Street Life Scene in a Dystopian Sci-Fi Megacity № 8

Titled “Two Packs a Day”

One could be forgiven for believing the chief meteorologists on the dueling state media channels to be archaisms, artfully - if artificially - kept from extinction to maintain some sense of continuity and commonality with better days past. Two living fossils from days when skies were bright blue, and lung cancer arose from smoking two packs a day. The masters of this dystopian nightmare may be craven, but they are clever too.

As the superfluous weathermen gesticulate wildly over their sundry data overlays one need only flip a coin to get the weather: suffocating smog or endless, acidic rain.

Climate change gone wild and feral conspires with unchecked pollution and ecological collapse to produce this menacing, schizoid mess, ironically aided by the few remaining geoengineering efforts flailing away with haywire abandon from lack of supervision or repair.

Lung cancer is now the leading cause of death, merely from breathing in the angry air’s daily assault.