Grey, cold Yorkshire

York, England. Saturday 11 May 2013

Grey cloud. Spots of rain. Chilly wind. Temperature climbing to 9/10 degrees Celsius max. Scientists - get working on that Mediterranean climate-controlled, Yorkshire arcological dome! It's fricking May! And 10 degrees! Even the local cats have escaped somewhere inside.

The ragged group squabbled over the source of the plague

The ragged group squabbled over the source of the plague. A mad preacher said it had been sent by God to punish humanity. A girl said aliens had delivered it quietly through a large comet, which had smashed into uninhabited forest in Canada's far north only last year. Others said a military experiment had gone wrong.

they both gazed at the giant, arcological dome

He put his arm around Belle's shoulder and they both gazed at the giant, arcological dome in the distance. It emanated a warmth they had seen nowhere in this dark, dead world.

'Who lives there?' Belle asked. 'Are they really monsters like Amber said?'

Mother and daughter sang

Mother and daughter sang and hummed softly to each other as the knitting progressed. A little horse slowly took shape, its mane now being added string by string.

He wasn't human

The lawnmower had been whining all morning. Jake looked down from his apartment window and saw the man pushing the machine back and forth. Spring was coming late this year, slivers of snow covered the grass and a cold arctic wind blew across the land. A middle-aged lawnmower man in a high visibilty vest.

Except that he wasn't human. He was an alien working on a great suburban estate. Quietly observing, recording, sending reports back home.

Click, scroll, drag, zoom

Click, scroll, drag, zoom. Monday to Friday. 8 till 5. Everyday he classified maps from the USA. The houses were so beautiful out there. Approaching middle age, he guessed his 'career' was over. A dead-end job. Never in his wildest fantasies did he suspect he was destined to become one of those quiet heroes post Z-Day. An ultimate Zombie Killer.

He had two prosthetic legs and got around on an electric scooter

He had two prosthetic legs and got around on an electric scooter. Nobody thought he would survive for long in the zombie-infested landscape. How wrong they were.

The girl had strange, psychic powers

The girl had strange, psychic powers. Told me she could sense a presence at the World Trade Center Memorial.

The neuroscientists looked in awe

The neuroscientists looked in awe at the flashes detonating across the human brain activity map. They had found the way to map human thoughts, and one day build a mind.

The post-apocalyptic landscape was haunting, at times breathtaking

The post-apocalyptic landscape was haunting, at times breathtaking. Now and then lightning would form above active volcanoes on the horizon.

Starving

The hungry children walked along the railway embankment, canning. They were starving, in a land of obesity. Later while selling their cans in town Gretchen saw a girl munching on a delicious sandwich through a diner window. Fat people like cartoons plodded around. Tommy Lee felt weak, like he was going to faint.

a place of pilgrimage for the billions...

ET was discovered, not out there in the void, but here on our own planet. Alien crash wreckage was eventually found and put on display at the Smithsonian. The exhibit became one of Wonders of the World, a place of pilgrimage for the billions...

A gargantuan cosmic zoo

For years the ET hunters had found nothing. But then one day it came all at once, millions of exoplanets all confirmed with a myriad of life forms. A gargantuan cosmic zoo. Earth's museums would have a lot of cataloging to do...

Treasures of the deep

South of Hawaii the submersible slowly approached the nodules, its lights picking out the valuable rocks lying on the ocean floor. Packed with minerals, rising out of the shallow silt layer.

Strange bio-luminescent creatures floated in the surrounding darkness. Further on were the greatest prize - the hydro-thermal vents spewing black clouds upwards. 

Inside the the glass bubble cockpit the Chief Mining Officer grunted in approval. 

'You see all this? Several hundred years of cobalt and nickel are just lying around here waiting to be harvested'.

He pointed to the augmented reality, head-mounted display constantly recording his view of the deep sea.

'People whine and complain, simultaneously slaving after these miracle gadgets packed with rare-earth minerals'.

Huge vacuumers soon to move in would destroy the ecosystem, choking marine life's filtering systems.  Man had bled the continents dry. Insatiable man, never satisfied, now moving his operations to the dark ocean floor. 

The hydro-thermal vents would be shattered by massive robotic machines..

Pope Francis emanates peace and humility in Orion–Cygnus Arm

Tonight, through the endless void, on a pale blue dot in a solar system of the Orion–Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy - a humble man dressed in traditional garments of floor-length white wool cassock, white sash and white skullcap - sent a message of love and peace to all humans.

Pope Francis gave the immediate impression of humility, which I respect.

The holy spirit worked in mysterious ways this evening, shocking the world.

'5 reasons why I don't like aliens' (according to 25th century human)

1. They smell real bad (to us humans that is)

2. Their tentacles freak me out.

3. They're damn noisy, and their telepathic waves screw up my Internet.

4. They suck as girlfriends, even when they're sexy. My buddy has an alien girlfriend and if it weren't for the special sealed suit and helmet she wears, her skin would have poisoned him long ago on first touch. Not much contact there. They make poison dart frogs look tame.

5. Their food is positively disgusting, especially the stuff that's alive while they eat it.

... hey, what's that saucer hovering above my house? Holy cow, alien abduction! Now I've got the whole alien universe against me!

Join us

Still needs a lot of work...

Killer Bots

Captain Dornier bent over, studying the nanobot and its intricate engineering close up. His eyes like a child’s in wonder and awe.

‘It’s our latest creation Sir’ said the young scientist standing nearby. Our dominant position in military robotic sciences will not last forever. But this little gem will raise the bar and ensure we stay ahead of East Asia’.

‘What’s new’ asked the captain.

‘See the pointed nose here, that’s got a nano-nuclear warhead that will take out their heaviest armour. As soon as they appear on the battlefield our nano drones will swarm around them like locusts. The kinetic energy alone of one of these will take out any armoured goon. They just lock on and then BAM!’

‘Christ. That’s what we need right now. Another game changer. First came gunpowder, then the machine gun - atomic bomb - computers - drones - and now swarming clouds of tank-killing nuclear armed nanobots! How many have been manufactured?’

'We’ve currently got 5 million and counting. The clouds will be so thick they’ll block out the sun. When the enemy tries to breathe they'll suck mosquito drones down their throats and up into their nostrils'.

A guard entered the laboratory.

‘Captain Dornier’

‘Yes Private’

‘She’s here again Sir’

‘What! Again? Damned peace prize winner. Well, let her in’.

The Captain felt anger erupting inside. That bitch again. She wants to outlaw my department. Ban our research. Her and that damned international campaign. 

A middle-aged woman entered in a bright green power suit. 

‘Captain Dornier’ 

‘Ah ha, Ms Bernstein. Another visit so soon after the last?

‘Captain Dornier, we cannot allow your military robotics programs to continue’

to be continued...

Sharks disappear forever from Earth's oceans

The last known Terran shark in the wild was eaten today, by a group of Chinese businessmen from the rich and powerful technology sector. 

Sharks had roamed the seas on Earth for 400 million years before humans, specifically the Mongoloid or East Asian races abruptly decimated populations within a century. 

Normally such mass extinction events originate from Space, the result of cataclysmic but rare meteor strikes. In this case however it was simply a sub race of hominids that grew to dominate the 21st century of human history. They spent their accumulated wealth on satisfying their craving of the delicacy 'Shark Fin Soup'. The East Asians would chop off the beautiful creatures' tails and fins in a process known as 'finning', discarding the bulk of the carcass back into the ocean. 

Biotech food firms are already exploiting the extinction of these ancient creatures by offering cloned shark cartilage. 

Attacks against the East Asians have increased markedly in recent years, some environmental groups resorting to terrorism.

Others, like a man from Arkansas, screamed at a Luddite gathering: 'I hope ET comes down one day, chops off all their arms and legs, throws away the screaming carcasses and makes soup out of them!'.

Small numbers of sharks still exist in aquariums at various locations around the planet, closely guarded. 

Sharks once existed everywhere on Earth, ranging from tiny species to huge whale-like creatures.

The closest existing species similar to the Terran sharks are approximately 2.5 million light-years away in Earth's sister galaxy, Andromeda. They thrive on several large ocean planets there, where intelligent life has not yet evolved.

Ways to escape death

1. Enter the afterlife, heaven, utopia - this is the ideal solution. But requires faith. And it might not happen.

2. Next best - make sure you survive and live to see the technological singularity, when humans could become immortal (or even extinct in a worst case scenario). We're talking mind uploading here. You need to follow the 3 bridges of radical life extension here - eat healthily, take special drugs (hardcore pill-popping) to eventually exploit the coming nanotech revolution - future medical devices floating in the blood stream etc.

3. Get frozen for the future and brought back from the dead. If you don't live there already you will be transported to the United States when you die to be kept in cold storage. This is still a huge gamble because cryogenics is still medically unproven and it could take around a century before it is discovered if the process is successful.

4. Die and return your body to the earth, but be digitally resurrected like Audrey Hepburn was recently for a chocolate bar ad. OK - you're dead, but to other people you're still kind of there, even spectacularly. And in the perhaps the not so distant future an artificial AI based on memories and materials supplied by your relatives could be linked to your digital resurrection, or physical robotic body. But you're still only a crude copy, and it's not really you.

5. Wait perhaps even billions of years (not so painful, because you're actually dead, right?) for our distant post-human descendants to unite with the universe and create an everlasting cosmic computer. In pseudo science this is known as 'The Omega Point'. This will bring every man, woman and child that has ever lived back into existence. If this works, it could conflict with some of the previous solutions.