Choose Your Own Adventure

(The following is my first installment of a short story emulating Kurt Vonnegut's style. You get to decide the end. I dedicate this to you, Gary. No chihuahuas in this story, unfortunately. However, I'm working on a chihuahua based piece as we speak!)


If you want to know, then I guess the whole thing started back around 2097 or 98. The U.S. was having a heck of a time of it, what with the sudden change in climate when the moon fell out of orbit. Our lack of rain for the previous half-century used up most of our rivers, and the only sad, little crops to be had struggled along the Mississippi Stream. And even that dried up to its muddy bottom every five years or so, leaving the villages scrounging for whatever food could be found. During those rainless times, some village wells even went dry, which was hard on the very young and the very old.

On the other hand, Africa’s fertile soil had them living high and mighty. You’d think Africa, with all of their prosperity, would have passed some of their leftovers on to us. But they didn’t. Oh, sure, some missionaries came every once in a while with canned food and bottled water in exchange for lectures about the Muslewish Budha’i religion, but there was no consistent help. And if you didn't act interested in their theological discussions, they'd practically rip the bottle of water right out of your mouth. So, we pretty much fended for ourselves while Africa's politicians yawned and gave little sound bites every so often for or against Aid to America, depending which way the wind blew that particular day. In fact, the only African people who consistently discussed our plight were their high school students-- who practiced debate skills by choosing a side for or against American aid and arguing it. I’ve heard that some of those kids used to be real supportive and even wore t-shirts reading “Save the States,” which was nice. Even so, we were still hungry and thirsty all the time, and immigration laws being what they were, we couldn’t up and move. That’s if anyone even had money to travel, which no one did after the Crash of 2059.

Anyway, things were looking pretty bleak. Until Scooter Sniggerwig came up with the E.A.T. 3000.

Sniggerwig was one of those naturally curious people who was always trying new ideas. If it had been a hundred years ago, he probably would have been an ace in school, but as it was there were hardly any schools any more because every hand was needed to drag water from the village wells to try to get something to grow. After all that effort, most of us just sat around in the sweltering heat nursing our hunger and thirst. But Sniggerwig could never sit still, even in the oppressive heat. So, he tinkered with things.

See, Sniggerwig’s village was near one of those old abandoned factories that made cell phones and computers before someone in Africa came up with the Communochip Brain Implant in ‘58, making all those external devices obsolete. The factory had fallen apart and lay there like a gleaming white skeleton under the cruel sun. Sniggerwig putzed around with the old gadgets he found laying around and came up with a slew of inventions, most of which didn’t do much good, to tell you the truth.

Take the Personal Solar Fan, for example. This fan attached to the top of a hat, like a halo. When you were out in the sun, the solar panel on the hat powered up the halo fan, which was supposed to cool you down. The problem was that it only worked in direct sun, and most people found it was easier to just sit in the shade. It was a nice thought, though. And everybody told Sniggerwig he’d given a fine effort, but it would be even nicer if he could invent something that could make water. And so he did.

Lucky for us all, his putzing lead to a device that could break down the chemical properties of ordinary things like dirt and ocean water and reformulate it into any kind of food or drink. All you had to do was describe what you wanted on the little key pad and –bam--it appeared. The very first thing I had was a good old fashioned soda and Chicago hot dog with a salty pickle. I hadn’t had one of those since I was a kid. My stomach cramped up after being hungry for so long, but I got used to eating regularly pretty quick. It wasn’t long before I was scarfing down pierogi and Italian sausage and fruit salad and roast turkey with stuffing. Sniggerwig became an instant hero, I can tell you that.

Within ten years, America was like one of those old pictures of Palm Springs from the 1990’s. There were little oases of flowers and palm trees everywhere. America was back on the map, economically speaking, because we were all busy manufacturing and selling E.A.T. 3000’s to the world. Soon, no one needed African food any more. Even the Africans found it easier to just type in what they wanted and have it pop out fully cooked than to plant, harvest, package, distribute, and cook their own food. Of course, some of the African farm owners didn’t take well to the sudden shift in economy. I heard a couple of those wealthy farmers drove their super fancy hover compressors right into the middle of their crops and let the motor run until the nuclear pack in the trunk overheated and vaporized them. Sad.

Of course, you know what happened next. When you can have everything you want at a moment’s notice, you literally have every-thing-you-want. People started getting lazy and bloated and no one looked good in a swim suit any more, not even the models. The fashion industry was completely beside itself. Not to mention the diabetes and other health related issues. So, everyone appealed to Sniggerwig to invent something to get us out of this fix. And he did. Again.

The E.A.T. 3001 combined the nutritional value and calories of vegetables with any taste you wanted. You could type in ham and eggs with hollandaise sauce, and it would taste just like ham and eggs with hollandaise sauce, but the whole thing had the nutritional value and calories of a head of broccoli. Triple chocolate fudge cake was the equivalent of brussel spouts, which was good because no one ever ate brussel sprouts anyway, and they have lots of important vitamins.

The funny thing was that no one lost weight--even when we ate our ham-and-egg-broccoli and our triple-chocolate-fudge-cake-sprouts. It didn’t make sense. The healthier the food became, the bigger people became….

This is where YOU take over! How should this end?