The turkeys had all died.
I mean all of them, across the entire world, they ALL died. Taken by a particularly virulent variant of bird flu, which also took chaffinches and parakeets and a host of other species with it1. This was made sadder and even more depressing by the fact that the very last turkey in the world, Sven, died on Christmas Eve that year. A fact that devastated much of western culture and dominated the Christmas news feeds, but failed to really register in other parts of the world, especially during the brutal monsoon season of that year which had barrelled in after the worst droughts in living memory.
Vegans didn’t really give a fuck.
The Vegan movement had become increasingly militant in their beliefs2. Indeed, Europol had declared The Veganistas to be a terrorist organisation. Vegan assets were seized in a series of raids, vegan sympathisers were vilified in the press, then tried and convicted in closed courts. Vegan cookbooks were burned in town squares. Ironically, tofu became a banned substance. The sentences handed out by the justice system for the handling and possessing of tofu, especially with intent to sell, out stripped those for handling or possessing Class A drugs. Drug dealers across the continent rejoiced. Quickly and quietly the makers of QuornÔ withdrew from the European market. Vegetarians had to walk
a careful line and constantly prove they had no vegan sympathies by ingesting sufficient
quantities of cheese and wearing leather blousons3.
Following the blight most people turned to other birds, chickens, geese and ducks for their celebratory meals, but over farming and another bird-flu variant took chickens, geese, ducks and all the other tasty looking birds with it4. By this time fish and crustaceans were also out of the question. What had once been called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch had, over the years, grown into a series of islands and archipelagos. In the decade after the Turkey Blight these disparate islands had joined together, covering most of the Pacific Ocean. The United Nations eventually designated this to be a new continent and U.N. Secretary General, Elon Musk Jnr., decided to purchase this new untapped market.5 In a controversial official statement Mr. Musk Jnr. declared “…this new land is a testament to Mankind’s ingenuity and I shall look after it in the name of my dear father…6”
It was during the fall of New Atlantis that some people suggested, yet again, that we should all start eating insects. They were plentiful and a good source of protein and we could farm vast quantities of them in relatively small areas. Insects were held up as a sort of win win situation. Unfortunately, insects taste like, well, bloody insects. By which I mean most people would rather eat their Great Aunt Petunia than crunch through a plate of flipping tree crickets. So, with that in mind humanity pulled its collective socks up and worked together to create a sensible and sober option7. So, we built a fuck load of cool space ships and headed out to find a decent planet that we could easily get to and take over and then proceed to bugger up again till we had to leave and start all over again. We called it “Project Locust”8.
1: Norfolk went into economic freefall following the Great Turkey Blight of 2029. In the wake of the blight a small cult, The Sons and Daughters of Bernard Matthews, was born. They decided on the 25th November 2030 to commit mass suicide, in order to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of their messiah, Mr. Matthews, and because, what with living in Norfolk and living without turkey, their lives held no real meaning.
It seems that none of them gave a tuppence about the chaffinches or the parakeets.
2: Vegans were rumoured to have killed off cattle, sheep and pig production through a covert mass chemical sterilisation program. In a not entirely unconnected coincidence, a great many hard-core vegans have since declared their intent to remain childless – for the good of planet etc. etc.
3: This was not seen as a huge problem as the number of vegetarians in Europe was still in the single digits percentage wise. Though among those still identifying as vegetarian, post the Turkey Blight, a significant proportion developed worryingly high cholesterol levels – though few of them made any real fuss.
4: Among the only birds left were the Southern Bald Ibis, the Shoebill Stork and several species of Vulture. None of them were particularly attractive to look at and as it turns out their flesh was mostly inedible, if beauty is only skin deep then it seems, ugliness is not.
5: Elon Musk Jnr. tried to build a huge casino and wellness complex at the centre of the mass and a large steel wall around the continent’s perimeter. Neither Mr. Musk Jnr. nor any of his engineers factored in whether or not an 18-foot-thick slab of barely held together plastic rubbish could hold the weight of the casino, the wellness complex or the wall. Mr. Musk Jnr and his colleagues were all declared missing at sea a year after New Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean – this mass pollution event is what finally killed off marine life.
6: Elon Musk Snr. is still enroute to Mars, the last official statement from Space X is that the mission is going extremely well and that Mr. Musk Snr. is having a lovely time tending his dahlias and re-reading the works of Jilly Cooper.
7: I know that not everyone wears socks, our species enjoys a myriad of hosiery options depending on personal preferences and I am not trying to impose socks on any individual’s foot or feet. Please stop being so picky, it is nearly the end of the story.
8: Obviously, we made sure we were headed in the opposite direction to Elon.
SVEN
“May Flights of Angels Sing You to Your Rest”
08.01.28 – 24.12.29
Be First to Comment