News to Digest in the Year 2025

By Jim Banholzer

MMXXV was supposed to be the year for me to retire. But, President Jenna Blush’s impeccably developed scientific task force has shown that we industrious ape-evolvers live longer by not retiring. So now, for our own good social security biscuits start at age 75.

Robbie is my reliable robot helper for delivering underground newspapers. Readers still prefer actual newspapers –now that they’re edible. It’s just that the soy ink doesn’t stick as well to the stomach when it’s bad news for the reader. The sidewalks stay clear of snow for our distribution Segways, since the city elders were wise enough in the 20teens to invest in a new maintenance-free radiant heat invention. One can of “depleted” plutonium mixed in cement goes a long way. Even the wolves feel safe warming their bellies on these side walks, knowing that every bullet has a number on it and will be traced back to the owner via RFID tracking.

Last week we rode up the Baldy Gondola for the price of a Cheney dollar. Robbie and I looked down at the new buildings on the hill. I never thought that the definition of what a “hillside” is could be so easily amended. Well, it doesn’t look nearly as bad from up here as it does from town. Just hope we don’t get another avalanche like the Borah quake of ’09 when that slab of rock closed Trail Creek all summer.

Riding down the Greenhorn YMCA gondola, we intersect the airport tram that transfers to the Mackay area. Ten years ago, that town came alive to embrace the Chilly Slough airport /spaceport, where your tax dollars are shipped to astronomical places. Deicing’s not an environmental problem for the reservoir downstream either. It’s all done by microwaves now. The reservoir is being transformed into a holding pond for the ILL (Idaho Lunar Lab). It makes perfect horse sense since farmers get all the rain they need from designer storms –seeded from that old slough naturally. These storms on demand are a great backup system for snowmaking on Baldy and you know when they’re coming too -unless you’ve already eaten that scheduled section of the newspaper for lunch.

Think we’ll zip over on the tram to the Sacagawea Superdome this evening and catch the Frisbee Golf tournament. It’s retro day and players will be tossing discs the old-fashioned way –savages without remote controls. One back alley geezer, who resembles yours truly, tosses an Aerobie up into the ozone and around the neck of a Mastodon statue on his first try. Robbie enjoys this. I nudge him with my elbow pad joking that his frothing mouth will rust his lips. But he just stares at the game in a trace and takes another bite out of the program.

We head over to the Salmon Interpretive Museum next. Some kids are learning about what Salmon were. One whippersnapper holding a duzz-all device mentions he’s amazed that enough humans didn’t want to blast those darn dams. The HDTV on his wrist buzzes out a news report that the AFLAC duck has succumbed to avian flu. Well enough of this. At least the museum doesn’t have to show photos of what a tree was yet. That’s only on the other side of the cypress pond, where sharp inventors developed underwater chainsaws out of necessity.

It’s time for the bus to take us back to our affordable cell. We insert our marked wrists into the holographic security harness to get on. Confirming that we’re disarmed, it releases us through. Our driver is wearing a clown suit and he’s right to do so. Perhaps he’s the only thing in the valley that hasn’t changed. Even the elevation of the entire valley floor has risen five feet on account of all the garden mulch and earthly possessions hauled up from Twin over the years.

Yes, FEMA fixed that housing problem once and for all. The Timmerman Trapezoidal Manage-Mental camp rocks and rolls an Express train up here for the minimum wage workers. When Jeb Blush declared Martial law back in ’11 anyone suspected to have spoken too fancy-free was netted into this new workforce housing program. There’s even a store on the train. Good thing since most of Ketchum’s old shops are now vacuous second homes.

So in the spirit of Maxwell Smart memorize these words under a cone of silence before quickly swallowing them. Back in 2005 the United States was rated 44th in freedoms of the press. (See: Reporters sans frontières - Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index - 2005 ) We’ve been spiraling down a slippery Timmerman slope ever since. We’ll print all the news that fits until a high and mighty authority pops out of his protected penthouse, picks up a nutritious news wrap and discovers these underground points of light whose blushing brilliance need extinguished.

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