In early 2019 Elon Mush released the first commercially available flying car. Running on coal and steam, the vehicles were self-guiding and had a stellar flight safety record except for the occasional chunk of flaming coal that would land on top of tall buildings in New Yowk City. Despite the thick clouds of carbon monoxide and pollutants that hastened the collapse of the planet's delicate climate, folks lined up to buy them because they cost half as much as regular cars and coal was cheap, especially when purchased in one-ton blocks that fit on the back of the flying car (called the Tisla, but everyone called them Smokies.)

And then 2020 arrived, with the world-shattering new method of transportation discovered by the Nobel-winning scientists Nemo Syn, M.E. Silverai, and E. Stelore. While working on a top secret website project, they discovered an old, retired bot that had been removed from the website and sent packing. 

This bot, EDB, had forlornly left the United States and wandered pseudo-randomly across Europe. Back when it was working hard at keeping unruly humans (called "noders" for some reason long lost to the annals of time), it built up a thick coating of blood and mucus from all of the people it ingested. Weighing in at 2,716 metric tons (the builders had never coded an anus so what went in never came out), the bot finally succombed to depression and an addiction to lukewarm saki, falling over a ravine in western Bulgaria. There it remained while the innards rusted from all of the moist noder guts. The first spot to rust through was between the toes of its left foot.

The stewing miasma began to grow a moldy green fuzz thanks to the 700mm of annual rainfall, and that's where the scientists made their discovery. Just by ingesting a square millimeter of this green fuzz a person could rematerialize anywhere on the planet instantaneously. After packaging their new product, the scientists became trillionaires overnight. Soon after, money became moot because people were popping into Fort Knox and bank vaults to rob them blind. Society collapsed in 2021 just after (now penniless) Donald Drumpf's re-inauguration. The European Union converged on the corpse of EDB and set it ablaze with piles of leftover plutonium, which fell through the Earth's crust and started the war with the Lizard People who were living in deep caverns near the Earth's core.

Whatever interstellar alien civilization finds this complete, true, and accurate compilation of everything humankind had accomplished, appropriately titled Everything2, we hope you learn from our mitsakes.

 

Why? | What?

Proper story’s supposed to start at the beginning. Ain’t so simple with this one.

Rucks (voiced by Logan Cunningham), «Bastion»


For want of enough yearly rainfall in Bulgaria the green fuzz between EDB’s toes was lost.

For want of the green fuzz an important subspecies of fungus was lost.

For want of fungal biodiversity in Bulgaria the topsoil was lost.

For want of adequate biological processes in soil Helicigona ardica was lost.

For want of endemic insects the whole of Miniopterus schreibersii family was lost

For want of echolocating animals the constant hyper-audible sounds present in Magura Cave were lost.

For want of inaudible animal sounds in Magura Cave the epipalaeolithic peoples’ brains grew unable to reach altered states of consciousness when exposed to near-absolute silence.

For want of altered states of consciousness in epipalaeolithic humans the original need for transcendence was lost.

For want of a meaning to life beyond this earthly home and this temporary body the efforts towards building the Tower of Babel were lost.

For want of a physical connection between Heaven and Earth the division of mankind into separate languages was lost.

For want of linguistic diversity most of what we know as the field of comparative philology was lost.

For want of comparative philology the concept of Ural-Altaic languages was lost.

For want of Ural-Altaic languages its corresponding entry on The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia was lost.

For lack of entries in an old encyclopedia the publishing company «A Random House» was lost.

For lack of a suitable body of copyeditors, translators, advertisers and publishers, the «Complete works of Friend Behr» was lost.

For lack of a single source of simultaneous divine inspiration and madness, Eris was lost.

❧❧❧

Eris did not retroactively begot Ponos. Ponos did not begot Uther. Uther did not begot Arthur. Arthur did not begot Mordred. Mordred did not permeate the universe with microscopic McGuffin-esque beings.

These things did not infect Shmi. Shmi did not begot Anakin. Anakin did not begot Leia. Leia did not begot Ben. Ben did not rupture the physical laws of time and space to transport flashy weapons of old at faster-than-light speeds.

The rupture of time and space did not allow for prehistoric civilizations to achieve enough comfort to produce abundant food for all its members. Food scarcity did not allow Pearl to reach adulthood. Pearl did not begot Wilma. Wilma did not begot Pebbles. Pebbles did not begot Chip. Chip did not plant soy. Soy did not give Abel the strength to stop Cain. Cain did not stop the cycle of violence. Vito did not begot Michael. Michael did not begot Mary. These are of no further consequence, but are included as an example.

Franky did not begot Ma. Ma did not begot Joe, William, Jack and Averell. They in turn did not begot the gold rush in the Wild West.

The peaceful life in the eastern coast did not move Sven to find a partner. Sven did not begot Rubert. Rubert did not begot Garwood. Garwood did not begot Howland. Howland did not begot “Old Tut”. “Old Tut” did not begot Orville. Orville did not begot Abraham. Abraham did not begot Homer. Homer did not begot Bartholomew.

Dingus begot Fergus. Fergus begot Hortense. Hortense begot Donald. But this happened in another dimension of no consequence.

So all the generations from Eris to midichlorians would have been seven generations, and from midichlorians to the rupture of spacetime would have been six generations. From the rupture of spacetime to the perpetuation of violence in mythical times would have been six semi-causal links and four generations, from the perpetuation of violence to the negation of the gold rush would have been innumerable counts of bank robbery. Finally from the peaceful life on the East coast to Bartholomew would have been nine generations. None of these numbers are particularly important.

❧❧❧

For lack of «El Barto» a whole generation of rebels was lost.

For lack of rebellious design and engineering the technology for flight was restricted to boring airplanes and any talk of flying cars was restricted to the golden age of Science Fiction.

And all for the want of an average year of rainfall in West Bulgaria.


A ReQuested writeup: «See the lock text on I was promised flying cars. reQuest that someone explain this, in a separate node.».

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