The History of the Future: World Heritage Sites

On February 29, 2216, the Committee to Designate World Heritage Sites declared that the Great Calcutta Dump; a section of Interstate 5 from Edmonds, Washington, to the Canadian Border; and the site of the 2022 nuclear reactor meltdown in Callaway County, Missouri, were all World Heritage Sites.  These designations meant that these sites had to be maintained as closely as possible to their original state, including making sure that Callaway County would remain radioactive for all perpetuity, not like it wasn’t going to anyway, that the Calcutta Dump could never be cleaned up, and that I-5 would stay... well, ugly... forever.  These were also the last three places on the entire planet that weren’t already World Heritage Sites, which technically meant that there was no place left on the planet, including the bottom of the Marianas Trench, that wasn’t a World Heritage Site.  And that technically meant that there were now all of these wonderful (or not) places that people could go, but nowhere they were really supposed to stay.

On March 1, 2216, the Committee to Designate World Heritage Sites were all taken out back and shot. 

 The History of the Future: The Brooklyn Project

Documents that were finally declassified in 2214, revealed that in 1996, the United States’ Government began working on a doomsday device.  Cloaked in secrecy, the operation was known simply as The Brooklyn Project.  Led by Dr. Ivan Tupidsay, the goal was to create a device that would instantly kill all of America’s enemies with the touch of a button.  As well, there would be no nasty fallout, no lingering residual effects from nasty chemicals or biological agents, and the infrastructure would be unharmed.  All of America’s enemies would be instantly vapourized by the push of a button.  A daunting task, to say the least, but one the United States was convinced it must undertake.  After all, if they could imagine such a thing as being possible, then so could their enemies.  And if their enemies could imagine it, then, out of sheer prudence, the United States had no choice but to assume that their enemies were already working on such a thing.  It was further understood that once such a device were created, it had to be used immediately.  After all, if the United States could figure it out, then it is safe to assume that their enemies couldn’t be too far behind, and that once their enemies had it, then they wouldn’t hesitate to use it, either.

It was in the summer of 2009 that Dr. Ivan Tupidsay made what he called his “great breakthrough.”  Based on the knowledge that everybody has a distinct electrical current, Dr. Tupidsay speculated that it would be possible to scan everybody on the planet and record their specific electromagnetic frequency.  Once that was known, then by bouncing an electrical pulse of some sort off of the atmosphere, it would be possible to “shut off” everybody who was programmed into the weapon within one to the negative twelfth of a second of each other, which was considered to be within an acceptable tolerance.

In the summer of 2011, the United States, under the guise of weather satellites, put into orbit several scanners that were capable of recording the electro-magnetic signatures of everybody on the planet.  The initial scan was complete by the Spring of 2013, after which it was relatively simple to continuously monitor the world’s population and up-date the files that were kept in a super-computer deep inside the Cascade Mountains at a still undisclosed site, believed to be somewhere near Mitchell, Oregon.

It was on October 14, 2014, that the system went completely online, with the computer containing all of the world’s population’s electrical signatures linked to a series of photon-dispersement cannons, most of which were mounted on nuclear submarines positioned around the world.  How these particular “cannons” actually worked is still classified.  Once the system came on line, Dr. Tupidsay, acting on Presidential Order 666, unceremoniously pushed the button and was instantly vapourized.  No other deaths were recorded.  According to government records, the “experiment” was tried at least two more times, with the exact same results.  Following the third attempt, the weapon was deemed a colossal failure, and no other attempt was ever made to create such a device.

The History of the Future:  The End of the “Wave”

The “Wave,” which became popular in the last of the 20^th Century, was a form of cheering at major sporting events that apparently had nothing to do with the action on the field.  In the Wave, fans would leap to their feet, briefly cheer, and then quickly sit back down, causing a ripple effect that traveled around the stadium.

Though banning the Wave had been discussed throughout the early 21^st Century, mostly because it was just annoying, the debate was brought to the forefront following the July 13^th, 2018, ballgame between the Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Royals at Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City, where a Wave that started in the 6^th inning continued uninterrupted well beyond the end of the game.  Said one fan, “How do you stop a thing like that?  When it comes at ya, ya gotta stand.  Did anybody catch the final score?”

It was an incident at Seattle’s Safeco Field in April of the following season, though, that caused the Wave to be banned at all sporting events throughout the country.  Instead of going either left or right, a Wave that was started in the centerfield bleachers went both directions, each side building up momentum before colliding behind home plate.  Seven fans were killed, and over 400 people were injured, some seriously, with well over 150 people requiring hospitalization.  Even more tragic, Seattle was forced to forfeit the game.