The era of automobiles as we know it is coming to an end. It may not be in my lifetime or yours, but it’s coming soon. The writing is on the wall. And as long as there are humans, there will be some form of wall writing. We’ve become advanced enough to where most wall writing is digitally done now, figments of silicon and simulacra.
In museums there are replicas, models and remakes of cars and trucks, the pinnacle of the Post-Industrial Age. There’s the 1982 lemon-yellow Lamborghini Countach with its formerly futuristic door handles. In another room is the Volvo station wagon, stoic and small, outfitted with antilock breaks and a cassette player. Ah, but here is The Grand PooBah of them all–the Sports Utility Vehicle–complete with a truck frame, pussy exterior, running boards, underwhelming trunk space, pathetic gas mileage, and the faded Proud Soccer Mom sticker on the rear windshield. What a relic!
My, how things have changed since then. I remember being a teenager, working on vintage Dodge AeroFoils in the garage with my dad. Souping up the 2500 hp Verion Accelerator (or, engine) so that I could go “hot rodding” with my friends after school in the upper troposphere. Traction being a thing of the past. Old syndicated re-runs of The Jetsons show sterilized folk in peapods, putting along with a wheeze.
Are you kidding me?
Nowadays we have miniaturized fission reactors that power what the Big Three call Nano Sheaths, which is basically a fancy way of saying the cover of the car. Here’s how it works:
- You sit in the driver’s seat, cockpit, whatever you want to call it.
- Press the ignition switch, which fires the reactors.
- The reactors activate the Nano Sheath, which consists of roughly 2.5 billion specially designed nanomachines that whir in synchronicity like old electric razors used to do.
- The nanomachines act as a self-containing bubble and hovering device.
- The fission reactor then acts as a propulsion mechanism, using secret Pulse Technology that provides a smooth transition from pedestrian ground-based travel to complete vertical ascension of 3000 feet in 5.3 seconds. It’s pants-crapping awesome.
The only problem is all these damn irresponsible idiots out there. A century ago, when 16-year-olds were still of legal driving age, there were roughly 45,000 car-related fatalities each year. With the advent of the flying car–the realized dream of sci-fi junkies, Eisenhower flunkies, and the collective subconsciousness of a worldwide populace–however, those figures have ballooned to incomprehensible proportions.
Statistically speaking, with an American population of 1.9 billion people, most of whom now reside in the Midwestern states of Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, the annual number of fatalities stands at roughly 185,000. If you factor in the related collateral damage most flying car accidents incur, the figures are in the low millions. High speed aerial collisions are at an all-time high. Seat belts are a thing of the past. They ceased to matter long ago. No one is safe anymore.
Antique YouTube videos show creamy blue skies, free of congestion and gray nano-pollution. There once were things called “clouds” and natural flying creatures, like birds.
Now, the sky is dead. When you look up, it feels like Revelations has come to pass, a swirling locust blur, the continuous buzzing and whirring of the Nano Sheaths, the rumbling whoosh of the patented Pulse Technology. Multitudinous collisions occur high above you, far off fireballs that look like glowing red and yellow dots that then multiply, exploding Chinese fireworks raining hellfire down amongst abandoned streets. The few pedestrians that still drive electric cars or happen to walk wear Navigational Awareness Monitors (NAM) that give them a beeping warning that falling fiery debris is within a 5 mile radius.
The skyscraper, another Post-Industrial symbol of the Golden Age, has been abandoned. Most remaining structures look like steel Swiss cheese, riddled with dozens of flying car punctures. Multi-billion dollar substructures, essentially the inverse of skyscrapers, have become the new rage, being built up (or down) in abandoned coal, oil, and diamond mines. The ocean is gradually becoming colonized. The media reports great progress being made with regards to self-regenerating fish people being bred via stem cell research in SeaLabs.
Everything has been taken too far, but it will never be taken far enough. Nothing will ever end, even once we start referring to the sun as Big Red. I can’t wait to see what will come next.
