Milkwars Part 2 - by Rune Woodman
September 20th 2009 02:06
Though considered almost cannibalistic by today's standards in the past milk was a very popular drink. With the aid of time travel and a miniature-transmitting device built into every carton of milk, the milk producers were able to travel forward in time and track down every carton of milk. This meant that they could know, to the very minute, when any carton of milk that was ever packed was going to pass its use by date. With this knowledge they could return to the time of packaging and stamp an accurate date on the carton. The addition of this service onto an already popular drink caused the price to sky-rocket and milk producers became members of a new class of wealthy elite called, 'The Milk Masters'.
The public demand for time travel caused the machines to be redesigned so they could become smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper, until eventually the C-MITE was replaced with the PTIME (Personal and Thorough Instantaneous Minute Escalator).
With this device a new and popular pass-time arose amongst the younger Human Gods - Milk Spotting. In order to Milk Spot you would buy a carton of milk and do whatever you could to potentially make it last longer or go off sooner than the use by date then zip into the future to see what happened to it. The Milk Masters even posted rewards to any Milk Spotter who could prove that a carton had gone off at a time other than its use by date.
The PTIME led to the complete abolition of public transport. People could afford to take their time, leave home when they felt like it and drive to their destination through horrendous traffic without fear of being late. When they got to where they were going the PTIME could return them to their desired time of arrival. Some sad and lonely people, accountants and the like, would finish a day of work then jump forward to the following morning to immediately start the next day. This enabled them to avoid the lonely trip home and the long night worrying that their lives were meaningless.
The end of public transport meant pollution levels rose dramatically the ozone layer completely disappeared. It was too dangerous for the hairless Human Gods to remain exposed to the burning rays of the sun. They abandoned life above the ground choosing instead to live under it.
Great chasms were dug into the ground and all of the remaining forests, parks, crops and the great cities of the world were relocated into them before concrete slabs covered them up and blocked out all natural sunlight.
Coober Pedy, formerly a small mining town where the houses had traditionally been built underground, was named capital city of the world because its people had been living underground for centuries. They were the obvious choice to lead the Human Gods their new gloomy lives. The Lord Mayor of Coober Pedy took on the roles of both designer of the future and leader of all of Humans. Unfortunately his reign was short lived due to ever-increasing problems brought on by the milk industry over the coming years.
It was a hard life underground for the Milk Spotters. As members of the lowest classes they lived near the bottom of the pits with the cold and the damp. They became more and more desperate for incorrect use-by dates as a distraction from their dark days. An incorrect date on a carton of milk could earn a Spotter enough money to buy their way close to the surface where it was warm and dry.
The Milk Masters had become lazy. By the end of the Above Ground Time they were fat and corrupt. A small clutch of Milk-Dissidents, known as the 'Move Milk Masters Out Organisation' (MMMOO), emerged and began blackmailing the Milk Masters into putting false use-by dates on occasional cartons. The MMMOOs encouraged the Milk-spotters to gamble on the outcome of cartons. With the occasional 'incorrectly' labelled date the Spotters were keen to throw away what little money they had for a chance at a better life. This illegal activity made the MMMOOs rich and the tables of wealth were turned again.
Only a few short years after moving underground cracks in the roofs and walls of the new cities were showing.
Unfortunately for everyone, during the time of the building of the great underground cities the Mayor of Coober Pedy became addicted to Milk-Spotting. He squandered vast quantities public money on his habit. Much of the funds that had been set aside for quality construction materials for the roofs of the cities were lost. Instead of the solid, re-enforced concrete slabs that had been requested the cities were sheltered by a cheap, crusty, straw and cement mix. This set the stage for the great calamity that was in-store. But the Mayor cannot take responsibility alone. No one wanted to be the whistle-blower on the controversy so the financial and quality issues were pushed down the line of construction right to the very bottom of the cities themselves and it was not realised, until it was too late, that there was no money left for storm-water drainage.
With decay of the atmosphere continuing beyond the Human God's escape to the soil all of the frozen ice of the world melted at an incredible rate. The weight of additional water pushing against the surface of the planet caused increased tectonic movement and horrible earthquakes ravaged the land. It wasn't long before the roofs of the Great Cavern cities collapsed and rising seawater poured in. All of the Human Gods were to drown in the wake of their own foolishness.
Very little life on the planet survived. The taller animals on the surface lived through the floods. The population of milk producing cows came to no harm; after-all they were the most prized animals on the planet so their housing was strong and high in the hills where the air was still relatively fresh. The Cows survived but they were not free of agony. Without humans to milk them they were doomed to live their lives with aching udders full of milk.
It was one of the cows of this time who took it upon herself to wander the planet looking for solutions, rather than standing about eating grass and complaining. She went in search of a particularly tall type of animal that she suspected would have survived the tragedy. He plan was to find and mate with a giraffe. She hoped that her cow DNA combined with the giraffe's DNA would breed long necked daughters who could milk themselves.
This lone cow eventually found her giraffe mate and it was she who give birth to the first of our ancient ancestors, the first members of the Coraffe Race.
Chapter 7. The Journey of the Cow...
The public demand for time travel caused the machines to be redesigned so they could become smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper, until eventually the C-MITE was replaced with the PTIME (Personal and Thorough Instantaneous Minute Escalator).
With this device a new and popular pass-time arose amongst the younger Human Gods - Milk Spotting. In order to Milk Spot you would buy a carton of milk and do whatever you could to potentially make it last longer or go off sooner than the use by date then zip into the future to see what happened to it. The Milk Masters even posted rewards to any Milk Spotter who could prove that a carton had gone off at a time other than its use by date.
The PTIME led to the complete abolition of public transport. People could afford to take their time, leave home when they felt like it and drive to their destination through horrendous traffic without fear of being late. When they got to where they were going the PTIME could return them to their desired time of arrival. Some sad and lonely people, accountants and the like, would finish a day of work then jump forward to the following morning to immediately start the next day. This enabled them to avoid the lonely trip home and the long night worrying that their lives were meaningless.
The end of public transport meant pollution levels rose dramatically the ozone layer completely disappeared. It was too dangerous for the hairless Human Gods to remain exposed to the burning rays of the sun. They abandoned life above the ground choosing instead to live under it.
Great chasms were dug into the ground and all of the remaining forests, parks, crops and the great cities of the world were relocated into them before concrete slabs covered them up and blocked out all natural sunlight.
Coober Pedy, formerly a small mining town where the houses had traditionally been built underground, was named capital city of the world because its people had been living underground for centuries. They were the obvious choice to lead the Human Gods their new gloomy lives. The Lord Mayor of Coober Pedy took on the roles of both designer of the future and leader of all of Humans. Unfortunately his reign was short lived due to ever-increasing problems brought on by the milk industry over the coming years.
It was a hard life underground for the Milk Spotters. As members of the lowest classes they lived near the bottom of the pits with the cold and the damp. They became more and more desperate for incorrect use-by dates as a distraction from their dark days. An incorrect date on a carton of milk could earn a Spotter enough money to buy their way close to the surface where it was warm and dry.
The Milk Masters had become lazy. By the end of the Above Ground Time they were fat and corrupt. A small clutch of Milk-Dissidents, known as the 'Move Milk Masters Out Organisation' (MMMOO), emerged and began blackmailing the Milk Masters into putting false use-by dates on occasional cartons. The MMMOOs encouraged the Milk-spotters to gamble on the outcome of cartons. With the occasional 'incorrectly' labelled date the Spotters were keen to throw away what little money they had for a chance at a better life. This illegal activity made the MMMOOs rich and the tables of wealth were turned again.
Only a few short years after moving underground cracks in the roofs and walls of the new cities were showing.
Unfortunately for everyone, during the time of the building of the great underground cities the Mayor of Coober Pedy became addicted to Milk-Spotting. He squandered vast quantities public money on his habit. Much of the funds that had been set aside for quality construction materials for the roofs of the cities were lost. Instead of the solid, re-enforced concrete slabs that had been requested the cities were sheltered by a cheap, crusty, straw and cement mix. This set the stage for the great calamity that was in-store. But the Mayor cannot take responsibility alone. No one wanted to be the whistle-blower on the controversy so the financial and quality issues were pushed down the line of construction right to the very bottom of the cities themselves and it was not realised, until it was too late, that there was no money left for storm-water drainage.
With decay of the atmosphere continuing beyond the Human God's escape to the soil all of the frozen ice of the world melted at an incredible rate. The weight of additional water pushing against the surface of the planet caused increased tectonic movement and horrible earthquakes ravaged the land. It wasn't long before the roofs of the Great Cavern cities collapsed and rising seawater poured in. All of the Human Gods were to drown in the wake of their own foolishness.
Very little life on the planet survived. The taller animals on the surface lived through the floods. The population of milk producing cows came to no harm; after-all they were the most prized animals on the planet so their housing was strong and high in the hills where the air was still relatively fresh. The Cows survived but they were not free of agony. Without humans to milk them they were doomed to live their lives with aching udders full of milk.
It was one of the cows of this time who took it upon herself to wander the planet looking for solutions, rather than standing about eating grass and complaining. She went in search of a particularly tall type of animal that she suspected would have survived the tragedy. He plan was to find and mate with a giraffe. She hoped that her cow DNA combined with the giraffe's DNA would breed long necked daughters who could milk themselves.
This lone cow eventually found her giraffe mate and it was she who give birth to the first of our ancient ancestors, the first members of the Coraffe Race.
Chapter 7. The Journey of the Cow...
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