap.”
The ever-popular distraction of competitive sports would occupy a full 15 minutes of air time between 5 minutes of war and another 5 on the latest stock market numbers.
On a spur-of-the-moment decision, Paul nudged Andre and they each removed the headphone closest to the other. Paul asked, "Hey man, what are you doing after work? You wanna smoke a j?"
Andre smiled awkwardly. He didn't have anything important going on. "Sure man, why not.”
Paul’s brain replayed the lyrics, “hear the growing chora that a new dawn shall bring.”