Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump are playing a round in space. It’s 2085. They’re still alive because, like, technology, yeah? So, there they are. On the tricky eighth ‘hole’ (which is a bit of a specious notion because, technically, space is one big hole really but go with it). Donald, or at least, the dried up, Davros-like semi-human that Donald has become by now, has been regaling Jeff with tales of his latest fem-bot, which has ‘a pussy like a ten-pin bowling ball’ which makes it a damn sight easier to grab her whenever the need arises. (Women, naturally, have given up on men decades ago and have done one to the far side of the universe, taking the kids with them).
Jeff is chuckling at this as he steps up. He has a practise swing, then, wheezing softly, he bends to place his Titleist 2085 ball on the tee. He’s not been in the best of moods; the shipment of spring water from his private mountain range was delayed because of another damn pandemic on the Earth and he has just learned that Coldplay can’t play at his 121st birthday party because they’re double-booked with Elon. So, it is with more than a little irritation that he swing his three-iron and that would explain why he clips the ball with the tip of his club, sending it spinning off at 45 degrees, in an endless slice…
If you need an honest view of the state of the world, look at the behaviour of the billionaires. If anyone typifies the human desire to get the fuck away from everybody else, then it’s them. It used to be castles with walls around them. Then it was villas in the Italian hills, or ranches in the vast oases of America. Surely, the only reason that the Burj Khalifa is as high as it is so that the mega-rich can get as far up and away from the rest of humanity as it is possible to be? Never mind that it doesn’t have a working sewage system. The shit is driven away in trucks at ground level, so the rich never have to smell their own excrement. Christ, just think about how far that shit has to fall? Does it come down in frozen chunks? The higher you are, the less shit is falling around you, until you get to the bottom, ground level, where it must pile metres high.
And now, they’re scrambling to get into space.
Of course, it’s all in the interests of the poor, put-upon planet. But I can’t help thinking of Hugo Drax, the Nazi-fied villain of the Bond movie ‘Moonraker’. In the film, Drax builds his own fleet of space shuttles in which he transports the cream of humanity (in his case, the blonde and the beautiful) to a space station. Once there, deadly toxins are released with the intention of wiping out life on Earth so that Drax and his master-race can return and re-populate, only better (and a damn-sight more Caucasian) than before. It’s down to Roger Moore, a female doctor named ‘Goodhead’ and a bunch of American space marines to prevent Armageddon. Any of that sound familiar to you? (Okay – maybe we’re stretching it with the space marines…) And, isn’t Elon Musk the best Bond-baddy name ever?
Now, I’m not suggesting that we look to the works of Ian Fleming for hard social commentary but it does seem to be time to exit the planet for the mega-rich. Even Richard Branson, our very own, more cuddly billionaire super-villain, is at it. They all claim to be furthering humanity and they may well be doing just that but who’s going to be going with them into space when all of the Tescos and Aldis are underwater? You? Or that mega-rich arms dealer, whose kids go to school with Bezos’ kids?
So, they’ll get themselves set up comfortably in space to watch as the rest of us sink, or suffocate, or starve, or catch something nasty.
Or maybe, it’ll be something with a more poetic irony that finishes us off. Maybe Jeff Bezos’ golf swing will be the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Imagine that golf ball he hit off the eighth tee is sent into a wildly spinning trajectory which sends it arcing around the Milky Way, forming its own gravity, assimilating matter, in a huge, broad orbit which eventually brings it home, roughly the size of a small moon, to smash into the Earth.
That’ll fuck his supply of mineral water…
Effluvia 