The Future Is Coming

The city of the future, on Planet X, is filled with towering high-rises, like gigantic phalluses, thrusting out of the ground, ramming into an orange, smog filled sky.

In one yellow taxi, coasting a few metres above ground, three passengers are engaged in an act that defies description. The driver, a West Indian with a strong accent, nonchalantly whistles as he raises the partition between the driver and the rear seats. He's used to this.

A few meters away, a lone alien stares forlornly at the setting sun. She is unused to nighttime, coming from a rare planet, that boasts of five suns, and thus never experiences night. The sight of stars are a strange, bewildering experience for this poor alien, and the idea of darkness awakens dormant, primal fears. She shuts the window, pulls the curtains across to seal out every glimpse of the darkening sky, and turns on all the lights at full intensity. She gets into bed, and falls asleep.

In the next room, a blue-skinned, orange haired songstress unscrews a bottle of whisky. She sighs, and views the communicator in her room, contemplatively. She taps her fingers, lightly, on the bottle, and then summoning her courage, places a call. A few minutes later, tears running down her blue cheeks, she ends the call and takes a large swig of whisky. The bottle is finished, over the next hour, and the songstress falls asleep, lying on the carpeted floor, trapped in the throes of a nightmare.

In her dream, a young orange-haired boy falls down a never-ending hole.

In a hole in the ground, a rat burrows through a strange, alien soil. The rat bears little resemblance to his relatives back on earth; he has been bred specifically for this colonized planet, by a black-market trader, who deals in exotic, live goods. This rat, is one of many, bred for a new, off-planet cult, who sacrifice rats to their patron deity - a God with the body of a woman, and the head of saber-toothed cat, with a taste for genetically-modified rodents. This cult has grown in size and influence, ever since a rogue scientist advanced a hypothesis that the planet was originally inhabited by a race of intelligent feline-like creatures.

In party in a mansion in the Upper Reaches of the city, the rogue scientist is toasted by the elite of this city. A woman, with a strange tattoo of a snake that shifts and swirls across her skin, whispers seductively in the ears of the rogue scientist. He laughs, flattered by this woman's interest, and follows her into private, curtained alcove. There, he is startled when she bites him, vampire-like, on the neck, with two artfully concealed fangs, that retract into her skull. There is a powerful poison in her fangs, and the scientist falls, twitching, to the floor. Within seconds, he is dead.

The woman with the snake-tattoo, briskly exits the mansion, her job done. Within seconds, the rival cult that she belongs to, posts a notice on the planet-wide intranet, claiming responsibility for the scientist's death. This cult maintains the scientist is a blasphemous heretic, for they believe that a race of snake-like creatures, who live in the core of the planet, will rise, one-day, to the surface, when they will devour all heathens and unbelievers. Only the followers of the snake-cult will survive this apocalypse, and will live to see the dawn of a golden age, under the governance of these intelligent, alien snakes.

When the black-market trader sees the news on the intranet, he places a call to Earth, to inform his colleagues to cancel the last order for rats, and instead to work on developing a new breed of snakes, that can survive on Planet X.

Five years later, both rats and snakes are rife on the streets of Planet X, and most citizens have undergone state-sponsered genetic modifications that make them immune to rat and snake bites. The black-market trader is now making brisk business by importing mongooses, for wealthy citizens, who favour what they term an 'eco-friendly' approach.

In an artificial garden, a mongoose ferrets through a clump of imitation roses, as his owner, concludes a business deal with a client. He summons a boy from his mansion, and hands him over. He has discovered a loophole in Planet X's laws, that allows him to trade in livestock, which is not human. He has exploited this by breeding slaves who are not technically human. The boy, who has been summoned, has gills grafted onto his neck, that allow him to breathe underwater. His eyes flash, in anger, as is handed over, perfunctorily.

Three years later, the boy has reached manhood, and he swims in a distant lake, towards freedom, to a rebel slave colony. He is accompanied by a snake, one of the descendants of the snakes the black market trader brought to Planet X. In a short while, due to the radiation underneath the surface, the snakes have evolved a a rudimentary intelligence. This snake is a prophet, and he preaches, that a Day of the Snakes will come, when the snakes will rise up, with the slaves, and dispossess the humans of Planet X, a prophecy that ironically, bears much resemblance with the beliefs of the long-dead snake-cult.

And elsewhere, on Planet X, a baby is born, a mutant, with a third eye.

This is the future.