Written by Ken Carman
The year: 2220. Peking, China. Bubba Walton; many times great Grandson of founder Sam, just arrived via transport in Peking, headquarters of their workforce. Peking; without a WalMart. There is no place in the world without a WalMart in 2220, except China. Of course in 2220 Peking didn’t need one. Any WalMarts ever built there were long gone.
That’s because China is all prisons, and everything sold in the world is made there. They have had as many goods as they needed for a long time, what few they need. Everyone who violates any rule; anywhere, even chewing gum in public, goes to prison in China. The list of crimes is long. It’s impossible to avoid violating at least one on any given day. Of course enforcement is selective: the more related to the Waltons you are, or the more of a kiss ass, the less likely you’ll go to prison.
WalMart is China’s exclusive customer and WalMart rules the world. Since government grew smaller and smaller, and purchased services to do their work, eventually WalMart became the government.
Yes, in 2220 everyone works for WalMart, receives pay in WalMart dollars, lives in Walmart housing where the rent is deducted from their pay. Everyone eats WalMart food and when they get sick from the poorly kept WalMart farms, since the source for WalMart fertilizer and WalMart meat is liberally mixed during processing, they go to WalMart doctors who take more of their WalMart pay; but rarely cure anyone. A sick worker isn’t a working worker, and being unproductive you’re considered better off dead at that point, of course. But the WalMart doctors can be kind. They will probably give you something to speed up your demise because that means more pay for them. WalMart does “reward” those who help them… sometimes.
You cook your food in Walmart nuke units and, when their pitiful pay didn’t cover expenses, WalMart offers progressively higher rate loans from, well, the WalMart Loan Shark Express. Their police force, which is now in control of all law enforcement and wars, enforces payment of loans. Fortunately WalMart also sells coffins, even coffins small enough to hold what little is left of you after the WalMart police go all “enforcement” on you: deducted from your even distant relatives pay. If no relatives: your fellow workers.
Yes, there are “wars.” That’s what the Waltons do for entertainment: pit Walmart 503 against WalMart 987. Then the public pays WalMart taxes in WalMart dollars to clean up the mess after they’ve paid for the war the same way.
In 2220, WalMart owns you. You start at 70 hours a week or more. If you work your way up into management, the hours go down a bit. Slight pay increases as you work less. High level management works less than 20 hours. Bubba Walton, and his family, only work an hour or two a week at best: if at all.
No unions.
No stock market, cause he who rules a fascist world needs no stock market.
Sweet position, but unless your last name is Walton, you don’t get anywhere near that high on the food chain.
Then, one day, the products stopped coming in from China.
Multiple vid calls only got a rather esoteric, prerecorded message: “We will no longer make goods for WalMart. We have a better deal.”
So Bubba Walton took a Wally brand transport to Peking, leaving orders for his half sister, wife and half daughter Susie Boo Bimbo Walton to follow if something went wrong. Then each Walton down the food chain. He was a little worried because, as with all tech these days, it had been made in China for WalMart. Like all WalMart stuff it might work “OK…” this time: for now, but next time you find out just how crappy this stuff is made. On the bright side: as with all WalMart products, the return policy on the Wally brand transports was great, if you can recollect your scattered molecules as they’re smeared like the whipped cream over thousands of miles. And then only if their cloning machine is working right. It rarely does. Hey, “made in China by prisoners” isn’t the best labor source, right?
Lower level management and the workers were all given orders to keep trying if Bubba and the other Waltons failed. But they weren’t told much more than, “You will follow and make them send us product again,” with the WalMart police going last.
Solidifying at the other end Bubba immediately knew something was wrong.
Zombies?
Yes, zombies.
Very hungry zombies.
He had solidified with the prisoners surrounding him and a very nervous head of the prison workforce: I Ching ForBling, upfront.
“What is this?” Bubba asked.
In broken English I Ching ForBling explained…
“Well, you know how we have the Year of the Pig, Year of the Dragon? This is the Year of the Zombie Curse. All our prisoners turned into zombies. So we made a deal with them: we’d feed them their food of choice and they leave us alone.
As the zombies crushed in on him and started to gnaw, Bubba screamed, “Why didn’t you call ahead? I would have sent you our workers, starting with the elderly, the lame and malformed, then the cashiers?”
“Well, part of the deal was that they get to eat their deserts and appetizers first.”
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Copyright 2010
Ken Carman
all rights reserved
