Tales From The Current Year

 

Today, we have a special surprise on Your Dungeon Is Racist... a guest post by SexyTeKuvMa69.  What can I tell you about this piece?  It's a vibe.


Tales From The Current Year

Summer beats down on the grimy and dilapidated tapestry of urban decay with the force of a second Hiroshima. Across the pot-holed streets an exhausted gay pride parade tortuously waddles along to the ragged cheers of a starving audience, compelled by the watchful eyes of heavily armed trust & safety storm troops in biker leathers and animal costumes. Occluded by the smoke of fires that no one will put out, great billboards display flashing montages of hard-core gay pornography in reflex pantomime of the old commercials, now a mandatory part of every news broadcast and primary schoolers’ education. In a thundering babel of Swahili, Turkish, Han, Spanish, Hebrew and Esperanto, the news is blared across the street by repurposed air-raid sirens, triumphantly announcing the construction of three abortion clinics, a steep drop to the income of the middle class, an increase in homosexuality (87% of the population), the discovery of three new genders and the nationwide legalization of crystal meth – with new rainbow flavors!


It is Seattle, Day 186 of Gay Pride, The Current Year.


Under the ruins of Hasbro HQ, a man is dragged through grimy tunnels. He is the last remnant of the Old World, and the unwitting architect of the New Order. By his death, they will attempt to ritualistically expel the myriad contradictions that are devouring its entrails. Some of them have no hope it will succeed, but disobedience no longer even occurs to them.


He is to be judged by The Council: The chimeric offspring of a dozen trust & safety groups, social workers, NGO compliance boards, HR departments and marketing agencies, each member of The Council represents a Lagrange point in the heavens of intersectionality, a Keppler Rosette of all races, genders, body types and fursonalities. The court is a repurposed storm drain, built with ingenuity stolen from hard working sub-Saharan primitives during the Colonizer Era, stifling now in this summer heat. They nervously check their phones, vape weed, coom, fan themselves with pamphlets and eat bugs while they await the coming of the prisoner.


As he is brought in, a beam of the searing Seattle sun falls through the ceiling grate, illuminating a pugnacious chin, close-set Anglo-Saxon eyes, symmetrical features and alabaster skin. He meets their spiteful, furtive glances with the natural superiority of a captive tiger. They hiss and snarl, averting their eyes, fearful even now to meet his gaze.


No. 2 is the boldest among them, hir .03% Uyghur DNA and many bio-degradable facial piercings affording hir a slightly higher perch on the progressive stack, at least for the time being.
“Identify the Prisoner,” hir commands, carefully controlling the speed of hir inflection so it does not sound like hir habitual high-pitched nasal voice.


“I’m no prisoner, I’m a free man!” snarls the captive defiantly, drawing yet more hisses from The Council. The elite furry death commandos of the Seattle Board of Environmental Diversity ringing the chamber stiffen and growl in their purple fox costumes, awaiting the signal to pounce on the hapless prisoner.


“You are a FUCKING HU-WHITE MALE PIECE OF SHIT COLONIZER,” rages No. 5, already sweating in the sweltering dark, the magenta dye in xir wig falling in molten droplets on xir rainbow colored toga. “THIS IS A SAFE SPACE. YOU WILL NOT SPEAK UNTIL SPOKEN TO.”
For a moment, the court echoes only with xir exhausted panting. No.5 compulsively pats the X card in front of xir while No. 3 signals to an intern that a group therapy session is to be scheduled after the trial has concluded.


“Identify the prisoner,” No. 2 continues serenely. No 3. reads off hir brand-new Nokia 1984 in a bored voice “Name: Patrick Adolf Stuart. Gender: male. Hmn. Sexuality: Hatero. Race.” Hir pauses a moment in disapproval. “Hu-white.”


“What am I being accused of?” asks Patrick Stuart with imperturbable calm, again triggering the already distraught No. 5, who has to be carted off to an emergency Safe Space. The trial pauses momentarily until order is restored.


No. 2 raises an eyebrow. “You are not permitted to speak but since your guilt is beyond question, we shall indulge you.”


Stuart only waits until No. 3 continues. “Leaving aside the fact that your ingrained and permanent status as hu-white male renders you automatically guilty of the charges of Colonialism, Racism, Fascism, Transphobia, White Fragility and any charges levelled against you by a Genderqueer POC, and taking into account it is The Current Year, there are some additional charges to consider. After all,” hir concludes, ”we want to avoid the appearance of racism.”


No. 2. watches the prisoner carefully to see how he responds to the accusations. Stuart nods mournfully at the mention of his ancestral crimes, barely restraining the urge to abase himself, the proper response, but there is some fire in his eyes, some fundamental human quality that remains unquenched. No. 2 shudders involuntarily but continues hir careful observation.


“You were a member of Zak’s elite cadre of harassers, the Zak SS, and complicit in all manner of transphobic actions against such upstanding members of the community as Fiona Geist, Daniel Sell and the Paimon Prowler.”


“THAT’S A LIE!” roars Patrick. “I HAVE TRANS FRIENDS!”


No. 3 flinches but counter-attacks with the ferocity of a cornered rat. “You were seen making a tweet that could be considered transphobic and you refused to apologize!”


Patrick is dumbstruck, mute at the thought that somewhere, some action of him could have caused invisible harm of such titanic magnitude.


“Also, when you were discussing gender in the OSR Discord you mentioned that there were 66 different genders when in reality everyone knows there have always been 67!”  The council fell abruptly silent. Just that morning, a particle acceleration experiment by the brilliant physicist Dr. Ngumbe Wakanda, under the thoughtful guidance of Campus Administrator Professor Electrumberg, had uncovered a 68th gender. No. 3 had failed to read the update marked ‘High priority’ in hir feed and had instead read fifteen articles on the upcoming new Marvel Blockbuster about the new all trans Avengers. An understandable, but fatal, mistake. Gender law was very clear on this particular point. No one moves until No. 2 reluctantly motions to the Furry Death Commandos.
“NO NO NO I DIDN’T MEAN IT; DON’T CANCEL ME PLEASE.  I WILL DO WHATEVER YOU ASK… PLEASE,” No. 3 begs as they drag hir through the tunnels to the empty canal beyond.


“ACTUALLY A LOT OF MY FRIENDS ARE LGBTQPRDNOS+ AND I VOLUNTEER AT THE LOCAL HOMELESS SHELT-“ his voice is drowned out by the sharp staccato of machine gun fire.

The furry death commandos return empty handed. “EAT THE RICH! DIE NAZI DIE!” they chant.

“Eat the rich,” intones the Council, solemnly jazz-handing.

“Eat the rich,” concludes Patrick Stuart automatically before he can stop himself.


No. 2 continues somewhat irked. “Listen, hu-white ma-, Patrick,” hir corrects hirself, squeezing the bridge of hir nose. “I have already had to cancel one of the people that was very important to me and I am having a really bad day and you made a book with the guy so why don’t you just confess and save me a lot of stress, okay? It’s what any decent person would do. We are the Experts at Gender Law. You want to be a good boy, don’t you?”


“It’s me fookin’ livelihood, mate,” pleads Patrick.


No. 2 is getting irritated. “You should have thought about that before you committed acts that would later be considered crimes. I’ve had enough of this. We care about the Community. Don’t you see how toxic this is?” Hir sighs with irritation. “If you will not confess your guilt we will have no choice but to declare you guilty of being a Nazi. The sentence is Cancellation. Take him to the Nazi Termination Chamber.”


At last the realization strikes Patrick Stuart. He will not go free. They will not be swayed. He will be led out into that concrete gully and cancelled like all the pleading, equivocating, well-behaving hu-white men before him. He looks around the room desperately, into the watery, shifty, empty prey animal eyes of every council member, searching in vain for some glimmer of recognition, some basis of mutual respect, some basic acknowledgement of their shared humanity. There is none. Already their minds are drifting beyond the uncomfortable reality of the moment to new esoteric topics; the next Star Wars cartoon, how to emit less CO2, why there aren’t more midgets in computer science.
He does not scream as he too is dragged through the tunnels and out into the daylight but instead ruminates on his predicament with mute horror. In this empty concrete canal are the cancelled remains of his predecessors, some of them still frozen in positions of helpless pleading or desperate flight, others holed through, transfixed in mid-leap, a last defiant hurrah against overwhelming odds. He feels the sun on his face again and experiences suddenly, the revelation of who he truly is.


He turns to face his executioners. Behind their purple fur and cartoon animal masks, he cannot see their faces, cannot fathom their experience of this event. Are they eager, or bored, or do they weep for his fate behind those gigantic cartoon eyes?


He sees the sun descend beyond the sheer concrete bulwark of the canal sides and above a puddle of gasoline a tiny true rainbow, not the one on the flags, and he smiles and he cries as he suddenly realizes the beauty, the significance, of these final moments.


He raises his hand in what is sort of like a high-five (google it). He opens his British mouth in a gigantic British roar, spraying spittle and chunks of undigested fish and chips, revealing buck teeth, pledging devotion to that venerable ideological boogeyman in the most direct and unmistakable manner imaginable to his ancient race.


“TEN POINTS FOR GRIFFINDOR.“  He keeps up the roar as the bullets pass through his body, drowning out the noise of the gunshots and the shattering of the concrete behind him. His body jerks and twists like a marionette to the white hot rhythm of the Styr AUG. The pain is searing ripping knives, worse then any could imagine.  

He falls to his knees as he steals a new breath while one of the Death Commandos frantically reloads, cursing in Esperanto. His companion looks on in silence, his rifle dangling slackly from his hands. His high-five quivers but he does not lower it. “TEN POINTS FOR GRIFFINDOOOOOO-“.  

The rest is silence, riven by machinegun fire.


______________________


Any relation to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This entertaining guest post is sponsored by Venger Satanis' latest Kickstarter campaign Cha'alt: Chartreuse Shadows.  Show him some rainbow love while getting yourself some eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalypse!
         
              
 

Comments

Reu Writing said…
Well done, congratulate whomever he/her/shim may be on their outstanding work of non-fiction in the metropolitan northwest.
Jason Coplen said…
Reu Writing,

It's a hir!

Good reading. I'm tempted to steal this and modify it via what my players do as they fight for liberty in this land that opposes them. The voices of the 0.000001 straight dudes left must ring out!
Eric Walls said…
Venger is the Dave Chappelle of gaming.
I stopped reading the Star Trek novels several years ago when Peter David added a transgender planet to the Federation with those ridiculous pronouns.

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