21. Flash Fiction from the Editor
They’re Always Watching Me, No. 37 | Art by Dave Vescio
The Great, Gray Miasma
The monstrosity of our idiocy formed a miasma slowly, slowly until all at once it had grown to the size of the planet itself and dividing, had floated in gassy globules large as any solar-sailed, interstellar-class vacuum balloon over the cities of the world, settling upon them and obscuring the sky. Humanity found itself in a great, gray miasma. Pushing down and constricting. A miasma of dilemma. A miasma of denial. A miasma of falsehood. We built fans the size of city blocks to blow it away. Hoping to continue in our ways. That did not work. We tried many approaches, at the core of which was just more of the same. We made products to protect us from the miasma and touted the creation of the new jobs and the new industrial sector churning out the 171,983 and counting, new, nearly identical, miasma-related products that were sometimes proud to be made of almost 70% post-consumer recycled plastic and that sometimes proudly used renewable resources, or less water, or contained a percentage of biodegradable material in the packaging, or had a smaller carbon footprint, or produced less emissions and less pollution. This partially insulated us with an illusion for a time by sheathing the edges of the sword on whose tip we found ourselves slowly impaled, until even that was stripped away by the hands of Mother Nature who had long since lost her patience with us and we saw in full the sword of our demise. Eventually, we had no choice, and no fool’s errand to another planet would save us, we had to throw our fevered consumerism on the scrap heap of history’s bad ideas and remake ourselves in keeping with ecology. What was left of it. Replete with its fits of severity and now chronic dysfunction. We arose as citizen farmers, a Jeffersonian ideal and lived within our means. Real sustainability became the new brand sought by all. As we shed the velvet glove, Earth proffered a gardening glove in return and we ushered in a truly Green Revolution.
It was then that the visitors arrived.