I arrived home that afternoon after having taken the Pretoria Underground Hyperloop System, or the the mole as it is known round these parts. I will not fault you if you have never heard of Pretoria, so here’s a little fact sheet. It was where the great Elon Musk was born and raised, and it used to be the administrative capital of the former Republic of South Africa. Today it is nothing more than an administrative region in the greater Gauteng Metropolis, with the former city of Johannesburg serving as its CBD. Not the least bit ironic if you know Joburgers.
The Gauteng Metropolis in itself serves as the economic hub of the Southern African region and is also the capital of the province of Azania. The province of Azania of course being the former Republic of South Africa. The name change occurred when the republic joined the United Global Humanitarian Federation of Independently Managed Associated Territories, also just known as U.G.H.I.M.F.A.T., or the world government, if you want to keep it simple.
All former independent countries, apart from Switzerland of course, became a part of U.G.H.I.M.F.A.T. simply because it seemed like the next logical step in the evolution of humanity. Or, apparently at least, that is what they told themselves at the time. From what I have heard, U.G.H.I.M.F.A.T. is the result of someone coming across an antique radio broadcast about aliens invading New Jersey. They thought it was funny and decided to broadcast it across the globe.
Now I should interject here and say that I do not know how true all of this actually is. There are still many gaps that need to be filled in the story but this is what I could puzzle together thus far.
People were perplexed at first and did not know if they should believe the broadcast. Then live footage started coming in of New Jersey and the world got scared thinking the aliens did it. The mainstream and alternative media, both knowing very well that it was all a lie, started churning out clickbait article after clickbait article containing many half-truths and more complete lies.
This of course only exacerbated the problem until it got completely out of hand. The powers that be tried their best to put people’s minds at ease that there was no alien invasion occurring. Neither imminent nor perceived. Unfortunately for them, fake news has always been more interesting than the truth, and there wasn’t much that could be done to stop the madness. Thus the powers that be became the powers that were, leaving a power vacuum at the top.
As a result, and all of a sudden, new political parties sprung up all over the place on a platform of The aliens are coming! The right wanted more money for global crush, kill, and destroy capabilities, the left desired a global government for better arrogance coordination, and the moderates just wanted someone to listen to them. Two out of the three got what they wanted. The other one gave up on the notion that humans could be reasonable.
Nevertheless, the aliens never came, New Jersey was improved through a global relief fund, and no-one spoke of it again. To this day the whole event is hardly ever mentioned. Maybe the world just does not want to admit to itself that it may have been the butt of the greatest joke ever.
But that was of lesser concern to me at the moment. I needed to find my parents.
“Lina, I need you to do something for me,” I said as I walked into my apartment on the 21st floor of 8 Garsfontein Road.
