A Two Bedroom House

Everything is very scary right now. It feels like life now to just wake up and see the president of the United States calling for genocide. And it feels normal that our government will ignore that.

And it feels kind of hopeless? And we don’t want that. We want to feel like something can change because if we give up…

That’s where The Brighter Future project comes in. Today, Josh Drummond has responded to the current state of the world with a hope, a goal, a vision, a brighter future.

I hope it inspires. Distraction matters, but action matters more. I believe in us despite it all.

Arohanui Emily x

The Day It Didn't Happen

by Josh Drummond

It was the sigh of relief heard around the world, except where they dropped the conventional bombs, because they blew up too many people and were too loud for any sighs to be audible. That's what bombs do. They're just murder with a different label.

Bombs. Funny that so many of us found that label so OK for so long. The dictum was: It's not alright if you use knives. Bad if you use a car. But bombs? Go for your life mate. Bombs don't kill. They strike, they target. Bomb bomb away.

But somehow at last the rest of the world, the majority of us, we were like, nope! We're done with this! Only tens of thousands dead. Well, what if it had been billions and the world all wrecked? What then? And it could have been, you know. We gave a mad king the power to end the whole world. Is there any wonder he was going to use it?

So we did it. We just gathered in huge numbers and no-one could stop us, we were too many. We went into the halls of power and the ruling palaces and the secret hidey-holes and we pulled them out by their armpits. "You're nicked, mate," people said. That became the phrase, like old-timey police bobbies with the funny pointy helmets.

We started with him, of course. He was an old, gibbering man. He shit himself, either from fear or because he couldn't control his bowels, it's hard to know which. We said, "We gave all our power to that?"

In hindsight? Wow!

We gave him, and the others, exactly what he deserved.

The New Rules

Then we gathered and said well, what now?

The first new rule was: no more things that could kill everyone.

So we had to get rid of those things. If anyone had them, no one was safe. MAD only works when no-one is mad. We almost found out the hard way! Let's not have that happen again!

The scientists said: we do have all these rockets.

So we shot those weapons into space. We sent them on a one-way trip to the sun.

God, that blast-off was beautiful. The stark rocket trails arcing up into the endless bright blue sky above the clouds where it never rains. Gone forever. Worth the carbon emissions, everyone agreed.

When they hit the sun all the telescopes and spectrometers and the other instruments were pointed at it. The scientists said it was enough to make a significant blip. But in Science-speak "significant" just means "technically noticeable", by the most delicate instruments. No-one with a telescope even saw them hit.

Whew! Done! That was easy. Sensible, really. Should have done it already. A long time ago.

The next new rule was: You first.

Guy wants to start a war? Go for it buddy. Go duel the other guy who wants to start a war. You get a knife, each. Go to the frontlines of the massed troops and walk into the bullet storm. Ride the first bomb all the way down. You first!

And then we'd stopped all the wars! So weird! We just didn't do war anymore! How good was that?

Then we said to the economists, hey, you know how you keep recommending that we make about five percent of people poor and miserable so rich people can keep being rich? That seems a bit suss! You first, buckos. Every economist who parrots some creep doctrine about needing to have some people poor and miserable so other people get to be rich and comfortable gets to be poor and miserable first. You're the noble sacrifice, buddy! Be proud!

And just like that we'd fixed economics. How good!

We made lots of other rules too, mainly around the rule of law: the laws had to rule and everyone had to be subject to them. No more kings! You could have a guy floating around with a crown, sure, but he didn't get to decide anything.

Then we said, hey, letting around a thousand or so people keep and control 90 percent of the world's resources seems like a bad idea. They're just kings. (And one or two queens.) Let's not have that!

So we took our stuff - it was always ours - back from them and put it to good use. No more super-yachts! No more secret compounds! No more AI data-centres! Turns out that amassing that much wealth and putting it to those kind of uses is only ever done by total flippin' nutsos. Who knew? When we took it back we had enough to feed everyone and give everyone homes so we did that instead.

And we gave those psychos exactly what they deserved.

A Two-Bedroom House

We grabbed them under their arms and hauled them off. They'd tried to cover the earth in data-centres. They'd tried to cook us with carbon. They'd almost murdered everyone. They had murdered thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. They'd have done more if they could. The most absent in virtue, the most lacking in conscience, the least good people, we'd let them rule us.

What? So weird! Why?

They deserved death. By all the old rules and by all our most deeply held feelings, oh did they deserve death. Ten thousand, a million times over, death for all the death they'd caused. They should all have been killed, it was agreed.

We didn't give them what they deserved.

We gave them what everyone deserves.

We gave them each a two bedroom house.

The houses were well-appointed and clean. They could set them up any way they wished. They could do renovations and hang pictures and have a cat or a puppy if they felt like it. They got a stipend to spend on groceries and knick-knacks. If they were old and infirm - many were - they got healthcare and home help, available 24/7. There was a bathroom and an ensuite and a couple of comfortable beds and a garden with green things growing, already planted when they moved in. We tended to put them in out-of-the-way places: they had some pretty good views if they went out on their porches.

Their kids were allowed to visit but for some reason almost none of them ever did.

What they weren't allowed? Power. Ha, of course we let them have electricity, plenty of that to go round, but actual power? None for you! You had your chance, you blew it. Boy did you ever blow it. Nope, we took our stuff back and we're using it to clean up the world and decarbonise everything and give everyone jobs and make sure all are fed and all have beds. There's more than enough, there always was, it's just that we let you have it for some reason. No more for you! We've wised up! Took a while but we got there in the end. All it took was almost killing the world.

They didn't get an internet connection either. They had TV, sure. They could shout at that! But we took away their ability to post and, look, not everything was fixed straight away, a lot still needed doing, but honestly? When we finally got those fuckers to shut the fuck up a lot just kind of… fixed itself!

Everyone agreed: we should have done this ages ago.

It was so good, you guys. It was so good! And we could always have done it.

We could do it now.