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Writer’s note: this was written right before the most recent US presidential election.  I found the absurdity that someone like Sarah Palin might be elected Vice President so compelling that I pushed it to its logical conclusion.

After the US falls under its own economic deadweight, and roving bands of ex-stock brokers and ex-bankers make war upon each other, the former country’s last president, Sarah Palin, will become its supreme ruler.

She will build an arena for the bands to fight each other to the death: Palindrome!

Another boring day at the office. Same old dreadfully tedious numbers.

Except when there’s a discrepancy, in which case it’s the same old procedure, even if the moment of discovery is exciting for about a second.

As my cubicle neighbor starts to sneeze uncontrollably, I login to my auditor’s account.

It was the ultimate closed-room mystery!

Everyone was found dead, with no trace of violence, poison, or disease.

A gun was found in a drawer, but it was proved conclusively that it had never been fired.

The authorities were baffled to no end: the gun had everyone’s prints all over!

The gun was left in the drawer.

Everyone knew it was there, but no one dared use it.

Each one of them died, one after the other, while the detective tried in vain to puzzle things out.

In the end, he died, too.

And the gun remained in the drawer.

“Life is like a bad video game.”

“There’s no tutorial.”

“It takes a while to figure out, and you never get it completely.”

“A lot of it feels more like work than a game.”

“The balancing is out-of-whack.”

“The graphics are meh.”

“The plot makes no sense…”

“Then, game over.”

“Breakthrough!”

“What?”

“I’ve modified this phone.  Its reception circuitry is now temporally out of phase.”

“In English, please.”

“This phone is connected to the future.”

“Oh.  How far into the future?”

“I dunno.”

“Guess you’ll have to make a call.”

“You do it.”

“No, you.”

Just then, the phone rang.

“The computer’s frozen, again!”

“What were you doing this time?”

“Not my fault, this time.”

“Well, what were you doing?”

“Just playing a game…”

“How long have you been playing?”

“Four hours.”

“Gotta run the defrost cycle every two hours, or this happens.  Now just wait until it thaws out.”

“What’s that smell?”

“That, my good friend, is the smell of fear, amplified a billion-fold.”

“Smells like stale pee.”

“One of the ingredients.”

“Dangerous?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, is it toxic or something?”

“It’s perfectly safe.”

Just then, all predators in a ten-mile radius burst in and ate them.

“This DVD will show us the future!” he said.

“What did you waste your money on, now?  Some self-help guru’s prognostications?  Some crackpot financial analyst’s get-rich-quick scheme?” she said.

“No, this will be actual footage, from the future!  Watch!”

He starts it.

Footage from the lab.

White flash.

Then static.

The killer walked up to his victim from behind, and backstabbed him.

The victim fell, face up, revealing to the killer that he’d actually killed himself.

“Oh, shit!” he thought, looking upon his own, now inert features. “That’s the last time I go back in time!”

How right he was.