Planetary Deaths SkyRocket as WorldWide Drought Reaches It’s Third Decade
Written by: Tracy Mills, NewsCom Multiversal Incorporated
Hingko, Taurus System, Milky Way – Around me stand a dried out people, their skin cracked and their lips chapped as they beg me for water. Outside of the city, interior farms and villages lie empty, their river beds dry clay and sand.
Welcome to the world of Hingko, a place of former prosperity. Above us planes scramble and fly, firing precious MakeItRain brand pellets to squeeze every bit of moisture from the sky, while below desalination plants pump and grind tirelessly, chugging down the oceans to continue life on the dried up husk of a planet grappling with the worst heat wave in its annals.
“I don’t know what we are going to do,” croaked one planetary resident who wished not to be named. “We tried to stop them, the ones at top, when they started selling off the water. And then things got worse when they found massive oil and coal reserves under the dirt. Everything is so hot and dry. I don’t think we are going to survive.”
Several smaller affiliates on the planet have launched weather modification programs, but with large players like Dearth and Minseta in ownership of over 2/3rds of the planet, and another quarter owned by native affiliate Wilduck Water and Oil, residents have little hope that these attempts will be enough.
“I just spent my the last of my morties on water for us. Tomorrow we go into Storage,” noted Yeltsa Thymes, a mother of four. “I will dearly miss my children, but it is better for me to know that they are alive, even if I cannot see them again.”
Wilduck Water and Oil Resources said in a notice on Wednesday that drought throughout the planet was not the result of fossil fuel use nor of sales of large water reserves on the planet, and that even if it were, these things are owned commodities and may be kept or sold as the affiliates pleased.
“Here’s the thing,” CEO Gildur Basins noted. “We set up shop when BuyMort came and we mixed our labor with the land. We worked hard to own this water and the land that we drill is land that we bled into and fought for a century ago when things were still being settled. Now that we’ve done all the work, everyone else wants to pretend to own it! I’m sick of these lazy losers wanting everything for nothing. They need to go somewhere else and start an affiliate of their own.”
At least 4.2 billion people remain alive on the planet, with less than 150 million people admitting to having reliable access to fresh and clean drinking water. Responding to demand, local BuyMort prices have skyrocketed to an amazing 60,000 morties per liter, scrambling numerous affiliates around the multiverse to deliver goods and set up shop.
“There be casualties in the meantime, but once the prices settle and demand has been met, the world will become green and lush again,” enthused bar owner Bran Sanpeera. “And honestly, it’ll be nice to have fewer cars on the freeway. Traffic jams are the worst.”
This has been Tracy Mills, reporting.
Check out the story at https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/50738/buymort-rise-of-the-windowpuncher-how-i-became
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