The GDP Growth Jungle

The farts were getting frequenter and louder. But red was unrelenting. It was the turbulent kind so was slightly more apparent than the laminar one. Red turned into green and with a sudden jerk amidst loud blaring of horns, the mechanical animals were off. And the laminar farts were back.

Wave after wave of a mist-ful layer of dead and discarded cells shepherded out from the aggressively growing concrete trees. Almost like how cancer grows. The almost invisible cells farmed themselves all over the city, brandishing themselves into the skin of the city. There was a cacophony of sounds too and with each crescendo, another wave.

The topography of the city bore a similarity to a Pac-Man game. The mechanical animals - multiple Pac-Mans, running around amidst the concrete trees but instead of consuming the elongated dots, they are pushing out elongated bars of smog. There are the natural trees - the green coloured ghosts of the past - in between trying to mitigate the effects of smog like the four coloured ghosts trying to stop the Pac-Man. It’s funny in an apocalypsical way.

Like a mushroom cloud, the white smog covered the entirety of the city. Throwing its tentacles here and there to the ground, blocking off the visibility beyond 100 metres all around. Like a comforter, it provided warmth to the city. Suffocating it enough that we would want more of these mechanical animals and concrete trees.

Whirring of the animals and the growth of the trees - a constant hymn to the obeisance of GDP Growth.

Humans sat inside each of these - their own made contraptions - working away furiously or maybe shopping away furiously, all towards the cause of GDP Growth. It’s like one giant interconnected (by internet) network with humans as processing nodes - processing and re-processing whatever s**t they can get their hand on - driving the traffic up in the network world which translates to GDP Growth in the real world.

Ironic, how the characters have changed.