So despite all the doomsday predictions from the prophets of overpopulation and environmental disaster, we made it to the year 2100. Everyone was right to some extent – the environmental fundamentalists got some things right, as we did lose a lot of species, although they are now being slowly replaced from DNA recreation projects as their habitats are restored. The eternal optimists were partly right, as human ingenuity and technology did come to the rescue to a large extent.
The sea levels did rise as predicted due to global warming. Low-lying islands and nations ejected their environmental refugees to Western nations, who were threatened with third world nuclear weapons for their lack of compassion. Weather patterns changed and as predicted, affected the equatorial developing nations most as diseases spread and agricultural output dropped. Again, they threatened to nuke the richer nations unless they reversed their fucking around with the thin envelope of air around this round rock.
Chill out or we'll kill you
It wasn’t just the threats either. A revival of the 1960s flower power occurred in the 2030s and jaded, cynical, self-interested, consumerist youth of the ‘yeah, like whatever, dude’ generation were replaced by an idealist globally-minded green power generation proclaiming ‘stop fucking with our planet’. A homegrown kind of militant Buddhism sprang up, with the Buddhas half-jokingly proclaiming ‘chill out, be one with the Earth, or we’ll kill you’.
It was amazing to see what could happen when people decide to do something about it. I guess if you keep shitting in your own backyard, you’ll do something about it as you get close to drowning in a pool of your own stinking body waste. Wind farms sprang up everywhere. All roof panels were replaced with photovoltaics to produce electricity from the sun. Coal-burning power stations and internal combustion engines were outlawed and electric vehicles became the cool thing. Iron seeding of the oceans not only stored carbon but restored depleted fish stocks. A massive sheet of alfoil was erected in space at the L1 point between the sun and Earth to regulate the sunlight precisely.
Constant change is here to stay
As everyone knows, the most amazing event since the Industrial Revolution took place in 2068, when fusion power finally got to a workable stage. Suddenly, all nations had access to the power potential of the sun, just using a glass of water. This clean, abundant cheap energy source saw the final decline of poverty, wars over oil, starvation and a host of other human ills. The enforced global cooperation to fight global warming saw a beefed-up United Nations that could actually enforce the peace, and most insurrections and wars didn’t seem worth fighting when you quickly had the armies of at least 26 nations gathering at your borders.
A common slogan is ‘constant change is here to stay’ and yet in some ways, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. Parents are still horrified by teenagers manipulating their appearances for shock value or to follow the latest fashions seen on 3D vid – genetic modification of skin colour or growing an extra breast is common, but easily reversed.
Old school and new school drugs
Drugs are rife throughout society and many nations are happy with this state of affairs, although not all. The Nations of the Islamic Federation quickly became very moderate in their beliefs once fusion power saw the end of poverty and fundamentalists simply couldn’t find any converts. A grudging acceptance of drug use is growing although many nations still outlaw Radiance, Healium and of course, the old school drugs – heroin, speed and cannabis. A policy of harm reduction is in place so the flood of drugs into their lands is tolerated, if not approved of yet.
In the so-called Western nations, it is a free-for-all. As legal restrictions were lifted, laboratories began replacing harmful drugs like alcohol and nicotine with safer alternatives. Radiance is a synthetic opioid that you simply can’t overdose on. It engages feedback systems in the central nervous system and simply blocks opioid receptors when the heart rate slows too much. Dosage is extremely easy to control so it is quite a common drug for after dinner drinks for mellow conversation. Being legal, it is extremely cheap. A large recreational dose to keep you high for the day is only $2400, the price of a loaf of bread.
Say goodbye to physical dependence on drugs
Careful engineering eventually saw that no physical dependency could develop, and heavy use would eventually lead to very muted effects from the drug. Hard core users often tend to just move on to another drug then, like Healium.
Healium is the most common stimulant and is chemically similar to speed.
Healium has almost replaced coffee now as the workplace stimulant. In low
doses, it enhances mood, concentration and attention. In higher doses, it
is similar to speed but has amplified the warmth of Ecstasy. The Buddhas
use it for the popular love-in sessions of group sex or all night dance
parties. Derivatives of Healium, such as Glow, are less manic and used for
meditation and those romantic moments.
Psychogical dependency has been a tough nut to crack.
As with any drug, a small percentage of hard core users simply stay bombed out of their minds as much as possible. As the controlling chemical cascades set in, they simply rotate to the next drug until the chemical receptors in their brain begin to shut down on that one too. Health-wise, these users don’t suffer physically unless they forget to eat, but these level of dependence leads to a variety of emotional problems.
Growing a third penis
While growing a third eyeball or a larger penis is simple gene therapy, the incredible complexity of the human brain is one the last barriers to gene therapy. There are some experimental therapies for so-called ‘dependency-inclined personalities’ but they are not always effective. And of course, it comes down to choice. Some users simply prefer to get bombed all day and this is their chosen lifestyle. The beauty is that they aren’t judged or imprisoned for this choice in 2100, just seen as a bit odd when life has so much else to offer.
Funnily enough, the old school persists. Although illegal in most countries, heroin, cocaine and speed are still made or grown for the black market, although they cost much more than their legal offspring. The purists claim that you can’t really ‘connect’ with the new drugs because they have been overengineered in the lab.
Policing of production and distribution of the old school drugs is half-hearted at best. These old timers are much better educated about their drugs and overdoses are rare. In keeping with the old traditions, they often inject with the syringes that were a medical tool used until the 2020s. In keeping with harm reduction policies, these syringes are still made available for their use. Closed veins are easily treated nowadays with gene therapy.
Blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis C and HIV are almost non-existent except within this community. When they do spring up, a one-off treatment sees the problem gone with days.
Disease is only a state of mind
So a new century gets underway. We now live to around 120 years of age. Most countries have adopted the three day working week. The Mars colonies are thriving with fusion power-assisted space flights and industrial expansion, and terraforming of Venus is being researched. Disease is more a state of mind than a physical reality. Bob Hawke’s prediction was only out by about a century, but there is pretty much no child living in poverty nowadays.
But it isn’t all roses. Ten billion people crammed on a tiny planet means there isn’t much room to swing a cat, unless it is a very small one and it doesn’t mind a few knocks to the head. We are getting more forests back slowly, but it is hard to convince people to live underground, and the Martian colonies won’t be ready for mass immigration for decades.
Turn on and drop in
For those who need religion, the main choices are joining the Buddhas or the Islamists. Otherwise, everyone still faces that existential angst that can hit you late at night, when you realise you have pretty much everything you want, yet still feel strangely empty inside, till you swamp the feeling with Radiance, Healium or whatever you have in the bathroom cupboard.
Still it’s the life you make it. At least we’ve scrapped old ideas such as racism, poverty, terrorism/freedom fighting, aggression, non-renewable energy, military persuasion to convert to the one true religion, and forbidding biochemical alteration of our mood states. So as the young Buddhas would say, turn on, tune in and drop in.
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