A brief history of the future (non-faction)

If someone asked me how I thought Western Civilization was going to crash back in 2006, I probably would’ve spewed off a bunch of seemingly possible triggers and big corporate instigators… Haliburton’s greed or Wal-Mart evil… war or a nuclear disaster maybe… or possibly even global warming or a virulent strain of something or other…

In 2006 I probably wouldn’t have guessed that it would be the makers of Little People and Barbie.  I probably wouldn’t have guessed that it would be our everyday objects that we came to fear, like our toothpaste and our soda pop and our dinnerware.

I mean, at that time we were having enough problems with ensuring our own local food supplies were secure… we were making our selves mentally ill with stress and anxiety… we were too busy focusing on the threat of the “other” to realize that it was our very own existence that was the threat to our existence and survival.

But in 2007 our lifestyles turned against us. 

While many great thinkers and philosophers tried to warn us of our slow descent into the depths of social chaos… In 2007 we started to experience it.  We no longer had to be warned, because it was too late. I mean, that it was going to happen was fairly clear to many; our governments, our economy and the environments, all of that which we had so carefully constructed around ourselves for the previous 200 or so years, were turning against us.  But our faith and trust was shattered when the recalls began and it was revealed that we had been lied to for a very long time. 

The lies were perhaps not lies, but more myths about the promises of a society where comfort and leisure and profits were god-given rights to those who worked hard and took full advantage of the bounties that it afforded.  That our leaders lacked foresight is hardly their fault, rather ours for giving them such extreme control over the way things were.  And gullible we were, us, the simple self-gratifying species… we all just complacently waited until it was no longer in the realm of man’s control.  Our destiny became the ultimate example of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Never did it occur to us that we might become such voracious consumers, that consumption, especially the kind that exists from the inside out, might give us a belly ache, or cause indigestion… Never mind that it would actually poison us slowly at first, then very rapidly.

It started with a chance finding of popular children’s toys containing lead paint.  Inspector number twelve noted later, “I just had a feeling about this batch.”  Millions of dollars worth of preschool toys had to be recalled and the foundation of trust began to crack.  People were asking… “how on earth could this happen?  If the highest of safety standards aren’t being placed on products for the most vulnerable of our society… what about our coffee mugs and tupperware?” 

Justifications continued to be made, all in the name of savings and surplus discounts.  “We outsource production because those chinamen can produce it cheaper than us gawl-darnit…”  said one politician as he chewed on a cigar, “It’s an isolated event…”

But it wasn’t an isolated event… the toy companies wanted to ensure thier customers that the children were safe, so they announced more scrutiny on the products entering Western markets.  Well that was a disaster, because the more scrutiny they imparted, the more recalls occurred until finally, the rate of recall caught up to the rate of production, and the toy industry largely halted right around Xmas, 2007.  It was the worst season for retailers in department store history.

Then, right before planting time in mid 2008, a rash of unexplained deaths began to occur.  The poor, the very young and the very old were among the first to go.  As the autopsies were released, an internalized sense of panic overcame us… all of us… lead, mercury, arsenic and/or antifreeze poisoning were found to be the cause of death in 68 of the first 75 bodies. 

Teams of analysts were hired to try and pinpoint the source of the poisoning, finding that one common link… the product that was behind it.  But as soon as they thought they found it, another death would occur which wasn’t tied to any of the products they suspected… toothpaste, tylenol, kraft dinner… the rumors ran wild.

“I heard it was in pantyhose,” said one supermarket clerk who was shortly fired for speaking publically of the crisis. 

After about eight months of investigation, the surgeon general called it off, “The results from our studies can only lead us to conclude that it was a variety of products responsible for this consumer nightmare.  I am calling for a nation-wide recall of all products not manufactured in a country which has the strictest levels of productuion standards.”

Within days, the retail economy imploded.