Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The other day Webdiarist Ian McPherson wrote:

People have written short fiction stories about how the future might be in a dramatically altered world. Perhaps I should write one for Webdiary? What do you think? Could it stand a bit of fiction?

Margo accepted the suggestion with alacrity. Here is Ian's offering:

Musings from a not-too-distant future
by Ian McPherson

The nephew and I have been hanging out here for the past few days. He's spent a lot of his time jacked into his new phone/watch/browser/camera, one of the ones that fits around a single ear with the mike on the end of a thin, carbon fibre loop, with an LED keypad, monitor and browser built into a matching watch. Interesting tech. He only has to sub-vocalise to talk and be heard; all that tricky volume stuff has been hammered right out of the design. He tried to explain to me how it worked, nanoclusters and all this stuff, but I couldn't follow most of it. I got particularly lost on how he can hear things in stereo, even though the damn thing is only stuck in one ear!

The willy willies have been more common recently, hand in hand with this year's record temperatures. We had a corker yesterday, which managed to pick up some dirt somewhere in a backyard in Crows Nest. It came barrelling up the lane, spewing dirt in all directions and wobbling wildly. It picked up some glass bottles from a weather-resistant bin one of the restaurants had failed to batten down the lid on. Shrieking like a 360° glass-shard emitting blender, it faltered on for a minute or so, before collapsing under its own weight and laying a carpet of glass and dirt at the end of the lane. No problem for the new-gen electric trash trucks though; their tyres are some fancy new compound that just crushes the glass without digging up the road.

Juzzy and I took a walk up to our local Woolworths-Hoi Sin supermarket earlier. There's not so many cars around any more, not surprising when oil's $310 a barrel, so being a pedestrian is a lot safer than it used to be. The light-rail system they built right up the middle of the Pacific Highway in a panic after the oil shock of 2012 runs fairly regularly. It carries most of the people moving around. The rich still drive; I guess they always will. But we only spotted a couple of cars, a flash-looking Honda-Kia electric and a nasty-looking, fully-armoured police Hummer, one of the leftovers from our final US buying spree, when we thought we were going to need them.

The shelves in the supermarket were as sparsely populated as usual. Most people today think that this is normal, but I remember the days when it was stacked full of all this wonderful imported stuff from all over the world; sardines, tuna, salmon, caviar, chocolates, the list goes on. Now, most of the remaining ocean fish are protected, and the sea is too saline to support them anyway. Most of the food is local now, not all that varied, and very seasonal. There are still some imported goods, but not anything like there used to be before the depression of 2015-2020, and they're expensive. There's still some fish around, but it's GM-farmed and well-nigh taste-free. I suppose it's OK for you; they say it is.

Gosh, I'm so old I can still remember cash. Now they just scan your hand at the checkout. If you're in trouble, for some reason or another, a silent alarm is sounded and the private security contractors working for the supermarket chauffeur you into a waiting room, where you sit and wait for the Cops, who'll come eventually. It's the perfect system. If you break the rules, you can't eat. If you can't eat, you die. The system wins either way. Jails are gone too. Crims now get shipped straight off to the corporate GM farms to work it off. For any sort of violent crime, they get one of the old Halliburton security collars, developed for the looters after the US wild weather events. That keeps them well and truly in line.

GM's another tech thing that's come a long way. All our crops are now drought- and parasite-resistant GM varieties, like all of our livestock. The meats are tough, flat in taste, wiry and mean, like the animals they come from, specially developed in labs to live in what have become harsh and hostile conditions. The youngsters don't remember real steaks, real fruit and vegetables. They don't know what they're missing! There are still some permaculturists around, but they find it hard to maintain pure seed and animal varieties, and the big corporations have had quite some success pushing through legislation that closes them down for some idiotic health regulation or another.

The Labor nuclear renaissance was not only a sellout, but a furphy. After the first big oil shock we built two reactors but the idea just petered out. I think it was mostly because the second reactor, which was designed to desalinate seawater as well as use it for a coolant, looks like it will be underwater by 2050. Great government planning, as usual. Parts of the Sydney Harbour foreshores are now under water, as you know, and they had to re-route some of the roads closest to sea-level on the Pittwater. Once we knew what was happening, a stack of reasonably well-off people lost their shirts on their waterfront properties all around Sydney, up and down the coast, and in all the river system that haven't dried up. Property prices dropped to nothing, and most of them had to just sit there, mopping up the water lapping at the door.

One good thing to come out of the energy wars was the end of the military. During the US/Iran war, when oil went over $200 a barrel, the US collapsed, first into recession and then into depression. The US government tried to ignore the wild weather events at home and the costs of war, but in the end they couldn't ignore the effects. They eventually pulled out of Iraq and Iran, leaving a whole bunch of big, impressive buildings and embassies, now full of environmental refugees, squatters and wiry-looking rats. The US Army was reformed back into the National Reserve, now flat out fighting hurricanes, droughts, wildfires and environmental disasters at home. Most of the aircraft carriers just sit moored. And there's just not enough oil to fly the jets, even if they had a reason to. War ended up being just too expensive to maintain.

Mostly, that's how the world is now. Australia, and all of the other countries, are looking after themselves. Prime Minister Nettle's Greens cancelled all the long-term foreign contracts on oil, gas and coal exports and bought in the first of the serious carbon, oil and CO2 taxes. That helped get things going in the right direction. Renewable energy is getting cheaper, but we've still got a few old coal lungbusters working out there, reliably pumping out more CO2 into an already weary world atmosphere. It's still expensive to heat your home though, and only the rich can afford an air-conditioner. I try to use as little energy as possible. I like the idea of our new local energy association, which gives you home energy if you help them with an investment. They're certainly abuzz over there, with a bunch of hi-tech windmills whirling and solar paint displays twinkling in the sunlight.

Juzzy and I don't talk about the old days much. If I start to rabbit on, he just glazes over. Not that I blame him; I would've done the same thing at his age. The kids still seem to be having fun, but it's a politically correct sort of fun nowadays. Since electronic ID and the chip implants there's not much place for dissent. The government lets the kids talk it up a bit, but any sign of any action and they bring it to a swift close. The Cops cruise around a bit, but are generally holed up in their stations, as they have to meet budgets too. The Department of Homeland Security has the most feet on the ground, but they're supposed to be looking for the big guys, the ones who have black-market food and water supplies and have had their ID implants removed. Per capita, there's not many of them, and they're greatly outnumbered, I reckon.

Well, it's been nice to talk. It's good to find someone who likes to hear about the old days; the 'party days' I like to call them, 'cause we certainly did party! Juzzy and I will walk up to the Community Centre a little later and get our TrankTabs. We all do this daily, except for the Pollies, Cops and Homeland Security people, of course. I don't mind, mostly... I sleep better than I ever have, and I worry a lot less than I used to in the past.