Really Great

A high-school History classroom, circa the year 2360:

‘Okay everyone, settle down. That means you Juniper, stop messing with your laser typewriter now please. And you can turn your the hover down on your chair, Applicious. Come on. Back to ground level. Thank you. We’ve got a lot of important things to get through today.

       ‘So as you’re all aware we’ve already looked back over the First World War – or “The Great War” – and we’ve done the Second World War, which doesn’t have a “great” nickname. But today, we move onto World War III – often called “The Really Great War. Really Great. Better Than All The Other Wars. It’s True, Believe Me. Really Great. Really Good War”.’

       A hand shoots up in the middle of the class.

       ‘Yes, Barbararbara?’

       ‘Why the hell did they call it that?’

       ‘Well, it’s actually a sort of derisive and mocking reference to the initial instigator of the entire conflict,’ the teacher draws letters in the air with a neon laser pen, sounding the name out while writing, ‘Don-ald Trum-p.’

       That final pop of the “p” sound causes the entire class to erupt in fits of laughter.

       ‘No way! That can’t be real. A zuman called Trump?! Like a fart? Ohmygod, that’s fuckin’ hilarious Miss.’

       ‘Gzandrafa! Language! Come on now, you know we’re a gender-neutral society. It’s the 24th century for fuck’s sake.’

       ‘Oh yeah, sorry Mrrz. But it is fuckin’ hilarious though!’

       ‘Indeed, but not only was his name ridiculous, absolutely everything about him was downright bat-shit.’

       ‘So what happened Mrrz? How did the Third World War start?’

       ‘Well as you may have already studied in Universal Science, this takes us back to the Great Universal Timeline Split of…’ the teacher gestures to the class.

       They respond in unison: ‘Twenty-sixteen.’

       ‘Twenty-sixteen, exactly. And one of the key events that caused this reality to detach from a more harmonious parallel reality came right towards the end, when the people of the now defunct United States of America elected Trump as its leader in spite of everything that had gone before it.

       ‘Mrrz Trump was a billionaire businessman locked in a political battle with a well-experienced actual politician called Mrrz Clinton,’ the teacher continues, ‘and while Clinton spoke calmly and reasonably about the issues of the day, the public thought they knew more than a seasoned politician and decided to vote against zer. Instead, they sided with the zuman who said ze would just be a good leader because ze was just great at everything.’

       ‘Wait,’ one student interjects, ‘this zuman just says “I’m great because I said so” and the people just believed zer? Wow, I know it gets said a lot in jest these days, but the people of the past really were super fuckin’ dumb.’

       ‘Not all of them, Bzibzorb, but yes enough of them really were super fuckin’ dumb enough to just hand over global power to a complete fucking moron. Now, if you open your datalogs to chapters H53 and H54 and plug those in to your neural pads, you’ll see a condensed version of the time leading up to and during the Really Great War.’

       A few moments of quiet clattering as the students open their devices and attach them to the ingrained data-transmission pads on their temples. Each student sees projections of high-speed information relating to the period 2016-2019.

       One student, upon completing the data stream, raises a hand.

       ‘Yes, Melania?’ The teacher notices the rest of the students disengaging from their data streams one by one.

       ‘Surely a lot of them should have seen it coming though? I mean, if they were going to buy all that bullshit, could they really be surprised when it all happened?’

       ‘Hey, I just feel bad for all the people who protested and opposed it at the time,’ another student responds. ‘I suppose a lot of them would have been learning from what then would’ve been recent history of the other two World Wars. Surely they wouldn’t have wanted to repeat that. Was it really half and half?’

       ‘Well, yeah, clearly,’ replies the first student, ‘it clearly wasn’t enough of them learning from their recent past so as not to make those mistakes again. What fuckin’ idiots.’

       ‘What became of them after 2019?’ A small, quiet student at the back asks timidly, ‘I don’t quite understand. We’ve only seen two-and-a-half years of Trump’s presidency, but didn’t those terms last for four years at a time? What happened next?’

       All eyes silently turn from the timid student to the teacher.

       ‘Nobody’s entirely sure.’

       Uproar amongst the knowledge-thirsty students.

       ‘Nobody’s quite sure,’ the teacher raises their voice over the hubbub of the class, ‘because of the notion of fake news you all saw towards the end of the data stream.’

       ‘Yeah, I was gonna ask about that,’ a student replies. ‘What the hell is “fake news” anyway? I don’t get that. Surely that’s just lies, right?’

       Another student picks up the baton: ‘Yeah, and why would anyone lie and pass it off as news? That’s just fuckin’ ridiculous.’

       ‘Not as ridiculous as a time before liberal use of language!’ This student raises the hover level of their chair and reclines slightly. ‘Ah, can you imagine a world before “fuck” and “shit” were considered normal? Thank Zoraan for the way we live now, right?’

       Another student looks at them derisively, ‘you complete moron. You know there’s no such thing as a “Zoraan”! Do you really think “Zoraan” is watching out for you? Oh, lol.’

       ‘Oh shut up Yelliria! It’s a figure of speech, you complete boy!’

       ‘Vandru! Language!’

       ‘Sorry Mrrz.’

       The teacher tries to regain control of the conversation: ‘On the idea of “fake news”, it’s very difficult for us to verify anything of the Really Great War period after 2019 because fact and fiction became so convoluted. Hell, even the information we’ve given you might be a little sketchy as it’s been extremely difficult to verify.’

       ‘But why, Mrrz? Why would the people have fake news. Was it used in the war effort as some kind of tactical cover-up?’

       ‘Oh, I wish Urqwanda. But no, I’m afraid the answer is far more simple and far more stupid than you might like. People basically just wanted to believe they were right.’

       A stunned silence falls across the class.

       After a while, one student speaks out: ‘you’re shittin’ me.’

       ‘Sadly, I’m not shitting you. I’m not shitting anyone. People were so fuckin’ thick in the past that they valued their own pre-conceived opinions being right rather than the actual facts. And it happened on both sides – nay, all sides – of any given debate.’

       ‘Surely there were clever ones though,’ one student responds. ‘I mean, by our standards, they’re still pretty fuckin’ thick, but they would’ve been decent enough to notice it, right?’

       ‘There may have been,’ the teacher responds, ‘but after a time, the notion of fakeness would’ve seeped through to them anyway.’

       ‘So wait,’ one student stands up, ‘people in the past – just to appease themselves and their own pre-formed opinions – simply made shit up and actually passed it off as “the news”?!’

       The teacher is red-faced at unveiling humanity’s dirty past to today’s students. ‘Sadly, yes. And it pretty much fuelled the Trump dynasty and ignited all of that pointless war between humans.’

       ‘Just because they came from different sides of the planet?’ The standing student looks incredulous.

       The teacher simply nods.

       ‘And spoke differently?’

       The teacher nods again.

       ‘And had slightly different skin tones?’

       Another nod.

       ‘And because they believed in gender differences?’

       Nod.

       ‘And above all of those petty reasons, everyone was just so narcissistic enough to believe they were 100% right about everything, that when they saw facts that didn’t fit their teeny-tiny worldview, they distorted shit in order to convince others that they were right and everyone else was wrong? Like the whole world was a relentless game of “who’s the most rightest”?’

       A grimace followed by a curt nod.

       ‘Wow. Just, fucking, wow. People really were just fuckin’ dumb back then.’

       The standing student takes their seat again as the cosmic bell chimes.

       ‘We’ll have to leave it there for now,’ the teacher wafts the suspended neon writing out of the air.

       ‘Oh, but Mrrz,’ one student protests as they gather their belongings, ‘don’t we have any clear indication of how the Really Great War ended?’

       ‘Well, there is one generally accepted sequence of events that’s the closest we have to any kind of verified truth.’

       ‘…and?’ Half of the class replies in unison.

       ‘It’s generally understood that even though fear of a minority group of radicals arguably triggered Trump’s hatred, ze was eventually defeated by the majority group. And it wasn’t by violence or negativity, but by love and peace and care for the health and goodwill of humankind, brought about by a largely peaceful people we believe to be known as the Muzlems.

       ‘Now come along everyone, you don’t want to be late for Nu-Arabic.’

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With a wardrobe straight out of ABBA’s Eurovision dressing room and a slowly-rotating plinth from a late-night jewellery sale on QVC, this video has an uber-retro feel to it, which is a bit more retro than I can actually handle because it predates me by a good fifteen years.

But forget the video, this song feels like a mellow and floaty trip down some light-filled, rose-tinted memory lane. Just exactly whose memory lane that is, only Zoraan knows. But in a world of ever-increasing erratic darkness, it’s nice to have a tiny glimmer of something light… just as long as this memory lane doesn’t belong to a potential fascist or fascist enabler.

Tennis – In The Morning I’ll Be Better