VOODOO 12: FRAGMENTS FROM THE FAR EDGE OF HISTORY
2250 CE
South America is a desert. Africa is a Dead Zone. Europe, the former Soviet Union and North America are again heavily forested. Humanity is largely extinct — less than 1 billion people populate the globe. The last high-tech urban centers can be found in the coastal United States, Japan and Great Britain. In the wake of the Global Communication Crash of 2180, the Central United States, the Middle East, India, East Asia and Central America have slipped into quiet, barbaric obscurity...
1.
Mutant, pacifist desert-chimpanzees take over the abandoned city of Curacas, in what was once known as Venezuela. They revive some of the city's ancient utilities and industries, and utilize piped water, telephones and electricity. Though they use automobiles to a limited extent, horses are their preferred method of transport. The chimps are carnivorous in nature, possessing an average IQ of 85. Numbering 5,000, they function as a tribe, ruled by a 120-year-old Elder. They work tirelessly to transform the dead city — which they call “Mo Do Daheen” or “The Place Without Sand” — into a functioning oasis in the Great South American Desert. Warfare is unknown in their society.
2.
Universal Motors is the only auto manufacturer in the world. It has two bases – one in Tokyo, the other in Los Angeles. Its vehicles, which utilize water engines and interchangeable ceramic parts, are built for maximum durability and performance. Each new vehicle is guaranteed to drive off the factory line for 300,000 miles without engine malfunction and designed to last indefinitely.
3.
An army of violent, omnivorous dogs grows out of a mud bog in the wastes of Central Africa. Several-million strong, the army-dogs travel in a column 20 miles wide and over 100 miles long. Roaming slowly north, they eat everything in their path – humans, tires, bushes, furniture, entire stick-villages, etc. They are visible from space, by weather satellites, and their movement creates a dust cloud that circles the Earth for three years, reducing sunlight and causing spectacular sunsets as far away as Yakutsk. The army-dogs sack six occupied cities, eating an estimated 1 million human beings. After three years of pillaging, they reach the Southern Sahara Desert, where they die out – from starvation, cannibalism and plague – as rapidly as they first appeared.
4.
A new, nomadic plains culture appears in the irradiated Central United States. Small tribes, separated along ethnic lines — African-American, Caucasian, Hispanic, etc. — wander the flats in search of watering holes and wild cattle. factional, intertribal fighting prevents any large, cohesive society from forming. Some tribes scavenge through the abandoned cities of the plains, in search of weapons, scrap metal and fuel. Most, however, embrace a more primitive, premodern lifestyle.
5.
The whales, once almost extinct, repopulate the oceans of the world. Having been genetically enhanced by radical environmentalists in the late 21st century, they are significantly more intelligent than they were even a few decades before. After systematically wolf-packing and sinking thousands of fishing boats worldwide, the whales are left unmolested by humankind. This is the crowning, posthumous achievement of the now-defunct environmentalist groups of yesteryear. The whales are – and remain – the Lords of the Ocean.
6.
An unidentified rusty nuclear submarine surfaces off the coast of Los Angeles. It demands – in outdated English, via radio – fuel and provisions, threatening nuclear annihilation if its demands are not met. When Los Angeles authorities stall in fulfilling the demands, the sub fires a conventional missile at the downtown L.A. megaplex. The resulting explosion levels two square blocks and kills over 1,000 people. The submarine's demands are immediately met. The replenished atomic U-boat then submerges, never to be heard from again.
7.
A phantom army of robotic, solar-powered laser-tanks wanders the ruins of Europe, searching for new enemy targets to destroy. Its concepts of both "new" and"enemy" grotesquely distorted, the army cauterizes the already-pulverized ruins of Paris, Rome, Bonn and a dozen other cities. Eventually, the ghost-army disappears into Russia, where the machines freeze solid, high in the permafrost of the Ural Mountains.
8.
Pirates ply the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, setting up bases on long-abandoned offshore oil rigs and attacking post-modern coastal fishing settlements. The Nation of Florida launches a large-scale military attack on the pirate outposts, annihilating them and re-establishing Gulf marine trade routes. Florida then forges diplomatic bonds with slave traders along the Mexican coast, opening up new lines of commerce to fuel its slave-based, industrial economy.
9.
The Sussex Sky Colony, a 22-mile-high, permanent settlement of gas-filled balloonships, reaches maturity. Pronouncing itself "completely self-sufficient at long last" the 1,000-person balloon cluster releases its ground-tethers and soars to an unprecedented altitude of 66 miles. Free from all earthly ties save the faintest tug of gravity, the colony drifts away from Great Britain, to roam the highest realms of the stratosphere in peaceful obscurity.
10.
Marauding bandit-packs infest the Wild Lands of former Mexico. A shrewd mulatto outlaw named General Malabo unites a number of these gangs into one huge horde. The 10,000-man-strong army sacks Mexico City and burns it to the ground. It then heads north towards the United States, fortifying itself along the way. By the time it reaches the border of California, it numbers 25,000 horse-mounted men. The bandit army sacks Calexico and heads into Arizona, where it is vaporized by a single hypervelocity railgun-projectile at the Second Battle of Santa Fe.
11.
The carcass of a nine-ton, 32-foot-long, dinosaur-like sea creature washes ashore in San Francisco Bay. The creature has two baseball-sized brains, a set of lungs, a set of gills and a spiked underbelly. The steel shaft of a harpoon, carbon-dated to 1817, is lodged in its tail. The beast is infected with a virus of unknown origin, and is faintly radioactive. No creature like it has ever before been documented in the history of mankind. Frozen solid and stored in a deep-freeze unit in Hayward, it is studied for decades by the world’s leading scientists. Its origin remains unknown.
12.
A powerful religious prophet rises to power in Japan. Preaching and practicing a gentle blend of peace and benign technology, she unites the country’s corporate warlords into a single syndicate, encouraging philanthropy, scientific research and the construction of dozens of megalithic off-shore wind-turbine platforms. The island nation becomes self-sufficient with regards to energy production, and the laboratory creation of single-cell protein provides it with a limitless food source. Japan enters a period of prosperity known as The Great Peace, and a new religion, known as Creationism, permeates the land.
San Francisco, 1/8/95