Angry Jasper-Five

Absolutely the world sucked. So what? The world has always sucked. It just sucks worse now. Maybe it sucked a whole lot worse in that little Texas town than most other places, but that was a matter of opinion. The town hadn’t changed a great deal. It was still a crossroads to nowhere. The railroad tracks cut across the town, but they hadn’t been used since the last half of the Twenty-first Century. There were gaps in the tracks in places. Links of rail had been pilphered by scavengers; others were covered over by hard-baked sand and soil.

Who would have guessed that Crawford Texas, a po-dunk town where a President no one could recall any longer retired, would become the capitol of the sovereign republic of Texas. This was thee last bastion of the Corporation’s waning hold on the planet. Like some modern day Rome besieged by barbarians, the Rome of a dying planet it battled constantly for its very existence.

And some of those battles were epic, destined to go down in the heroic annals of the Corporation for whom the good citizens of the republic fought. Those who hadn’t given up entirely on Earth and fled. There was the battle of Texarkana, the siege of Galveston and the rebel raids against Laredo to name a few. It was, in a very real way a clash of cultures, of a part of humanity that was weaning itself of terra firma and clawing its way into the universe, against those who clung to the memory of a world gone by. It was a war between twenty-four century civilization and Twenty-first Century heathens. It was the last stand between those who believed in reason science, and the religionists. Of course that was all just a matter of perspective, or loyalties.

Space sucked too, but in a different way. Mankind had colonized much of the solar system and had begun to plunder the inner planets as it pushed towards the stars. Officially it was the Corporation. Certainly it wasn’t a democracy, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. Of course, it wasn’t a dictatorship either, which might have made the paperwork easier. It was some mysterious oligarchy, a secretive politburo made up of nameless power wogs, a cabal no one knew the names of, but everyone feared. They ruled like mob bosses of old, collecting their dues from obedient minions and falling on the disobedient like a ton of shit.

The solar system, such as it was, had been parceled off into a confederation of near feudal governorships. Under the wary eye of the Corporation, and within limits, each governor was free to run his little fiefdom as he saw fit. This faceless cabal didn’t dabble in the day to day lives of their trillion or so subjects. They cared little for the minutia and little operas of the powerless. Here is where they lost sight of the fundamental rule that guides the course of history. Even the smallest events, and the unseen dramas of nobodies can have terrific effects, and one was about to have profound impact on all humanity,

The Corporation. A lot had changed in almost four centuries since the Great Pandemic of 2054. The whole process had begun some years before that. Some half witted despot had traded lofty words on a paper for profits. Diplomacy was devalued and warfare exalted, simply as a means to an end. Ears and eyes and souls were overwhelmed with Corporation propaganda paraded as patriotism. Wars for profit they came to be called, consumed the planet. It started slowly at first, the tentative steps of private corporations into the actual execution of warfare. The profits followed, and like the good businessmen they were corporate leaders followed then chased the money.

Somewhere along the way the line between Corporations and government had become blurred. Kind of like nailing a hot cousin; forbidden fruit. Power and money are like that. Best to have one or the other, but mixing the two was just asking for trouble. Might not become evident right away, but sooner or later you know you’re gonna end up with melon-headed mutants for kids.

It was the pandemic that really tipped the balance. The virus had been around for decades, languishing in frogs of all things. Pollution and climate changed had wiped out a good many of the slimy little beasts, all except for a sturdy population in Wisconsin. But if there is one thing about virus’ is that they mutate and adapt quickly to a new host. It made the leap to humans one chilly autumn evening in an undercooked bunch of frog legs. The virus spread like wild fire, and in the worst imaginable way-explosive diarrhea! In just short of a year it wiped better than half the population of the planet.

Governments collapsed. Accusations between nations erupted into sudden wars and nuclear exchanges. The dead, covered in their own filth, littered the streets, picked over by animals, or rotted untended. Whole cities ceased to exist, and the few survivors banded together out of desperation. In America the President lost his mind and became a drooling fool. The Pentagon fractured and fought battles in the streets. The country seemed lost, and crumbling into the same primitive existence much of the rest of the world descended into.

It was a corporation that stepped into that void and took up the reigns of power. Strati-corp became the de-facto rulers of the nation, organizing a new civilization upon the ruins of the old. The fools who clung to the idea of government for the people and by the people were marginalized, ridiculed and finally hunted. Driven underground they became the seeds of resistance against the Corporation, and the genesis of the Earth-first movement. The Corporation’s rise was sort of like a Rottweiler mounting a Schitzu in the street. Only when the deed was done that gluttonous Rottweiler ate that little Schitzu.

There are some who subscribe to the view that Strati-corp was behind the virus, and that they had planned the whole thing. Whatever the truth was its ancient history now. Ask the resistance and one is likely to get one answer. Everywhere else no one much cares anymore. What matters is what is. Guess that cousin was just too hot to pass up!