– “Mystery of why Stone Age villagers spent so much time underwater“, New Scientist, 4 June 2018
SKELETONS from an early 21st century community have revealed physical abnormalities that could shed light on this darkest age of human history.
“You can tell a lot about a person by their skeleton,” said Martha Woundbinder, who led the study, “such as whether or not they’re dead.”
The remains were found buried in the walls of bunker 47, where they had been used as building materials once the bottom fell out of the housing market and irradiated plague rats took over the concrete business back in the 2480s.
Of particular interest to the researchers are bony growths found abutting the ocular orbit. Also known as eye-roller’s eye, these tend to appear in those who frequently have to deal with acts of mild if predictable stupidity, like the questions of small children or the suggestion that wellwater might once again be safe to drink.
“This comes as a real surprise,” said Woundbinder. “We assumed that 21st century people would have been too busy foraging for rat carcasses or escaping the poisonous clouds of radiation to find things irritating in such a mild yet persistent way.”
While the presence of these growths in eye sockets across the community remains a mystery, a number of theories have been proposed. “We believe that the culture must have been confronted by a period of intense stupidity,” said Alex Lossassessor, “something that far eclipses anything we’ve experienced since.”
In fact, Lossassessor notes, skeletons have been free from eye-roller’s eye for centuries. We didn’t acquire it when Saviour John suggested letting the sexbots acquire consciousness, for example, or even when the bunker doors were made compatible with the internet of things.
“We’re talking just years and years of attritional stupidity,” says Lossassessor. “On and on, never stopping, always, somehow, finding a way to get yet more stupid even when you thought no such way was possible, grinding away at your resistance to the point where your body has to physically lay down calcium deposits to prevent your eyes from rolling themselves out of your head.”
Not everyone takes such a bleak view of the past. “We think eye-rolling might have been used as a primitive form of language,” said Woundbinder, “a way to transmit messages over the noise of the decadal blood rains.” Others disagree. “Come to us. Be among the chosen. Let us make you free from imperfection,” said one sexbot who agreed to speak on background.