Saturday, March 29, 2014

MeLos the Memory Loss Drug


Zombies? There aren't any zombies. It's a word that got used over and over again until... 

There was this experiment done decades ago with monkeys and cocaine. A lab monkey could press a bar in his cage and get a dose of cocaine. Eventually the monkey pressed the bar so often he forgot to have sex, forgot to eat, or drink and eventually pressed that bar until he died of an overdose. 

Decades later, science in concert with large corporate pharmaceutical financing, invented a memory erasing drug. It’s original intention was to relieve the patient's chronic stress caused by irreconcilable memories. War vets were some of the first test subjects, looking for relief from post traumatic stress. Desperate to forget the horrors of war. It seemed to work as expected. For a while. The government gag order kept a lid on details behind a sudden increase in violence and homicide on military bases and in vetren hospitals.

Then the drug began showing up on street corners, eventually ending up in suburban living-rooms of middle America. People became obsessed with forgetting. Black market demand for the drug even outstripped the demand for marijuana. Then things really started to change...

Once some manmade synthetic is released into the natural environment, there’s no control over it. Genetically modified crops first proved migratory data on this scientific short-sight. Then came mutating viruses from animal to human, another overlooked aberration. When the pharmaceutical companies started pushing gene modification injections, they frantically attempted to cover up the monstrous, unexpected genetic outcomes. Think tank committees, quickly hired by the companies, were coerced into a consensus that the Memory Loss pill was the only way to return things to normal. They called the pill MeLos and advertised it on television and over the internet. Misguided visions of profits and absolution danced in their heads.  

When people began taking MeLos the memory erasing drug, it blended with a battery of pharmaceuticals they were already codependent on. These people lapsed into semi-functional, vegetative states. Already at the time, the word zombies had been over-used and adopted by pop culture and infiltrated it’s way into the lexicons of municipal departments and social institutions. The advent of Melos usage just cemented the label Zombie into reality. Only the few people who didn't take the memory loss drug-  didn’t buy into marketing hype, were able to fully realize the drug’s hideous result.

MeLos zombies proliferated every niche of society. Service sectors, even governments became useless. Before Melos, people who took drugs -over the counter medication or illegal controlled substances- could hide their addictions for a period of time, still function at their jobs or with their families to a minimal degree. But when people started taking Melos, they couldn't hide it’s effects. They couldn’t remember how to do their jobs, care for their families, be responsible for their actions. MeLos made them forget everything- and people felt good about that. They felt so good, they didn't feel a need to interact in any functional way with their communities. They simply didn’t remember anything. 

After a month, the person's mind and body started to organically self-produce the drug. This was a big shock to the pharmaceutical companies that held patents to profit from the  drug’s manufacture. The scientists, micro-biologists, developers- no one saw the memory drug high-jacking the patients genetic codes and begin to internally manufacture the insidious chemical on it’s own. 

There's an old saying, "it's never just one thing." When people fixed on an agenda of profit to invent that magic bullet, they often overlook the other "things" that might contribute to wrecking the outcome of their greedily imagined agendas. GMO pesticides, antibiotic over-use, polluted water supplies, microwave radiation, designer gene manipulation and yes, the copious production and use of more and more pills. When you combined MeLos with this already festering chemical- cocktail, somebody should have seen it coming. Nobody's run of blind luck is THAT good. 

Zombies? There aren't any zombies. Don't you remember? 

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Time Spheres



Palm-sized spheres with deep grooves purposefully incised around the circumference and strange, spongy material insides. A warm tarnished bronze hued ball bearing errant reticulated scabs. The most unlikely of time travel devices, yet... the story is now dead. The spheres have lost their energy. The technology is light years ahead, yet millions of years old. A quick wonder about the choice of such distant antiquity to have arrived and maybe, possibly not returned from. It's frivolous speculation. A dreamer's folly. Folly that stems from belief in physically existing objects. 

There's an object, and an unknown origin, function and intent. This unknown outweighs physical evidence. Time was traveled, then forgotten. Eventually, measuring with increments of time was rediscovered, reinvented. But the applications of manipulating time, traveling the winds between then- now and beyond hide, still denied. Maybe that was the intent, to bury the secrets of time travel, prevent a dark and dour eventuality from millions of years in the future. But that only raises more speculative and unanswerable questions. The dull voice of distant drums echo more dreamer folly.