JS: The story became a legend. They would simply herd people to different areas of each city. One area would be selected for recycling. The people would be processed and turned into little food squares of “Soylent Green.” There were lots of different colors of food squares made from the various forms of food still available but there wasn’t enough to go around.

SK: Do you expect me to believe people ate squares rather than real food and never asked what was in them?

JS: Oh, we had a lot of mystery food toward the end. It had labels on it but as the news reports showed, the CEOs of corporations would put anything in processed food for a buck. We even had companies putting toxic automotive antifreeze into toothpaste because it was cheaper than the glycerin they were supposed to be using as a thickening agent; since it was sweet, they could also cut back on the sugar and other sweeteners in the mix.

SK: Oh come off it! People would have died in large numbers if that story were true.

JS: Believe me, it is true. I have it in a news magazine somewhere in that stack behind you. The other truth about toxins is that in tiny enough amounts, they don’t kill. Sometimes they don’t even make you sick. But when people keep adding more and more, really bad things happen.

If you don’t believe that, then you won’t believe women used to kill their husbands with a beauty treatment.

SK: I would believe many women want to kill what they have for a husband but we simply don’t have a lot of choices when we marry.

JS: During the Renaissance in Italy, Signora Toffana invented Acqua Toffana. It was a face powder containing the toxin arsenic. Signora told customers to only wear this face powder around their husbands, but women being women, they wore a little bit each day. Eventually they started wearing large quantities of it when going out with their husbands because milk white skin was all the rage. By that time the women were nearly immune to arsenic, their husbands not so much. Signora was put to death for causing the death of around six hundred husbands. Signora should have sold that powder only to unhappily married women, it appears.

There were other stories throughout history: some true, some not. What is true is that there were many beauty products made with toxins so women could have pale, milk–white skin. At the root of all of these stories is the same odd little truth. Humans can build up a tolerance to nearly any toxin if starting off with tiny enough doses, which gradually increase over a prolonged period. Arsenic is believed to be one such toxin, especially given the documented face powder case.

SK: How could such a story actually be true?

JS: Simple. Women never do what they are told, that’s a historical fact! Getting a woman to do something like follow instructions is a task akin to herding cats. These women completely ignored Signora’s advice. They wore small quantities of the powder all of the time. As their immunity rose, and any ill feeling that could have been associated with the powder diminished, they wore more and more. Eventually, they put on enough to kill multiple men and went out for the evening.

SK: I’ve never heard of that time, so I cannot comment on the day.

JS: Good.

SK: Good?

JS: You’re starting to drop the “if it ever existed” clause, and that, my lady, is a beginning.

SK: Does that mean we are ready to talk about the Microsoft Wars?

JS: Not yet, but you are certainly closer than when you arrived.

SK: What more could I possibly need to know?

JS: Do you know what the Internet was? How GPS worked? Ever heard of a submarine?

SK: You mean the sandwich?

JS: No, I mean the thing that gave the sandwich its name.

SK: That would be no on all counts then. But after that, can I finally ask about the Microsoft Wars?

JS: Before you learn about those, you must learn about Atlantis and the other survivors.

SK: But then can I ask?

JS: Sure. By then, you will realize the wars, like Microsoft itself, really never mattered. People just wanted to believe they did. Wars, like corporations, exist only for a brief period of time. Both may make contributions to society during their short existence but in the end, those contributions get rolled into many other things and forgotten.

Beginnings, no matter how important they are, get forgotten. There was a time when it seemed that everyone knew who invented the first usable computer. It was heralded as a new age for mankind when the thing was put to work. Eventually, there were a bewildering assortment of computers, operating systems and software. People no longer cared about who was first. They became focused on what was next. When people change their focus, both information and history gets lost. The best you can do is identify one of the beginnings because the beginning was thought to be common knowledge and not recorded.

SK: Do you really believe that?

JS: It is a sad fact of humanity. You have already experienced it yourself.

SK: You cannot know that.

JS: Does your culture have some sort of rite or ritual all children must go through to be considered adults?

SK: Yes.

JS: Does this even require some official to oversee or preside over it, and do most families have some meal or celebration after?

SK: Yes.

JS: Is yours even permanently recorded?

SK: My mother has the certificate in a chest along with other things from my childhood.

JS: Does it include the list of those who attended and what they discussed?

SK: The list probably but not their private conversations.

JS: Has anyone who attended one of your celebrations gone on to do something remarkable? Perhaps something that was first put to them at your celebration?

SK: My uncle. He came up with a blend of herbs that, when added to hot water, could cure a horrible flu, which was spreading. The fear of it was discussed openly at my party.

JS: So you have a list written on paper and stored in a wooden box along with other burnable things, but you do not have the conversation that prompted your uncle to invent a cure. Your uncle most likely created a new field of medical study for your people but it is not recorded on stone in a pyramid. Instead, it is common knowledge, it will remain unrecorded and the beginning will be lost.

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You are reading a special promotional version of “John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars.” This is the third book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:


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