Next up is the asteroid
and although several countries have space programmes it turns out no-one has the right equipment in terms of guided missiles, which leads to a huge verbal fallout from the international blame game.
When the rock crashes to earth the news media salivates once again. Beasts from the east, war, floods, famine, Brexit, Covid and now this… our cup runneth over!
The resulting dust clouds gather but the President tells us, “I’ve got this big stone thing covered, it’s fake news, folks, just a hail shower.”
Primed by the pandemic, we all return to lockdown in our homes hoping the sky won’t stay dark for too many months because the Premier League season’s only just got started.
Sure, there will be food shortages: tomatoes, flour, bananas, cranberries – basically anything that needs a little sunshine in order to grow. Still, we’ve learnt our lesson and already stocked up on toilet roll, so that’s all good. Just a shame that the water supply has been turned off.
Allen Ashley’s poetry has recently been published at “Oddball”, and “Bonnie’s Crew”, in “Indigomania”, and in his collection “Echoes from an Expired Earth” (Demain Publishing, 2020). Allen is President Elect of the British Fantasy Society. www.allenashley.com
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