Toast
The year is 2021.
Somewhere in the virtual savannah, three goblins gather beneath the shade of two lonely palms. Their leader is missing - killed in battle, caught up in traffic, or detained by customs, it is not for them to speculate. Still, they have quorum.
“Our lord, the 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁, works in mysterious ways,” the big goblin proclaims.
“He is like a Rube Goldberg machine - vast and complex and comprised of millions of bewilderingly odd machinations that, when properly tuned, work in perfect harmony to toast a piece of bread,” the big goblin adds.
“I like bread” the smallest goblin replies.
“The bread is metaphorical” the big goblin says, “bread is money, and today, the contraption that is our lord and savior has, in effect, short circuited, and if you stick your hand into his proverbial toaster just so, well, there are many, many loaves to be had.”
“Toast,” the smallest goblin adds.
“You see” the first goblin continues, “the bread-makers that tune the machine of God operate in secret covens atop fortified towers nestled in far away skylines, and there, being the sacred, untouchable gluttons that they are, they hoard all the toast for themselves!”
“Erp” says the small goblin.
“But this time, this time their hubris has gotten the better of them - they have bet against the religion of the everyman, the every goblin - and in so doing, they have gotten their smarmy little hands caught in the cookie jar, or in this case, the toaster.”
“God broken, big doozy” says the smallest goblin.
“Now give me your hand and ready your appetite,” the big goblin says, “tonight we dine in Heaven.”
Compassion
We find ourselves at the foot of a goblin’s deathbed. He is in the midst of recounting the last of his memories to those who will listen. A robot assigned to his case waits patiently in the corner.
“We were somewhere in Spain,” the goblin says, “or was it Portugal? A lot’s changed in 35,000 years.”
The goblin continues, “our tribe came upon a herd of wayward mastodons, and, hungry as we were, we culled them into a ravine and hurled boulders upon them until the whole pod was crushed.”
“Frenzied as we were, our chieftain broke his femur.” The goblin elder pauses, “he was immobile, what were we to do?”
“In those days, there were no gods, just stars, no sense, just chaos. We clubbed his head in, ate his brains, and tossed his ribs to the glaciers.”
“Many lives later,” the goblin continues, “it was my femur on the line.”
“It was during the construction of Gobekli Tepe, about 12,000 years ago, when a stone column crashed down upon me and pulverized my leg. Per tradition, I readied my head for a clubbing.”
“But clubbed I was not,” the goblin exclaims, “far from it - I was mended, tended to, and healed.”
“At this moment I knew that we had finally graduated beyond the cruel realm of animals and into the compassionate pastures of civilization, where the weak, the infirmed, and the old were free to limp and thrive amongst the strong.”
At this proclamation, the robot rises from its corner and injects a 17-inch-long motorized-syringe into the goblin’s puny skull, scrambling the grey goo inside and slurping up what’s left of the goblin’s consciousness into the cloud.
“Next” says the robot.
Simulated-Hypothalamus
The year is 2091.
The cybernetic entity that was once Gossip Goblin is fluttering through hyperspace when its brain, presently hosted in the cloud by a surrogate host in an underwater consciousness farm in what was once Jakarta, feels a nudge.
The goblin opens the Bezos-membrane (the last application to ever exist, the everything application) and discovers a new notification in its inbox. How peculiar; the Goblin has not received a personal message since the Social-Distancing Proclamation of 2066. Intrigued, the goblin opens the letter:
"𝗛𝗢𝗧 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗜𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗿𝗲𝗮 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗼 𝗧𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱-𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗺𝘂𝘀".
Silence, Sonar, Safeway
𝐈: 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
If a wave crashes in the ocean, and no life form is around to hear it, does it make a sound? For two hundred million years, Earth’s primordial oceans are silent. Then, without reason, a primitive, single-celled prokaryote manifests from the hot, slimy aether, and life is born.
𝐈𝐈: 𝐒𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐫
If a bat screeches in sonar four and a half billion years later, but the only walls to echolocate are a frying pan, does it make a sound? A nameless man punches out his time card at a nameless factory, and gets himself something to eat. His broth is served up fast, and before it's half digested, a hot, novel coronavirus is born.
𝐈𝐈𝐈: 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐲
If a supermarket alarm goes off, but the security guards are busy tending to a man on Angel Dust in the parking lot, does it make a sound?
Amidst the quaint sprawl of pastel pink Victorians, a Safeway Supermarket stands tall and proud. A line squiggles out the doors and down the parking lot where a jogger trips over a curb and clings to her shattered ankle. We can do nothing but watch. She is likely infected.
A gun-wielding mercenary blocks the entrance to the market. She is fierce and assertive. A man demanding sugar begs her to enter. He is denied. A man wielding a car antenna like a rapier pleads with her to enter. He is denied. A man with dreadlocks and a pitbull asks if the market carries Brewer’s Yeast. He is ignored.
The aisles are empty. The eggs are gone. A lone chihuahua roams the Kosher foods section unattended. Two old men dispute personal space to the backdrop of tuna cans. Beside an empty shelf of sauces the dreadlocked man reappears and asks if Nutritional Yeast is the same as Brewer’s Yeast. He is told they are.
Outside, half the city’s pigeon population congregates around a plagued loaf of bread and the man on PCP disappears behind a haze of sirens. From the cold, contaminated aether, a new normal is born.