Midsummer Madness (or what happens after the pandemic) - Katherine Roberts

 

So it didn't happen, then? I hate being right (see last month's poem).

The curse of the speculative fiction writer is that we can usually see ahead of the curve. Mine tends to whizz me about 10 years into the future, which is pretty useless for planning purposes since 10 years is plenty long enough to forget what I once thought I knew. But for a bit of fun this midsummer (when we all thought life could finally restart but it can't yet), here are my predictions for the long awaited post-pandemic years: 

There will be a revolution in England. It will fail.

Wales will have to wait two weeks for their revolution, and do it better than us.

Scotland will declare independence and apply to rejoin the EU.

The EU will say 'non'. The Scots will remember William Wallace and decide they are better off alone, anyway.

When we are finally allowed to vote again, the current government will not be re-elected. The opposition will not be elected, either (since they do not seem to be opposing anything). So we could end up with the LibDems, except they will have long ago disbanded and become something else.

Someone in a lab at the far side of the world will finally find a cure for the common cold. This will be too late, since it only works on those whose bodies do not recognise the current pandemic's spike protein. Everyone will queue up for the cure, anyway, because nobody wants to be heard coughing in public.

Trillions of face masks will have been buried in special landfill sites beneath brand new housing estates, where the purchasers will soon begin to feel queasy and be told 'it's all in their mind'.

Class action lawyers will have a bumper decade.

Following a green government policy, everyone will be using electric everything, including cars. There will be a worldwide power failure when the magnetic poles reverse.

Everybody's phones will stop working on the same day at the same hour, leaving billions of confused people blinking at their screens.

Our moon will be shunted out of orbit by rogue 5G satellites knocked out by the resulting EMF pulse, and start a fatal trajectory towards Earth along with the redundant satellites. A government advisory committee will try to predict the worst case scenario and panic the already confused population into mass migration.

Most people will get lost, because their satnavs will send them the wrong way. This will be a blessing in disguise, since in the worst case scenario we will all die, anyway.

The rich with private spaceships will flee to Mars, experience acute homesickness a couple of years later, and bring back an alien virus to the survivors on Earth.

This will start another pandemic.

It will be called the Venus variant.

Please tell me I'm wrong this time!!!

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Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fiction for young (and older) readers.

Her latest book is The Horse Who Would Be Emperor about Roman Emperor Caligula's favourite racehorse, who attended the Senate when he wasn't eating golden oats or winning chariot races.

The Horse Who Would Be Emperor