Normal

[The Wizard Joseph]

If we're lucky, all that will happen next is catastrophic famines that will severely curtail our determined efforts to strip the planet like locusts in a green Utah cornfield. If we're really lucky, we'll remember why it happened, and restructure our entire remaining civilization to avoid it ever happening again.

Primates are not known for having an institutional memory with respect to the tragedy of the commons.

My guess is everything will freeze.  That's the optimistic outlook, because the human species has a track record of surviving ice ages.

We're a pretty young species, and the "civilization" stage of our development has happened on a very short timeline.

Sure.  But our species has made it through ice ages, all the same.  What we can't survive is 160F temperatures and acid oceans.

Mostly because the human-friendly microbes can't. Laundry lore.

If that became Earth's new normal we could only survive in constructed environments if at all.

As a maintenance guy, that means "we can't".

As a guy who's watched the maintenance guys I agree. Also why Mars colony is a terrible idea. Just really, really bad.

It's a deathtrap.  On top of that, they'd arrive as tumors in suits.

But it's never going to happen.  After years of fundraising, they have 10% of what they need to build their initial unmanned probe, let alone launch it.

I didn't even know that they were fundraising.

Think I get the tumors in suits bit. Guessing we haven't figured out how to radio shield well enough to prevent the holy hell of solar energies from jamming your biosystems to shit.

Then there's the media sphere side, assuming we COULD figure a means of transport. You're a New Frontiering Martian Colonist. Lauded for bravery and erudition back on The Homeworld and all that while you struggle like hell for every scrap of resources you can get and there's been no reply from Central for days about how George over there ain't doing so good, those weird marks are back and he's throwing up all over the place, it's a contained environment goddamnit!!

Most of Earth might never hear the truth about what happened during the "enviro breach" incident in Outbunker12. No, they must remain heroes and feed the media-political machine that had discovered something more efficient at chewing through resources and keeping people distracted than war. The promise  of a new world.


Ok... that kinda ran away on me.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I am a hideous & vile old man.  I am in fact so old that the Earth's population doubled in my lifetime.  Get that around your noodle...An extra 3.7 billion people in less than half a century.  I remember the world as not being so crowded, and I remember correctly.  When I was a boy there were fish in the ocean and turnip trees on the land, as far as the eye could see.

But having seven and a half billion people is the New Normal.

Humans are really good at compartmentalizing stuff.  Nigel could probably give you biological reasons for this, using words that sound made up but sadly aren't, but let's break it down in layman's terms.  When stress gets too awful, when the boogieman is coming out from under the bed with your tax records in his teeth, when your nation is eating itself and howling through mouthfuls of its own skin that it is still strong...The angel of apathy comes along and whacks you upside the head.  All these things are now Normal.  They are part of the routine, and are less stressful.  Or at least you can ignore the stress, at least until it's time to buy an AR15 and join the folks jabbering about Jade Helm.

Manufactured Normalcy.  It's not really a new concept.  How many times have you heard some horrible new band that makes you want to smash your car into a wall?  Everyone hates those guys.  But the radio plays them and plays them, MTV gets some brain-damaged kids to scream on TRL, and suddenly the horrible band is just another part of the scene.  This is how Fallout Boy happens.  Neuroscience is a strange and frightening thing, and not for the likes of you and I.  Unless you're the kind of person that gets off on slicing up thousands of snake brains.

Manufactured Normalcy is also how people like Rick Santorum and Donald Trump can run for president and have 47% of the country keep a straight face.  After all, once you've voted for Palin, you're pretty much at rock bottom, may as well go for broke.  It is how the TSA can now grab your junk for no reason and you just gotta stand there and smile.  It's how police can just start murdering people for any reason or no reason at all, and the outraged masses will...Well, they'll LIKE and they'll SHARE and they'll TWEET, but as mad as they get, it's now NORMAL, so that's all they're gonna do.  Get mad.  Not the clean, white-hot anger of the superior mutant, but the sickening, ulcer-inducing anger of a person who HAS gotten mad as hell, but IS gonna take it some more.  Not because they're cowards, but because that's the way it is. 

This is The Machine™.  It turns out there never were clattering treads and grindy choppy horrible spiky bits.  Well, actually there were.  But that's to be expected.

Or Kill Me.

Permission for reuse?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am a hideous & vile old man.  I am in fact so old that the Earth's population doubled in my lifetime.  Get that around your noodle...An extra 3.7 billion people in less than half a century.  I remember the world as not being so crowded, and I remember correctly.  When I was a boy there were fish in the ocean and turnip trees on the land, as far as the eye could see.

But having seven and a half billion people is the New Normal.

Humans are really good at compartmentalizing stuff.  Nigel could probably give you biological reasons for this, using words that sound made up but sadly aren't, but let's break it down in layman's terms.  When stress gets too awful, when the boogieman is coming out from under the bed with your tax records in his teeth, when your nation is eating itself and howling through mouthfuls of its own skin that it is still strong...The angel of apathy comes along and whacks you upside the head.  All these things are now Normal.  They are part of the routine, and are less stressful.  Or at least you can ignore the stress, at least until it's time to buy an AR15 and join the folks jabbering about Jade Helm.

Manufactured Normalcy.  It's not really a new concept.  How many times have you heard some horrible new band that makes you want to smash your car into a wall?  Everyone hates those guys.  But the radio plays them and plays them, MTV gets some brain-damaged kids to scream on TRL, and suddenly the horrible band is just another part of the scene.  This is how Fallout Boy happens.  Neuroscience is a strange and frightening thing, and not for the likes of you and I.  Unless you're the kind of person that gets off on slicing up thousands of snake brains.

Manufactured Normalcy is also how people like Rick Santorum and Donald Trump can run for president and have 47% of the country keep a straight face.  After all, once you've voted for Palin, you're pretty much at rock bottom, may as well go for broke.  It is how the TSA can now grab your junk for no reason and you just gotta stand there and smile.  It's how police can just start murdering people for any reason or no reason at all, and the outraged masses will...Well, they'll LIKE and they'll SHARE and they'll TWEET, but as mad as they get, it's now NORMAL, so that's all they're gonna do.  Get mad.  Not the clean, white-hot anger of the superior mutant, but the sickening, ulcer-inducing anger of a person who HAS gotten mad as hell, but IS gonna take it some more.  Not because they're cowards, but because that's the way it is. 

This is The Machine™.  It turns out there never were clattering treads and grindy choppy horrible spiky bits.  Well, actually there were.  But that's to be expected.

Or Kill Me.

Permission for reuse?

Sure.

Same rules as always.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Doktor Hamish Howl?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Doktor Hamish Howl?

Either way.  I'm mostly going by Rev Roger these days. 

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

[The Good Reverend Roger]

NICE

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I may need to tone down the background a bit, even with the text being really bold it's hard to read in a couple spots. I think I managed to get all the punctuation dealt with properly, damn font doesn't have any and I had to sub in Impact for everything...

[The Wizard Joseph]

I may need to tone down the background a bit, even with the text being really bold it's hard to read in a couple spots. I think I managed to get all the punctuation dealt with properly, damn font doesn't have any and I had to sub in Impact for everything...

Yeah I dig the gears and shadows, but the visual effect is stressful to read through. Perhaps just the shadowy gears? The font seems obscured specifically by the sharp contrast lines of the "foreground" gears.