It's All Behind Us Now

Much like our grandparents could tell you what they were doing on 9/11/2001, or what their parents were doing during the Kennedy assassination, our entire generation could tell you with perfect clarity where they were when Laser Butt Disease ended modern civilization.

We had known about LBD for about 30 years, an unusual bacterium that sat in the colon and occasionally discharged low-power laser fire. It made headlines for months, and the late night hosts beat it to death, but there really wasn't much to it. Occasionally you'd buy a new pair of underwear, a handful of fires around the world a year. Once in a blue moon, someone would have a particularly potent variant; a Z-Pack from the doctor would clear that up in a few days.

It was summertime of 2074 that Methicillin-resistant Laser Butt Disease became the scare of the year. Years and years of throwing antibiotics at the problem kickstarted the evolution of it, and it went from a jokey part of the human condition to something far more serious. The wattage increased significantly; what was originally a joke product called "Lord Explosion's Laser Butthole Ointment" became a staple product for most that could afford it. Gramps called it "the new Red Ring of Death," whatever that meant. He thought that old line was hilarious.

It was on April 1st, 2076 at the G11 summit that laser butt terrorists assassinated heads of state for 11 of the world's superpowers, including President Rothschild IV and the robotic brain of Vladimir Lenin. Dirty laser butt disease bombs were dropped and pathogens released into the jet stream. Before civilization collapsed by way of laser butt genocide, a small terroristic art collective claimed responsibility on national television. Home grown, right here in the States. They made a truly insane statement that still echoes in the memories of the survivors.

"We have been cool for long enough. You know what's cooler than being cool? Being on fire."

What was incredible was just how destructive the new strain could be. Stomach cramping was about the only warning you had that you were probably about to have your last few minutes on this earth. The lasers were anywhere from 200KW to 2TW, the latter of which was literally like farting a small hydrogen bomb. Worse was that with the increased wattage, our old friend Isaac Newton came by to visit. People would get literally launched into their ceilings by laser butt disease. The roofers made good money, for a while. Then too many cases came, and too many roofers were afflicted themselves. Gas stations were, one by one, blown up in huge laser butt conflagrations. Oil refineries. Factories all over the world. Data centers with lasers clean through a whole row of racks, the destroyed capacitors catching fire. The science labs, our only hope for stability and a cure, were slowly destroyed and abandoned. Then the prison breakouts started.

There were emergency centers erected at most community pools. You felt the blast coming on, you headed to the pool and aimed your ass to the sky. When it came, you got launched into the pool. It worked well until a bad case showed up and inevitably cracked the bottom of the pool, the force of impact with the water ripping the flesh off their bones.

The government slowly collapsed, trying to run the country from bunkers. Even as they slowly died off in their isolation, there was nobody in a position to carry out their orders on the ground. Some few dedicated cops and soldiers tried to uphold order; most resorted to looting or hiding with their families.

TV stations, one by one, went dark. Only a handful of radio stations stayed around, alternating between music to try and keep spirits up, reporting on eyewitness news, and hawking home remedies. One memorable host went off right in the middle of pitching urine enemas as the cure. "I've been doing it for years and aaarrrghghhhPEWPEW"

I think we all knew the end of the world was a foregone conclusion when animals started exhibiting laser butt disease. The picture of the cow embedded in the Statue of Liberty was our generation's Iwo Jima. It was all ending.

We tried to do our job at the Foundation as well as we could, given the circumstances. We'd lost most of our network infrastructure, and had gone to a paper-only setup for the first time in over 100 years. It was boggling how much paperwork we accumulated. There were files on skips we wouldn't even contain for another five years, just sitting there in the pile. Containment breaches were commonplace, and the business of resecuring the skips became much harder when half your task force "had to go pew pew" on one retrieval mission. We filled 173's storage unit with fast-setting concrete and called it a day. We lost the lizard about 6 months back, nobody knows where the hell he is now. Best case, he's firing butt lasers in hell.

noooononononoPEWPEW

Judging by the klaxons, I'd say something big and mean just got out through a man-shaped hole in the wall. I'll be back.