By Jack Bryson
In the spirit of wild and baseless speculation, I offer a few of these predictions:
In the future the weather is more extreme. Winters are really cold -polar; hurricanes devastate the gulf region and the Atlantic has reclaimed Miami. In the summer it’s really fucking hot- sweltering, California desalinizes seawater for its drinking water and wildfires have made the eastern half of the state uninhabitable. 10 years after a war with North Korea, a genetically augmented veteran suffering from PTSD has an episode. A self-driving car beeps at him and the veteran snaps- he picks up the autonomous car and chucks it into a café of patrons who were enjoying their cloned coffee and venison Schmeat (lab grown meat).
Not to worry, this is isn’t the first time a veteran suffering PTSD has tossed an automobile into a cafe. An early warning alarm alerted the patrons to take cover as the car flew through the air. The car crashed through the glass façade of the café but there were only minor injuries and there were no passengers in the car. Several flyers taped to the glass façade fluttered through the air and land around the scene of the “accident”. One of the flyers advertised a new attraction at San Francisco zoo- the Woolly Mammoth exhibit. It’s apart of the zoo’s de-extinction program.
The police arrived to deal with the veteran’s outburst. They used nets and bear tranquilizers to subdue him. After he was knocked out with the tranquilizers they hauled him away as paramedics came to assess the situation and treat the injured. Infections and illness are of great concern again as antibiotics are useless. Scientists are racing to fix the problem, looking for antibacterial compounds or artificial means to fight infections.
Things aren’t so grim- Space X built a moon base and we put a woman on Mars. The earth is still in shitty condition but people now use a lithium glass battery to power their autonomous cars. Carbon emissions have been greatly reduced and the planet is slowly healing itself.
If some of the predictions come true then, they’ll no longer be considered speculative fiction and they’ll be mentioned off hand in mainstream literature. Some of these ideas appeared in the television show Elementary- they toyed with current events that may become commonplace one day. At any rate, I didn’t mention the gross invasion of privacy and surveillance but that’s more or less already here. These are a few fun topics to explore.
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