One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Terminus (A Litter Nation)

The year is 2022, and humanity is nearly snuffed out by the mountainous blankets of irresponsibly discarded, infectious disease prevention masks. In the narrow pathways between towering mask mounds, the few children still in existence play a darkly amended version of Rock, Paper, Scissors called Covid, Climate Change, Crushed by Maskalanche. The viral epidemic was just the beginning. It was exponentially worsened by humanity’s lack of concern for the environment.

Once the great scare hit, it was already too late. After the first few rounds of panic buying, the grocery stores were forced to turn people away in droves. There were still food goods and other necessities inside, but there was just no parking because the apathetic littering didn’t stop at masks. Every parking space was filled with mid-lot-abandoned shopping carts. The cart returners just couldn’t keep up, and decent humans, Good Samaritans with brain-enough to return the carts to the proper areas, mere feet away, were few and entirely outnumbered, not that it would have helped. There were just so many masks. There was no escaping them, nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, nowhere to eat, and it probably wasn’t even a good idea to breathe. 

(Please, wear your masks when it is appropriate, or don’t, no one is going to change anyone’s mind about that, but for the love of the Robot Overlords, don’t throw them on the fucking ground.)