Just in time for the holiday season, I’ve decided to write a children’s book.

Here’s the synopsis:

Christmas was near at hand.   It approached like a shower of bombs just released towards their target.   There’s the moment when the ordinance seems to be still, as if it isn’t going to move, just hover in the air. Within fractions of a second however, its ruthless progress earthwards is clear.

This, at least, is how Slorbfindel, one of Santa’s elves, felt about the holiday. While all the other elves joyfully and tirelessly worked night and day and night to finish the toys that would fill Cringle’s pan-dimensional gift bag, Slorbfindel worked towards one thing and one thing alone:

the creation of an artificial, targetable gamma ray burst device.

Slorbfindel was determined to make this Christmas the last.

MEMO

To: All Staff
From: Tom Atlas, your adventurous and beloved CEO

Subject: Do we feel the flames? Are there flames to feel?

Yesterday, I walked into the mini-kitchen on the 17th floor (near the accounting and perceptual engineering departments) and overheard an argument between two members of our corporate family.

As you know, one of the founding principles of this company is that disagreements are unacceptable because they produce a negative atmosphere that’s bad for our bio-equilibrium and, of course, bad for productivity.

Even so, I held back from stepping in to stop this heated debate because I felt the topic was vital.

What was that topic? What inspired two of our family members to argue? It was this: are we, like Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (aka NERO), fiddling while Rome (which, in this case, means the world) burns?

After all, so many terrible things are happening — some, such as the pitched battle between the Gamma Boys and the Titanium Lads, are happening right around the corner from this building — and yet we laugh and cavort as if we were gods, unaffected by the world’s pain.

Is this right?

The answer is yes.

I understand what you’re saying Lord Strawberry but right now what I’m wondering is this: in 3,000 years — give or take — will people study the ruins of Las Vegas much as we study the remains of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes?

If so, what will they get right and what wrong?

Of course, there is irony aplenty here.

Just as penguins begin to enjoy pop cultural godhood in dramatized documentaries and computer generated children’s films, the climate begins to change in ways not beneficial to penguin-dom.

The Huge Entity’s ever seeking Mr. Danieru writes:

What ideas will future generations glance back at and laugh in contemptuous hindsight? In 50 years time which contemporary cultural memes will be deader than the proverbial Dodo? Lying in the digital darkness of our internet time-capsule these questions, and more, will have to wait 50 years of technological shifts; of societal upheavals; of cultural fermentation before they can be answered.

To answer this question, he presents to a darkly glittering world the Conceptual Time Capsule.

Contributions include musings from:

• Your dystopian host
• Velcro City Tourist Board’s Armchair Anarchist
• Hyperaware Consciousness’ Daniel Poynter
• Reality Carnival’s Cliff Pickover
• The Huge Entity’s Mr. Danieru

and more to come…