"We're saved! We're saved!"

"What? What's that you're saying?"

"Oh, we're saved at last! I knew it would happen. I just knew it!"

"Saved how?

"Haven't you heard? We can fly!"

"Fly?? No way!"

"Way! It's a new technology!"

"I always said technology would bail us out!"

"Right, but no one would listen. Some people just have no faith! And no more stupid talk about the environment!"

"All those people thought the world was going to end. Bet they feel silly now!"

"I can't wait to start flying!"

"Me neither!"

"So what do we have to do to get started?"

"Just go over to the government flying station and give them all the money you got. It's easy to find, it's sponsored by Exxon with a giant electric sign. Do that and you're ready to go!"


The lines were long and the crowd buzzing with happy excitement. It was as if the weight of the world had been lifted from their shoulders.

"Oh, thank God they figured this out. I never wanted to say anything but all the pollution we were causing was going to kill us for sure!"

"Yes, I feel like I can talk about it too now. We must have been insane! What were we thinking?"

"But how you know this even gonna work?"

"The President said so! He said it's our patriotic duty to start flying everywhere we go!"

"The President! Oh, my! Well, I don't know about you but I'm ready to serve my country and jump right off that cliff!"

"Me too! I'll show you what a good person I am!"

But on a hill beyond the cliff stood a prophet without profit. He warned of the doom brought by lies and the conceit of man. The crowd was irritated by his words.

"Damn liberal lies! They always want to ruin everything, that's what it is."

"You know, I always try to keep an open mind but I'm sick and tired of all this talk about so-called responsibility. Finally, something good has happened and these losers just can't accept it!"

"It's because he hates the President! That's why he's saying it! I hate political people!"

When news of the prophet's words hit the President's ears, he was livid. "He's upsetting the people! It's my job to make the people happy and we cannot have this one man destroy our country. He must be stopped! Call Terrorist Team Six to take him out. I'm one bad ass ninja!"


In due course, the men with guns accomplished their mission, gloating over their bullets' deed.

"Haha! There you go!" spat one terrorist. "Now he's a good American!"

The crowd rejoiced at the news of the prophet's death. "Truth, justice and liberty win in the end! Our way of life shall endure!"

One by one, young and old, man, woman and child lined up at the flying station to get their Super High Tech wings to "free them from the bondage of oil". Unreleased anger vented from long sealed mouths deriding the "old ways" and "old days" before love's technology finally saved their souls. Who needs a heart when one can have a chip? And one by one a smiling jokester heaved the patriots off the cliff.

But flapping though they may be, they seemed just to keep falling towards their doom in spite of all the governmental promise and common wisdom to the contrary.

"We must not be doing something right," queried one falling body to another.

"Don't worry, if this many people are doing it, it can't be wrong! Flap harder!"

"I don't know about you, but I trust the President and I KNOW he's a good man who wouldn't let us down. If anyone dies it's their own fault!"

But of course, they all died. Back in the Exxon corporate offices, the laughter was loud and hard. "What fools! I love it! We don't even have to kill them ourselves - they volunteer for it!"

"And thank God for that useful idiot of a President. All he cares about is if they die happy! What a glorious Pied Piper he turned out to be."

"Yup, one of our own people could have never fooled so many sheeple. Now we can keep everything for ourselves. It's profit over prophets, baby!"


CODA: In the end, there was no honor among thieves as the survivors consumed their lives in a stubborn refusal to change. Ten thousand years later a space archeologist discovered the dead planet and wondered why a people who had everything could die off without a trace.

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