100 Futures: Tales of Possibility

.02 (The Burducka Bush)

2016

They called it the Great Recession for a while. Then Japan start to slip into hyperinflation, like a cousin flirting with meth. For the next decade they called it the Great Disappoint. The world around me deteriorated while the world inside the screens became nearly perfect. The first time I read about William Burducka I was in college reading the local free rag. William Burducka was a teacher at the Colorado State working on a plant to help deal with global warming. He was the free agent pick up for the school hoping to specialize in order to compete with CU. I was impressed only because I was feeling the hope of success in Colorado. An agricultural product that we could grow in the arid semi dessert would be great. I also thought solar antenna's would be on the side of every house.

2028

I was working out of my cabin on the Western Slope when the Burducka bush made its first large scale appearance. In the Denver Metropolitan area a series of vacant and depressing fields were filled up with the bushes planted like groves of trees. They did well. Denver became the cleanest large city in the country, and then the world. I was laying out on the huge rocks called Stones of the Druids, just to feel small, when my mother died. The rocks are giant and when I walked around on them I felt as small as an ant, but I never felt as small as when I stood next to my mother's coffin. She died of a brain aneurysm. She was only fifty five years old.

2042

The Burducka bush made its way to China, and India rapidly. International cooperation pushed the plant into large scale production all around the world, and before long the sunrises matched my tired out eyes and glistened with radiant color. Quietly brain aneurysm climbed the charts until it was the leading cause of death in the United States. The boomers were keeling over like spent sunflowers. Years would pass before they would recognize the vast majority of cases were on the coast rather than old age. Florida was a perfect example of how they were confused for so long. Lots of old people lots of deaths by aneurysm. Colorado had one of the lowest body counts and its safety against natural disaster caused a mass migration. Colorado's electorates grew, the cities grew, but even more the biking paths grew. There were some walkers and runners, skateboarders and long boarders, and all kinds, but one thing was sure everyone felt the urge to get outside to enjoy the fresh air that smelled of rain.

2065

When the boomers were mostly gone the death rates on the coast stayed eerily high. Young and even healthy people were wisping out. The burducka bush was no longer being planted in groves, by this time it was growing wild. Though I thought it impossible the smell of rain started to make me sick. I stayed full time in my mountain cabin and was accompanied by most everyone in the world it seemed. What used to be a quiet mountain started to go bald with construction. The government moved too late. Even with organized demolition and large scale burns, the burducka bush spread. William Burducka died of a brain aneurysm before he found a way to kill the bush. I put a filter system on my cabin but there is no escaping the smell of oxygen. The burducka variants around the world dominated the rest of the plant life. Animals died as the food chain fell apart.

2081

PineElk and Burducka stew is what we eat now. Tastes like eating an evergreen tree. The pine elk are bigger than the old moose, but the meat is not very good. All the animals left are changing in the response to the increased oxygen concentrations. Death from oxygen overdose has eaten giant holes in the collective patchwork quilt of human knowledge. Humanity is fading away like a puddle of water drying in the sun. Like my consciousness as I lay on the Druid's Stones and take deep breathes.