by JONATHAN STURGEON
A space telescope unfolds its golden mirror, blooming under the hidden light of the universe at the Second Lagrange Point, where it will offer the fruits of unpeaceful scientific progress to American humanity. It is named JWST, after a bigot who purged gay scientists from NASA, and it is well-positioned four units of lunar distance away from what is happening on Earth.
World leaders on Earth are searching for a resolution to the eight-billion-body problem. Eric Dean Wilson reports that ministers gathered at COP26 for “The Shitshow in Glasgow,” where, sipping tequila and vodka, they committed to ignoring the climate crisis despite significant cost outlays. Jessica Fletcher writes, in “Cut-Rate Eden,” of dilapidated parks and unused public spaces in New York City, which reflect the broken social hopes of the city’s past urban designers. In “Brick and Mortared,” Kevin Rogan surveys the damage wrought by landlords, Amazon, and the real estate monopoly Vornado across Manhattan, renamed Vornado Alley by some locals for its empty storefronts and unpeopled offices.
Meanwhile, in other horrifyingly actual Non-Places, the American government upholds its tradition of renditioning its presumed enemies to the crippling darkness of its global Black Sites; nuns in Tuscan Convents penetrate the mysteries of religion; and a nebulous cult of “cryptopians” worships at the altar of the Blockchain and prays to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, now the world’s richest man, who implores citizens of Earth to make more babies in advance of the colonization of Mars.
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