All four Exponential Apocalypse books are on sale for the foreseeable future, both paperback and digital, until I remember what anything other than despair and anger feel like.
And, look! Here are some funny and not at all prescient quotes from the books.
From Dead Presidents:
Commercial passenger aviation hadn’t existed since prior to the first end of the world. All the major airlines at the time, unable to stay ahead of the terrorists that the media and the government kept warning them about, decided to tackle the threat head-on and instituted a new law that forbade all brown people from being allowed on flights. There being a lot of brown people in the world, and a number of Italians who kind of look brown, and almost all of them not being terrorists, the law did not go over so well.
From High Voltage:
After all the petroleum reserves were used up – rendering the Middle East useless to the West and allowing them to finally get on with their lives instead of constantly being pissed off at everyone about their exploitation by other countries – the first dinosaurs were cloned. After an elementary school science teacher explained to the scientists in charge of the procedure that dinosaurs were only converted to petroleum over a lengthy and complicated process, and that there were a number of easier and cheaper, though admittedly less cool, options for fuel available, the scientists went ahead and pursued those instead.
The oil companies lost their shit and launched a full-scale attack on the common sense of the American consumer, complete with Orwellian-level double-speak, subliminal messaging, and proton mind control bombs. The attack was thankfully short-lived, as a troupe of giant, angry, mutated shrimp rose from the Gulf of Mexico and destroyed the headquarters of BP, Exxon Mobil, and every other oil conglomerate they could find on Wikipedia.
The auto industry, meanwhile, converted wholesale to coal. Shortly thereafter, the same elementary school’s gym teacher explained to the auto industry all the reasons that this was a terrible idea and they moved on to electric-, garbage-, and midget-powered vehicles instead.
Everything was great and pollution went away forever.
Except in West Virginia.
Much like the oil companies before them, West Virginia had lost its shit when fuel sources were switched away from coal to saner alternatives. Unlike the oil companies, though, they couldn’t launch a full-scale assault on anything, so they seceded from the galaxy instead, just in case Earth, or some other planet, tried to institute an interstellar standard at some point.
Also from High Voltage:
After the First Robot War ended the world for the ninth time, Los Alamos, in what was then the state of New Mexico, was rechristened as the capital of the United States of America, its scientists ruling as democratically-elected kings and queens. Billions of dollars were funneled into technological research and, in short order, cancer was cured, global warming was reversed, and electric cars became commercially viable and less ridiculous-looking. Everything – literally, everything – that scientists had spent years toiling over and hypothesizing about, hamstrung by shoestring budgets and time travelers from the eighteenth century using the Bible as legal precedent, became a reality.
When the Kingdom of Los Alamos was deposed – the former rulers chased out of their city by heavily-armed helicopters – the scientists did what they had to do to survive. Some took jobs with private companies, some with the government’s new Department of the Biggest Gosh Darned Explosion You Ever Saw. Most, though, retreated to the surrounding volcanoes and underground laboratories littered across New Mexico, waiting and plotting, stewing in their resentments until they boiled over and became full-fledged supervillains and mad scientists.
Now, I’m not saying I can predict the future, but maybe read the books if you want to know what’s up for the next four years.