Wacky Wednesday: Brave New World

21 Jul

Posted in Wacky Wednesday by Roger 1 Comment

Previously: There was good news and bad news about your latest attempt to use time travel to become rich without hard work or the need to wait for decades for your money to grow. The bad news is that your grandfather ended up withdrawing your money and using it himself decades before you were born. The good news is that he seems like he started a business with the money, so perhaps all is not lost…

As you talk to your aunts, uncles, and cousins at your grandfather’s birthday party, you begin to realize one of the biggest problems (if one of the generally unacknowledged ones) about using time travel to alter reality: you are out of sync with everyone you know, heck, the entire world. Just about everything you say, from talk about current events to comments about which school your family members are attending, just gets you weird looks and weirder responses. You decide to simply stop talking until you have time to closely scrutinize the history of the last fifty years and get on the same page as everyone else.

Still, you can’t resist trying to learn more about what your grandfather did with YOUR money. He talked about a business he opened back in the sixties, and that it ‘changed his whole life’. He didn’t mention any names, what the business did, or HOW it changed his life, although from the bored and knowing expressions on your other relatives’ faces, it’s a story that he told often enough that nobody needed to hear it any more. Nobody but you, that is.

So, you attempt to subtly ask your relatives to share information about the business, without mentioning sports, politics, current events, or any personal information that would lead them to believe you’re not who you say you are. (You can’t be sure that time travel exists in this version of reality; perhaps you’ll be mistaken as an identity stealing cyborg and dissected instead.) It takes a while (none of your relatives particularly want to talk about Granddad’s business), but you eventually learn that it was called Omnicorp (an ominous company name if ever you’ve heard one, even more ominous than ‘Microsoft’), and it still seems to be in existence.

Excited, you decide to cut out all the middlemen and go directly to the source. “Grandpa,” you ask, trying to sound curious but not completely ignorant, “tell me about Omnicorp.” You think you’ve done alright; the question is vague enough that Grandpa can interpret it any way he wants, and will be unlikely to jump to the conclusion that you’re completely ignorant of the past five decades of family history.

“Well, well; I’m glad one of my grandchildren still wants to hear the stories from this old man,” he responds, beaming. He proceeds to regale you with the story of how he used that sudden, unexpected wealth (YOUR money, you think with no small amount of bitterness that you play as close to your chest as possible) to start the Omnicorp, the ‘company that provides everything you need’ (somehow becoming even more ominous when you know the purpose behind the name). He was planning to start with the consumer goods of the day that were becoming more and more essential to the average household, and gradually growing to be a major competitor in every technological field on the planet.

You give him credit; he has chutzpah, if nothing else. Still, if the the business was still around, he must have done something right. You aren’t in a giant compound, patrolled by bodyguards and decorated with gold and diamonds, so you’re guessing he never achieved his goal of a company that was tops in the incredibly large field of everything. But even a small business, allowed to grow for decades, could still be influential and an excellent source of profit.

You want to ask what Omnicorp currently makes, but he speaks up before you have a chance, “You want to go visit the the factory? This party’s starting to get a bit boring…” You couldn’t ask for a better opportunity (or narrative convenience), so you readily agree and accompany him on a trip to the factory (he drives, so you don’t have to ask for directions to a place you should know how to reach).

You whistle in spite of yourself; the factory is big, really, really big. You see the large ‘Omnicorp’ sign, and follow Gramps inside, still wondering what it actually produces. Inside you see row after row of hamster cages, and you inadvertently flinch; there’s still so many memories of grooming hamsters. You take a moment to remind yourself that these hamsters can’t talk, when you start to hear voices all around you.

You look around in surprise, glancing at your grandfather. He’s standing next to a sign that says ‘Omnicorp: Proud Maker of Animal Translators Since 1978′. Your mind reels at the implications; first, that animal translators actually exist, and second, that your grandfather has been making money off them since the time of disco (did disco even exist in this reality? If not, they really dodged a bullet). It just seems surreal (even more so than everything else that you’ve gone through lately).

You’re about to ask your grandfather all the questions burning in your chest, when a screen comes on next to him. A dog appears, along with the crest of the President of the United States. Your granddad, without missing a beat, says “Hello, Mr. President.”