New Video: ASRock Challenger 9070 XT Review

 

A review of the ASRock Challenger 9070 XT, a very good and affordable (for this day and age) upper mid-range GPU. Probably the last upgrade for my AM4 system that I built in 2020. 

Writer's Block: Nobody Is Special

 

Another story from my work in progress sci-fi/horror collection, Nobody Is Special is obviously inspired by current events, to the point where there's certainly nothing speculative about a society descending into fascism. Hey, poke your heads outside every once in a while, everybody! Life has always been a struggle, and it's never over until you give up. There's plenty left fighting for. Just remember that this country, despite its many atrocities and crimes, was founded as a democratic republic with humanist ideals. America has done some wonderful things, from joining the Allies in World War 2 to putting a man on the moon, and we can do good again. We just have to remember who we are and that the current administration is about as far away from the American ideal as possible. 

...

The comedian took the stage to lackluster applause. He had curly hair and a big nose and wore a blue blazer that was noticeably faded in the bright lights. Before he spoke, he removed a note from his pocket and stared at it for a moment, as though he didn’t recognize his words, before tossing it to the ground with a nonchalance that belied the almost imperceptible tremor in his hands.

“Hey, how you all doing tonight?” he asked the crowd. “Boy, the Gestapo is out in force. Sometimes I wonder what they look like under those skull-like masks. Are they good-looking? Is a Brad Pitt look-alike under there? Is Ben Affleck’s twin busting my nuts? You’d never know because they never take the masks off. What do you think that signifies? What do you think that means?”

“What if I got up here in a doomsday helmet and told jokes? It wouldn’t work, would it? It would be too humanizing. You’d know that under that monstrous mask, there was a real person with a real sense of humor. We don’t know if a random Gestapo agent looks like a movie star or Cleetus Diabeetus, but I’ll tell you what, I’d bet on the latter!”

The crowd murmured with a few uneasy laughs sprinkled about.

“You know what kind of fucking losers work for the Freedom and Pacification Force? Dumb fucking hillbillies! The kind of people to whom you ask a question and they answer with duh-huur? You know why they never read you your rights? It's because they can’t read!”

Two armored FPF agents had materialized behind the back of the crowd. They started walking toward the stage, truncheons drawn.

“You know, we used to have freedom of speech in this country. A person could say whatever they wanted, especially a comedian. Telling the truth was our societal function. Now they drag you offstage to beat the hell out of you for calling a pig a pig!”

Both agents had hopped onto the stage, shiny black helmets gleaming in the strong light. The comedian turned toward them with a sneer.

“Oh what the fuck you gonna do, big man? You gonna beat me in front of all these fucking people, you fucking cousin fuck…”

The truncheon slammed into his big nose with an audible crack, and the comedian fell to his knees, blood spraying across the stage. A gasp went through the crowd before it grew silence. The agents dragged him off the stage and behind the curtain, and the promoter ran out to apologize, sweat glittering on his forehead.

“It’s over, folks, the show’s canceled tonight. I’m sorry, we’ll offer refunds at the door! Please exit in an orderly fashion. This will all be over soon! Goodnight!”

The crowd did as they were told, but there were a few lingering stares, for in the quiet shuffling of feet moving, you could hear the blows raining down upon the comedian, falling like heavy rain behind the curtain.

…

“Quite the show, eh?” said Jeff to his friends.

They sat around a circular table, cards in hand, three middle-aged men and one woman drinking beer in-between bets. They were in a smoky basement room adorned with sports memorabilia and a two mounted deer heads. Old honky-tonk played on a stereo softly while a basketball game progressed on a muted television that they all ignored.

“He had it coming to him,” said Diego, a brown-skinned man with close-cropped hair. “Everybody knows you can’t say shit like that.”

“Why not?” asked Wilhelm, whose long blond hair was fleck with gray. “In Germany we can tell jokes about the police.”

“Well in America, you fuck around and you find out,” explained Ashley, winking across the table at her boyfriend Diego. “We don’t put up with agitators and terrorists.”

“How was the man committing terrorism by poking fun at the FPF?” asked Wilhelm.

“He was calling them Gestapo and hillbillies!” replied Diego. “These men put their lives on the line every day, rounding up undesirables and degenerates! If they didn’t do their jobs, we’d be mobbed by the homeless and the Anti-Fascist radicals!”

“In an ostensibly free country, you should be able to speak your mind without fear of government retribution,” opined Wilhelm.

“That’s socialist propaganda,” dismissed Ashley, taking a swig of her beer.

“Can you explain what you mean by that?” asked Wilhelm.

“Can you guys stop talking politics all the time?” asked Jeff. He had dark skin and a bald pate and a thick, woolly mustache.

“Jeff’s what they call an enlightened centrist,” said Diego.

“I am not! I don’t pay attention to that shit. Both parties are the same,” explained Jeff.

“Surely you don’t mean that,” said Wilhelm. “The Progressives never implemented anything like the FPF when they ran the country.”

“No, what they did instead was jack up inflation so high that you couldn’t afford groceries or gas and then implement polices in schools to turn the kids gay and teach them to hate themselves for being white,” said Ashley.

“Do you believe this?” Wilhelm asked Diego.

“All I know is that I don’t like women telling me what to do,” said Diego, smiling at Ashley.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” she told him.

“Sure, but I’m your asshole,” replied Diego.

“Play a hand, play a hand,” said Jeff. He showed his cards and won with aces high.

Suddenly there was a loud knocking on the door.

“Who the fuck is that this time of night?” asked Jeff, getting up from his seat.

“Probably some freeloader looking for a handout,” said Diego.

“Jesus, Diego,” said Ashley, laughing. “It’s probably a neighbor.”

Jeff opened the door to reveal an FPF officer standing before him. He had on a thick black uniform with an armored torso and knee pads, and his right hand dangled above his side arm as though ready to duel. His encompassing helmet had empty obsidian eyes and a circular respirator that amplified his breathing. The black combat boots raised his height considerably so that he towered over Jeff, who was not a tall man. There was no badge or number on his breast or sleeve; FPF officers were free of identifying insignia, so that they could perform their function anonymously.

“Is this your house, citizen?” he demanded in an electronically-distorted voice.

“What’s this about?” asked Jeff.

“I asked you a goddamn question,” said the officer, who put his left palm on Jeff’s chest and shoved. Jeff stumbled backward and fell to the floor.

“Hey, what the hell?” yelled Ashley, getting to her feet.

The FPF officer pivoted toward her and drew his pistol.

“Stand down! On your fucking knees!”

“Oh my god!” screamed Ashley, falling down with her hands behind her head.

In the doorway a flying saucer about two feet in diameter hovered, red lights dancing across its surface. It aimed a white light at Jeff, and then Ashley, until it stopped on Diego and began to strobe.

“That’s him,” said the FPF officer. “You there, brown man. You’re under arrest for illegal immigration. Walk in front of me with your hands up.”

“What the hell, man! I’m a goddamn veteran!” said Diego, who had his hands up.

“I’m not going to tell you again, motherfucker,” said the FPF officer, aiming his weapon. “The AI doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Well it sure as hell does if it thinks I’m an illegal immigrant! I’m a former Marine, asshole…”

The gun fired, deafening in the small garage, and Diego slumped to the floor with a hole in his skull. Ashley screamed and the FPF officer turned his weapon toward her.

“Shut up, you stupid bitch, or I’ll blow your goddamn head off!”

Suddenly the flying saucer’s light cease its strobe effect, and turned toward Wilhelm, who was staring at Diego’s corpse in wide-eyed shock.

“Wait a minute,” said the FPF officer. “You’re the illegal, aren’t you?”

“I forgot to renew my visa,” said Wilhelm, his voice stammering.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” babbled Ashley, who had begun to crawl toward Diego.

“I thought you said it didn’t make mistakes!” said Jeff.

“I…” murmured the FPF officer before falling silent.

“You killed him! You killed him! You murderer!” cried Ashley, her hands covered in blood as she cradled Diego’s head.

“Shouldn’t you call an ambulance?” asked Wilhelm.

“He shouldn’t… he shouldn’t have resisted,” said the FPF officer finally.

“He did nothing of the sort! He was complying! You shot him for nothing!” accused Jeff.

“He was a domestic terrorist,” replied the FPF officer, his voice regaining its hostile confidence. “He should’ve done what he was told to without question. You fuck around and you find out. You! Illegal! Come with me outside.”

Wilhelm quietly followed the FPF officer outside. Jeff and Ashley remained where they were until they heard a car door slam shut followed by the squeal of tires as the FPF officer’s vehicle burned rubber.

…

Across the street, two neighbors watched as an ambulance carted off the body of Diego Sanchez.

“Christ almighty, what is this country coming to?” asked Ernest, a heavyset man in his late forties.

“They’re making it right,” replied Andrea, a bleached blonde older woman with a cigarette in her hand.

“The FPF? They just shot one of our neighbors and abducted another,” said Ernest incredulously.

“They already uploaded the video to the internet,” replied Andrea. “Here, watch it. You can see that the Latino didn’t do as he was told.”

“Look, I support the Freedom and Pacification Force as much as the next guy, but there was no reason for the officer to shoot Diego! He had the wrong guy!”

“You do what you’re told when a federal agent points a gun at you,” said Andrea, taking a quick drag on her cigarette.

“You’d let them drag off your own mother, wouldn’t you?” accused Ernest.

“You bet I would. You know she has it coming. I’m going back inside.”

Ernest was left alone in the now-quiet neighborhood, a look of disbelief lingering on his face.

 

America Is a Lawless Land

 

On Wednesday, an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year old mother. You can watch the video yourself; I'm not going to link it because I don't want to promote someone's hot take. I'll give you mine, though, and I'm just going to describe what I see. Words were exchanged between Good and an ICE officer; he tried to open her vehicle, which was slowly turning away, when another ICE officer pulled out a pistol and shot Good three time, killing her. The vehicle drifts away down the street, its driver dying or dead. If we lay politics aside, all we see is a Federal officer executing an unarmed woman in a vehicle. The ICE officer, who has been identified as Jonathan Ross, was never in any danger from the slow-moving car. Had he wanted to stop the vehicle, he could have shot her tires. Instead, he decided to be judge, jury, and executioner. Because Ross is a Federal agent, any attempts to try him in State court will be moved to Federal jurisdiction, and the FBI has already taken over the investigation. Instead of admitting fault for the reckless actions of ICE, the Trump administration has declared a Good, a single mother of a now orphaned 6 year old, a domestic terrorist.

If the act of simply trying to escape ICE can be considered domestic terrorism, then we are all potential criminals in the eyes of the Trump administration. Good could have been you or me, or your wife, sister, or mother. Trump and his cabinet of sociopaths want you to ignore your eyes and the logical conclusion that any thinking person will reach after watching Ross murder Good: They can kill you if they feel like it and get away with it. Trump wants you to be fine with this conclusion; after all, he's constantly contradicted reality his entire life. Who can forget alternative facts?

In George Orwell's 1984, the Party has to break the novel's protagonist Winston. It's not enough that they've apprehended him and defeated his schemes. Two plus two has to equal five. Winston has to believe in Double-Think, and he has to love Big Brother, even after they've taken everything from him, because they have to destroy his spirit after destroying his conception of reality. That's true fascism--convincing you to disbelieve your eyes and ears and instead to trust Big Brother, no matter what. That's the end goal of the Trump administration--they want to crush your spirit and force you to believe that they're Making American Great Again while ICE terrorizes Blue cities and grocery prices and housing spiral out of control, all while Trump and his cronies become richer and operate the United States like the Mafia.

The next time you turn on the tv, stare at your phone, or take a walk outside, remember that they could kill you at any time and get away with it. We don't live in a free country, and we could all be staring down the barrel of a gun. While this has been true for many people in America at many different times, it's especially true at this moment because Donald Trump is President of the United States. Remember when he said he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue and get away with it? Renee Good was that person. Any one of us could be the next.

Writer's Block: Gratitude

 

Here's another story from my horror/sci-fi collection I'm working on. This one's about a caveman and how much it would suck to live in the Pleistocene.

...

Cro moved through the dense underbrush, his breath coming out in great puffs, as he struggled to control the pain emitting from his right arm. During the chase, he had rushed past a thorn tree too closely, and now a three-inch barb was deeply embedded in his right biceps. The snow was heavy and his furs weighed him down, and huddled as he was in the thicket, spear in hand, there wasn’t much he could do at the moment to alleviate his discomfort. The giant deer paced a few feet ahead, its massive antlers preventing it from retreating further into the woods. Meat. That singular word reverberated in his head. For days he had eaten nothing more substantial than pine nuts, and his stomach felt as though it were in the process of consuming itself. He was focused now, and not even the sharp pangs that sent tremors down his arm could distract him from the source of sustenance that stood before him, only waiting to be killed. Where were Kia and Cumo? They should be at his left and right respectively, but he saw no trace of his brothers in his peripheral vision. He would have to do this himself.

 
With a cry, Cro rushed the giant deer. Upon seeing him, the beast lowered its head, but Cro dodged to the left and thrust forward his spear. It lodged into the deer’s left shoulder, causing the creature to rear up and lash out with its hooves. One caught Cro right in the face, crushing his nose, but he kept his focus and pulled the spear out and thrust again. This time, he managed to jab it through the beast’s heart, and the gigantic ruminant collapsed, its rich blood staining the snow.
Cro stumbled toward the slain animal, the pain in his right arm now forgotten. Gingerly, he raised a hand and touched his face. The resulting sensation nearly caused him to collapse. Wheezing blood, he fell to his knees before the deer, and pulled out his knife. There was no time to lick his wounds—he had to harvest the flesh before the smell of blood summoned scavengers.

“Brother!” said a voice.

Cro looked up from his work and saw Kia and Cumo, the latter of which had his arm thrown around former.

“What happened?” he asked.

“He has broken his foot,” explained Kia. “He fell into a hole hidden in the snow as we chased the deer.”

Cro swallowed the frustration that threatened to bubble up. Complications were expected, and nothing ever went according to plan, and it was not useful to explode and curse the gods and the lot that they had given man.

“Come, we have much work to do,” he said to his brothers. “We will not be able to carry as much meat back, but it will have to do.”

It took them an hour, but they managed to fashion a gurney out of the bones and hide of the deer, and they lay their brother upon it, who cradled his in arms as much meat as he could hold, wrapped as it was in the left-over skin of the beast. The sun was falling fast, and as Cro picked up his end of the gurney, he felt his arm spasm and tremble. The pain was almost too much, but he bore it, and soon he and Kia trudged through the snow, a slow procession traversing the icy wilderness. They had only traveled this way for about a half hour when Cro’s grip failed and his end of the gurney fell, causing Cumo to cry out. They stood for a moment, all three men panting in the snow, and as the sun began to lower behind the hills, Cro’s eyes met those of Kia’s. His brother nodded. Without a word, Kia bent down and took the meat from Cumo and began walking again.

“You would leave me as well, brother?” asked Cumo as Cro lingered.

“I can carry you no longer,” he said.

“It seems that we are born to die, often in the cruelest way possible,” said Cumo. “I have known little pleasure in my brief years. What I do, I do simply to survive, and it is only now, at the end, that I have found the time to ponder my purpose in all of this.”

“I will remember you, brother,” said Cro.

Up ahead, a sudden scream was cut short by the roar of a tiger. Cro clutched his spear, and Cumo struggled to his feet. They could see only a dim outline, but in the gathering darkness, the silhouette of tiger was clear, and they could even hear the crunch of Kia’s bones as the predator consumed his flesh.

“The meat,” said Cro quietly.

Grief was a luxury, an emotion experienced on a quiet day alone, with nothing else to distract the mind.

“We cannot kill the tiger, not with my broken foot and your injured arm,” said Cumo.

“We will starve otherwise,” replied Cro.

“Such was my fate a minute ago,” said Cumo. “That, or an end similar to Kia’s.”

Cro turned to his right and examined a thicket nearby. Removing his flint and pyrite stones and some tender, he rushed over to a dried bush and cut off two branches. Arranging the kindling over a fallen tree, he struck the stones together, raining down sparks onto the wood. Though his tender flickered, the bush branches would only smolder and not catch.

“You are attracting the attention of the tiger,” said his brother, who had hobbled over.

“Take this spear,” he said as he continued his work.

“What is the point, brother? We are dead.”

“Neither of us are yet,” replied Cro.

“I do this only out of my love for you,” said Cumo.

The shadow of the tiger loomed ahead of them, massive shoulders taut, the heavy head lolling about. A guttural bellow rose from the belly of the beast, and Cro paused only to see it pounce on Cumo, who had wandered toward it unarmed. The giant paws and forelimbs held him down, and in one smooth motion the tiger plunged its sabers into his brother’s neck. Cro clutched his spear, but fled, rushing into the thicket. He didn’t hear the tiger coming after him, but nevertheless, he scrambled up the truck of the nearest tree, and high above the ground, he spent the night, shivering in the cold that did little to numb his pain.
In the morning he climbed down the tree, his arm stiff, nose throbbing, nostrils clogged with clotted blood. There was no trace of Cumo other than the red-tinted snow, but his other brother’s carcass was being picked clean by the crows and a lone wolf, who stared unperturbed at Cro with a muzzle stained and caked with gore. In the snow, the tiger’s tracks led back into the forest where he had spent the night, so Cro decided he had to put as much distance between the woods and himself as possible. He considered bringing his brother’s body back, but the wolf appeared unafraid, and he doubted he could fend it off with his spear, considering his injuries, therefore Kia was abandoned and he continued on, alone.

He had walked an hour before he came to a familiar stream, and from its icy waters he bent down and took a drink. It flowed through the valley over smooth stones, and a memory from his childhood surfaced suddenly, much to his surprise. He and his father had fished here, catching giant pink salmon as they made their run, and he had derived much enjoyment from the ease of their labors, which must have shone on his face, for his father had looked at him and smiled. It was the only time he remembered an expression of joy on the man’s face. The salmon for some reason did not come this way anymore, and after this disaster, he wondered if was time to move to an easier place, if such an environment existed.

As he drank, he noticed a current of red flowing past. He turned his head to look upstream and saw the tiger, bent down and lapping at the water, reddened muzzle glistening. The beast had likely seen him, but having gorged last night on his kin, it had no interest in further meat at the moment, and so they could share a drink in the stream, predator and prey. Cro’s hands began to tremble with rage. He would never see his brothers again—never speak with them, never hunt with them, never walk the wilderness with them—and this tiger was the reason for that. His spear lay next to him, ready. It was a solid instrument, constructed of spruce, its point sharpened enough to pierce any tough hide. Yet the creature was healthy and strong; he could see the taut muscles moving beneath its coat, and he was tired and starving, with a right arm that ached and a crushed nose that whistled slightly as he struggled to breathe through it. He had the desire, the pure emotion, the seething rage—yet he lacked the means to express himself, and years of harsh conditioning by the world had taught him that you couldn’t always win against nature; the spirit of the tiger was stronger than that of one man, which was why the tiger had to be hunted with your fellows and not by yourself, no matter how much you yearned for its death. Eventually the tiger turned from the stream and sauntered back toward the forest, perhaps heading to wherever it had stashed Cumo, and Cro watched it leave until he could see it no longer, and only then did he rise from his crouch by the stream and continue across it, heading toward the cave where his family awaited him.

It was nearly nightfall when he arrived at the cave. The flickering light of the fire sent him strength, and despite his weariness and injuries, he made the climb up the rocky hillside without too much trouble. He saw his mate sitting by the fire, staring into the depths of the flames, a smoked tuber lying beside her, and he came and sat down, mumbling a greeting.

“Where are your brothers?” she asked, after a moment of silence.

“The spirit of the tiger consumed them,” he replied.

“Where is the meat?” she asked.

“I come to you empty-handed.”

“Crey went out with me to gather tubers but he never came back,” she said. “I searched for him for hours but found no trace. He has been gone for a day now.”

As he stared into the flames, he felt sure that the shaman who had been banished from the tribe was to blame for all of the misfortune. It will be a harsh winter, for death will come for us and feast on our brothers and children, and unsatisfied, it will come for our wives and then us, and then it will make a feast of our bones, scattering them about the wilderness, and no one will know of our lives or tell tales of our passing, for there will be no one left. This will happen because we have not honored our ancestors; we have not respected the rituals, and no sacrifices have been made in the name of our forefathers, for we cling to this earth too much, and now they will abandon us so that we may know the error of our ways.

He had driven the shaman away himself, having grown tired of his insistence that a quarter of every meal be left in the wilderness for the ancestors. There wasn’t enough food to feed everyone, and surely the ancestors would know that they meant no disrespect. But he had been wrong; they had performed their cull, and now there was just his mate and their quiet babe, who had not made a sound since he had entered the cave.

“How is she?” he asked.

His mate look at him solemnly, and then he began to weep.

…

“What the hell is this?” said Jared, throwing the headset down.

“You didn’t like it?” asked Garrett.

“Fuck no. Who wants to play a VR game where you watch your family get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger?” asked Jared. “That’s some stupid shit right there. I should’ve been able to kill that thing but the game wouldn’t let me.”

“But you felt like him, right?” asked Garrett. “You felt his pain, his frustration, and his fear? I thought it was incredible.”

“This is the kind of shit they put out there and try to call art. I don’t want to feel anything when I play a video game. I want to forget about how boring life is. Why the hell did they call it Gratitude? Am I supposed to be thankful for that shit?” asked Jared.

“It think the developers wanted you to think about how far we’ve come and how terrible most of human existence was,” explained Garrett.

“Well fuck that with a capital F,” said Jared. “Let’s go play Titty Masher 69.” 

“Alright,” replied Garrett.

Both boys ventured further into the arcade without giving Cro another thought.

New Music: Latin Song

 

I used the Telecaster for this song, along with my T-57 Tubescreamer, resulting in a nice bluesy overdrive. The bass is actually just the Tele run through a Pitchfork pedal, since my cheap Squier Jaguar bass is kind of a mess in terms of both playability and intonation. I like the rhythmic feel of this song. Short and sweet.

Writer's Block: The Meat Farm

 

First story of the new year. This one is a flash fiction about a human meat farm. Remember: if you don't eat your meat, you don't get any pudding.

...

The Meat Farm

“Hey there, new kid. Lemme give you a run-down of the place. I see you staring all-funny-eyed like you don’t know where the hell you are or what to make of it all. I can relate. I remember my first day. The blood. The guts. Oh, and the smell. Funny thing is, you just stop smelling it after a while. Pretty soon you’re driving home with your work clothes on, and your truck reeks like a slaughterhouse, and your wife is bitching that no matter how much she washes your clothes, the smell just won’t come out. And there’s truth to that, both literally and figuratively. This is a job that hurts your soul. You won’t be the same after working here for any extended period of time. But somebody has to do it. And after you see how they live, it becomes a whole lot easier to rationalize. Not to mention there ain’t any other place around here that pays thirty bucks an hour.”

“Now let’s go over to the holding pens. This is where they live their entire lives. Yeah, I know it’s small. They say back in the day before domestication, homo sapiens lived in large colonies and often traversed up to a hundred miles or more in a day using one of their primitive, coal-powdered vehicles. Can you imagine? Their overuse of that antiquated tech is why it’s so goddamn hot all the time now. Convenience and economic development outweighed cooking their home planet. Yeah, it’s a strange perspective, but it’s not like our species have never been short-sighted. Remember that crazy guy Muskie Ratt who bankrupted the entire economy of his solar system trying to build a Dyson sphere? How could you not have heard of him? Ehh, yeah I guess it was before your time. That’s the problem with getting old—you carry your cultural touchstones with you.”

“If you look through this pen you’ll see a big ol’ guy—we call him Herman—who has been here about twenty years or so. There’s been a real push by the industry to slaughter them younger, but this is a reputable abattoir, and we let the animals mature. The holding pen is about fourteen square feet. Small, but plenty of room for his activities, which are pretty limited. He’ll sit there and watch the images on the screen for hours on end. We have to turn them off or he’ll keep watching them and not get enough sleep. We use a simple risk-reward system hardwired into his brain via cybernetics. Basically, he’s playing video games that tickle the right parts of his mind. The crazy thing is, despite being from an entirely different evolutionary tree, they do have some similarities to us. Just like our ancestors, they evolved in an environment of scarcity, and so ancient reward pathways were preserved, not anticipating modernity. That makes them highly vulnerable to substances that give them pleasure. Crawl after that thing that serves you dopamine and survive, so sayeth the worm. Junk food, alcohol, gambling, and digital entertainment keep him constantly stimulated and pacified. See that slot machine over there? He’s damn-near worn out the buttons.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard what the protesters say. They say that homo sapiens are sentient beings who are capable of complex thought. They say that the animals deserve to roam free in their natural habitat. My question to them is this: What kind of intelligent being wrecks their own planet? The biosphere was on the verge of collapse before we came. Now half of the planet is a nature preserve and creatures that were on the brink of extinction are flourishing, especially since we’ve been hard at work pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. When homo sapiens were roaming free, seventy-three percent of the planet’s wildlife populations were in decline. Seventy-three percent! This planet would’ve been an apocalyptic hellhole were it not for us. Some people want to anthropomorphize everything! That’s what children do, you understand? They’re not people, not like us, anyway.”

“Anyways, let’s get away from the holding pens. Lemme show you the corral. See, it’s better psychologically if the animal doesn’t see what happens to the one before it. Less screams, less resistance. So we herd them down these long, curving pathways where they can only see the animal in front of them. They’re so tame that you can kind of just nudge them along. They’ll give you a prod but you really don’t want to use it unless you absolutely have to. When they get to the slaughter bays, one single bolt penetrates the skull, killing them instantly. Simple, effective. Humane. There’s no shame in it, alright? This is a better role for homo sapiens than master of Earth. Hell, they were halfway to this result themselves. Limited socialization due to addictive stimulation had cratered their birthrate, and economic inequality rendered many of them unambitious and without purpose. Basically, they had altered their environment to the point where they could no longer flourish. It was time that someone domesticated them and gave them a role as livestock.”

“What are those pens over there? You’re not ready for that yet, buddy. Those are for the little ones that’ll become veal. I won’t eat it myself, but it is apparently a very tender meat.”

“Hypocrisy? What, you think it’s hypocritical to work here and not eat meat? I said I didn’t dine on veal, kid. I still eat meat. Now it’s been a while, I got to say. The smell, you know, I think about it every time I see a steak. The smell, and all the carcasses piled up, all the meat and bone we couldn’t use.”

“You’re not sure you want to work here, huh? Take it from me, kid: this is a good job. Like I said, you won’t make money like this anywhere else. Everything eats something else living. What does it matter if it can think? A mind ain’t no great luxury in this universe. Fact is, it’s a chain dangling heavily around your neck. Do what’s best for yourself and your family. You get used to the smell, even if it never leaves you. Here, let me show you where we get cleaned up.”