THE WORLD OF BEECROFT
The sun rarely breaks through the thick black smog. This world is, for the most part, shrouded in a black cloak… both, figuratively and physically. The rare free-thinkers (who I’ll mention soon) facetiously call the atmospheric obscurity ‘the cloud of misery’.
Overpopulation has meant that humans must either scavenge or be the masters of those who toil. One must rule or be muled. In other words, leech or be a mule.
But what happened? How did this world become so caustic? What is its internal logic?
Consumerism is the opiate, it has become a totemism, it has caused a social chain reaction where, the rapacious human appetite for material goods has become a collective addiction… everyone is a junky for something. If you’re lucky, it’s shoes and the latest gadget, if you’re less lucky, expensive morphine, and/or a need to gaze into the ‘lights’ of the gadgets that will cause neuralgia and a subconjunctival haemorrhage causing ones eyes to bleed now and then.
Genericised trademarks have become increasingly more common in this world. Some examples that you may know already are, Crayon, Texta, Aspirin, Kerosene, Sellotape, heroin, iPhone, Jacuzzi, Xerox to name but a few.
But in this world, things like; sex, the feeling that pop candy makes in your mouth, the feeling of when it exits the body, certain plant species, photosynthesis, mercenary, kill, starvation, are all genericised trademarks that have been applied to the lexicon. Therefore, some words have lost their legal status making them all the more easier to commodify and and by extension, justify.
For this world, it breathes opportunity for the corrupt and the wealthy, the leeches. But conversely, it spells desperation for the poor who will inevitably become the mules.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for subordinates.
There is however, a talisman of hope for the less fortunate, as formally witnessed by the junky mule protagonist Beecroft. It is the uprising of free thinkers who’s mission is to repair the atmosphere, socially and physically, through agriculture, humour, education and the dissemination of unbiased empirical research.
However, such an agenda is damaging to the upper echelons of this society and they will do all they can to stop its progression.