I am telling you the TRUTH, I tell you!
It’s 0100 and I hunch like a Golam over a glass of hot lemon and honey. Searing pain in both ears as the liquid passes, a crescendo to the burning pain in my throat that has awoken me each night this week. Tonight my eyes were crusted over so that I could not open them, but at least my nose has stopped bleeding and making horror story scenes in the shower. In two hours from now the fever will subside and I’ll go back to bed. This is what has become of me, in my dark lair in the dark hills, and it all could have been avoided, if I just hadn’t run.
I’ve been telling people that I have “man-flu” but I’m going to tell you the real story. Eight days ago, my first day on my new job, I visited an encampment in the deepest, darkest, remotest corner of Tory Street. It wasn't a pretty picture. It looked like a severe case of Social Injustice, a systemic failure of democratic socialism; of course I walked in -- there was suffering. I thought it was localised, I thought it could be contained. A different story emerged from the histories I took. These people had fallen like flies on DDT, fast and hard. I called the WHO and the CDC for immediate assistance. As I hung up the phone, I coughed. Three hours later, with the helicopter dropping two men in hazmat suits with self-contained breathing apparatus, in a touch and go landing, I was already on the floor of a makeshift hospital that used to be funky coffee roaster.
They came to me. Oh, my god, Kenno. How fast, asked the muffled voice of Dustin Hoffman from behind his mask. Just a number of hours, I said, we were all drinking coffees and discussing cascading resource redistribution polarities that might have caused a localised resource distribution failure. We were wrong, we were so wrong. Coffees, a voice said from behind the shaded mask of another Hazmat suit. Dear Jesus, if this has become caffeinated, if it’s in the coffee supply, this city doesn’t stand a chance! I recognised the voice. It was Donald Sutherland! Now I know Dustin works with the CDC, his febrile ranting tirades may have sparked a few dozen false alarms, the unnecessary evacuation of hundreds of thousands over the years, but he means well, he means so well. Sutherland, that’s another story, that lanky case of Marfan syndrome, with such a voice, he has the heart of an icy killer. He’s Military Intelligence: nuclear, biological and chemical, not WHO like his name tag says. I know this. I know him. When he reached over Dustin, squeezed my thigh and said, don’t worry, we are going to get you home son, you will live to revive Keynesian economics another day, I knew it was over. It was as if he had poured out the vessel as the clouds broke open and said: It is done.
What can I say? I was weak, I was having fever induced hallucinations. I hadn’t had a Latte in four hours - this was serious people. You don't know, you weren’t there! I knew what was coming and it would be a low flying prop plane. We would look with hopeful eyes that an air drop of major antibiotics and freshly roasted coffee beans would save our self-righteous butts. But what would be dispatched from the plane, would not be Costa Rica Triple “A”, it would be a bomber-delivered thermobaric weapon. All that is alive merely evaporates. A cleansing flash of fire and you’re done, you’re gone. They use these weapons to replace smaller types of nuclear bombs. One of these could take out the coffee house, the yuppie gym, and the Soup Kitchen while leaving Moore Wilson’s intact. By Saturday morning while hundreds of locals poured into Moore Wilsons for fresh baguettes and ripe cheese, jars of olive stuffed anchovies in truffles, a cover story of an unfortunate sinkhole would surface and be blamed on infrastructure underfunding by the previous government. The people would buy it. They always do. They only want their ripe cheese. The Frebreze soaked masses. So, I panicked and ran for The Terrace.
And here I am, I’m getting some clarity back now, this thing hit fast, so fast, it stinks of something from some laboratory buried deep in the Southern Alps. Some mutated virus cultured from an ill Tui Bird. Yeah, this could be Tui Flu weaponised for coffee delivery. Talk about your attacks on the middle class. Why? Why do this? Wrong question gentle masses. The question is who, and the answer, as always, is the one percenters. The elite rich want the middle class out of the way; out of their way in the airport lounges, on the cruise ships, in the jewel shops, and most fervently at the Deli cheese counters! Yeah, that’s right, the cotton-polyester blend, no iron stratum of society is slowing things down for the top end. Why have a Ferrari if you are stuck in traffic? Why go to Ontrays, if a bunch of hopeful aspirations are getting a free coffee before you? Why bother even going out to get the best Raclette if you have to deal with a frenzy of leather handbag carrying, yoga panted liberals looking for bargains? It’s all so bloody tiresome.
Of course it’s doomed! It’s supply side suicide, but they never listen. And there’s the flash. Tory Street is gone now. Mass assisted suicide. Maybe I should have stayed, at least it was merciful. Now, now I’ll be hunted down like a hairless monkey escaped from a biological weapons laboratory. I should be so lucky! I have to survive the illness first. If it gets me, they’ll be happy. If I recover, that’s when they’ll want me tired to a metal table in a lab, a kilometre underneath Hanmer Springs thermal resort. Oh, you haven’t heard about that place? You were not supposed to.
Wellington needs viral resistance now people! Before it’s too late!
I’ve been telling people that I have “man-flu” but I’m going to tell you the real story. Eight days ago, my first day on my new job, I visited an encampment in the deepest, darkest, remotest corner of Tory Street. It wasn't a pretty picture. It looked like a severe case of Social Injustice, a systemic failure of democratic socialism; of course I walked in -- there was suffering. I thought it was localised, I thought it could be contained. A different story emerged from the histories I took. These people had fallen like flies on DDT, fast and hard. I called the WHO and the CDC for immediate assistance. As I hung up the phone, I coughed. Three hours later, with the helicopter dropping two men in hazmat suits with self-contained breathing apparatus, in a touch and go landing, I was already on the floor of a makeshift hospital that used to be funky coffee roaster.
They came to me. Oh, my god, Kenno. How fast, asked the muffled voice of Dustin Hoffman from behind his mask. Just a number of hours, I said, we were all drinking coffees and discussing cascading resource redistribution polarities that might have caused a localised resource distribution failure. We were wrong, we were so wrong. Coffees, a voice said from behind the shaded mask of another Hazmat suit. Dear Jesus, if this has become caffeinated, if it’s in the coffee supply, this city doesn’t stand a chance! I recognised the voice. It was Donald Sutherland! Now I know Dustin works with the CDC, his febrile ranting tirades may have sparked a few dozen false alarms, the unnecessary evacuation of hundreds of thousands over the years, but he means well, he means so well. Sutherland, that’s another story, that lanky case of Marfan syndrome, with such a voice, he has the heart of an icy killer. He’s Military Intelligence: nuclear, biological and chemical, not WHO like his name tag says. I know this. I know him. When he reached over Dustin, squeezed my thigh and said, don’t worry, we are going to get you home son, you will live to revive Keynesian economics another day, I knew it was over. It was as if he had poured out the vessel as the clouds broke open and said: It is done.
What can I say? I was weak, I was having fever induced hallucinations. I hadn’t had a Latte in four hours - this was serious people. You don't know, you weren’t there! I knew what was coming and it would be a low flying prop plane. We would look with hopeful eyes that an air drop of major antibiotics and freshly roasted coffee beans would save our self-righteous butts. But what would be dispatched from the plane, would not be Costa Rica Triple “A”, it would be a bomber-delivered thermobaric weapon. All that is alive merely evaporates. A cleansing flash of fire and you’re done, you’re gone. They use these weapons to replace smaller types of nuclear bombs. One of these could take out the coffee house, the yuppie gym, and the Soup Kitchen while leaving Moore Wilson’s intact. By Saturday morning while hundreds of locals poured into Moore Wilsons for fresh baguettes and ripe cheese, jars of olive stuffed anchovies in truffles, a cover story of an unfortunate sinkhole would surface and be blamed on infrastructure underfunding by the previous government. The people would buy it. They always do. They only want their ripe cheese. The Frebreze soaked masses. So, I panicked and ran for The Terrace.
And here I am, I’m getting some clarity back now, this thing hit fast, so fast, it stinks of something from some laboratory buried deep in the Southern Alps. Some mutated virus cultured from an ill Tui Bird. Yeah, this could be Tui Flu weaponised for coffee delivery. Talk about your attacks on the middle class. Why? Why do this? Wrong question gentle masses. The question is who, and the answer, as always, is the one percenters. The elite rich want the middle class out of the way; out of their way in the airport lounges, on the cruise ships, in the jewel shops, and most fervently at the Deli cheese counters! Yeah, that’s right, the cotton-polyester blend, no iron stratum of society is slowing things down for the top end. Why have a Ferrari if you are stuck in traffic? Why go to Ontrays, if a bunch of hopeful aspirations are getting a free coffee before you? Why bother even going out to get the best Raclette if you have to deal with a frenzy of leather handbag carrying, yoga panted liberals looking for bargains? It’s all so bloody tiresome.
Of course it’s doomed! It’s supply side suicide, but they never listen. And there’s the flash. Tory Street is gone now. Mass assisted suicide. Maybe I should have stayed, at least it was merciful. Now, now I’ll be hunted down like a hairless monkey escaped from a biological weapons laboratory. I should be so lucky! I have to survive the illness first. If it gets me, they’ll be happy. If I recover, that’s when they’ll want me tired to a metal table in a lab, a kilometre underneath Hanmer Springs thermal resort. Oh, you haven’t heard about that place? You were not supposed to.
Wellington needs viral resistance now people! Before it’s too late!