It Ain't Far Off
Work in progress.
Kurz got up and stretched. He couldn't remember the last time the Brutaal Royale was so stunning. Ah, the carnage! Forty-five Extras had been slaughtered, making it the bloodiest on record by six.
Kurz rotated his body from horizontal to verticle and hung his legs about a centimeter off the floor. His loafers slid without a sound out of his closet and secured themselves on his feet.
Life is much better now, he thought to himself, without the wars and strife. It had been two-hundred and fifty years to the day since World War III, the "War to End All Wars". The history books ran red with the attrocities that had occured up until the great Treaty of Brazil. Before the draught, mother Earth was supporting twelve billion humans and eight-hundred million of their domesticated kitties and puppies. During the draught, only enough food could be provided for four billion humans and two-hundred million kitties and puppies. This caused panic. Millions were slaughtered when The Great Decline began to take its deadly toll. The computers that controlled the farm machinery, in order to save the most lives, took to using their harvesters on objects roughly the same height as corn and a little wider. World War III was between the computers trying desperatly to harvest food, and the humans trying to get at the little food the machines had created.
But everything was fine now. Henry Ford the twenty-sixth, mass-producer of farm machinery and kitten toys, was thankfully old enough to remember how to work the machines. He pushed their 'Off' button. It was large and red. So Henry Ford stood up infront of millions and called on humanity to begin a new age of enlightenment, where reason reigned supreme.
To begin, he said, we must abolish all weapons of death. Man, he said, with any power above his brothers, is a dangerous thing. And power, he said, comes to those who weild what people fear most: death. So began the great age of enlightenment. In two-hundred and fifty years there had been no war between peoples of different opinions. There had been no hunger either, since the Law of Extras. The Law of Extras was this: In order to both control the population and satisfy the more animalistic side of humans, Mr. Ford decided that every day, all the babies that were born in each city must be thrown into a great pit at the middle of the city, and that the spectacle was to be played on all holowalls in the city. Only on one day each year did this not occur, the Day of Birth. Now everyone had the same birthday: December twenty-fifth.