“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” - George Washington.
James Slaughter had used to love cats before this global human disaster happened to the planet Earth. And he had been fond of reading before they prohibited every book except for Koran. In far back 2004 James had got by chance a volume of Russian almanac “The XXI Century’s Afternoon” edited by Boris Strugatsky, and was really impressed with the short story, which title can be translated as “Get away! Go to stars!” by July Burkin. The author expressed his own belief within the slogan: The war was lost, lost irrevocably and definitively, and the failing civilization merely had no future. Absolutely none. At least over here, on earth. The loser had only phantasm of a hope to survive somewhere in different worlds...
“Sorry, man, you were wrong, goddamn wrong”, - this annoying thought appeared in Slaughter’s head every time when there was a cat in his sight. - “They made all the things awfully bad far earlier than the mankind managed to arrange space traveling to the stars even with the one way ticket, and it started in 2014.” - James’s sighing for the flesh-pots of Egypt could not bring neither peace, nor assistance to him and few thousands, maybe a million, of people who were not proselyted to Islamism. And now it’s too late. They’re prosecuted, sterilized, locked in reservations, and have no future. Absolutely none.
This was one of the days when ALL inhabitants of the Old World and the New World had their common celebration, and they called it White Friday. Why Friday? Because they always have weekends, and holidays on Fridays. Why White? Because on this day the war was over, when millions of white flags appeared hanging next to each door and window of survivals. The Peace Treaty was nothing but performance, and it was signed under in 2024 by a handful of Deputy Representatives, weak and ignorant, falsely “elected” from random governments of approximately thirty countries.
“Oh, sorry again, my Russian comrade”, - such a divagation made James’s internal discursive colloquium more vivid under the circumstances, - “Your country did not participate in that negotiation and bargaining. Russians were so clever that they had built their Iron Fence, a real one, not kind of political Iron Curtain of the twentieths, during the period of the latest war. So, the Russian party was invited just in capacity of observer force. And, of course, we understood that the chance of military cooperation to Russia against the Islamic State was lost in vain because of our own stubbornness and stupidity.”
The War of the Worlds, as some people called it instead of the Third World War, can be considered as the most severe disaster in the history of the known civilization, meaning that some scientists guess there were more than one mankind formations on the Earth before, which had passed away as a result of global warfare conflicts. Billions had died, and the map changed its skin. After losing ability of defense, and still facing the threat of vaster danger, most of nations decided to unite their efforts, and gave up independence in the sake of surviving. So, when Americans dropped some atomic bombs on Japanese islands (again!), and countries of the Pacific and Indian Oceans suffered from crisscrossing fire between African and South American continents, the Great Indian-China came to an existence.
Defensing own borders and confident countries of Asia and Middle East from Islamic State attacks, the Russian protectorate covered almost the whole continent, and the Great Russian Empire was restored in the new borders, like to former Germany in the West, to Saudi Arabia in the South, and to Indian-China somewhere in the Pakistan mountains in the South-East. Using the previous experience of their remote ancestors Russians continued the Great Wall of China with the enormous fortifications in the directions to the east, and to the west, and all around, along the land frontiers.
The Islamic State could not resist the Russian war machine, but they had wisely arranged the creeping occupation of the Western Europe and the Northern America, and exterminated the negroid race in Africa, Latin America, and everywhere else, building their Great Islamic Caliphate in the emptied territories. “If you can imagine what kind of weapons had been used in that immense war, you understand the scales of megadeath. Don’t you, pal?” - James Slaughter has seen with his own eyes the hills of dead corpse, and smelled with his own nose the “aroma” of burning flesh. Europe was really helpless, while left to its fate by politicians got absorbed in playing games. Nobody even noticed the moment of deadline passing, and voila!
In the world of the Great Islamic Caliphate one can keep a life, of course, but first every chosen must pass through the ceremony of converting to Islamism. “Hey, body, do you believe that many of white people became chosen? ‘Cause not! And if you are not selected, say 'good bye' to the balls!” - somehow James even laughed at this joke made to himself. Most of the women became pieces of furniture in the houses of Muslims. Then they put survivals to stony and isolated islands after the procedure, and gained some business effects from the slaves. “But whom they are going to exploit when all castrates die, I wonder?” - however, the matter was not important at all since nothing could be corrected. The White Friday for Slaughter and any other James, John, Will or No-name meant only day without work.
“OK, people, now it’s time for you to ask me, why you don’t like cats? It’s so simple, men. Because Allah likes them. He doesn’t like me, but he likes cats! But there is one more problem with these bastard animals. On this day ten years ago, they say, a cat was the first living organism met by the Islamic soldiers in the street of Paris before making the Peace Treaty. And they deemed it as the Ambassador of Allah. So simple!” - and as usual this thought became concluding in the James’s mind. Tired and exhausted man extracted a bottle of cheap home-made whiskey from the old fridge, probably contemporary to the cute dictators of the past century in comparison to the present day butchers, and sat at the table.
“Thank you, God, for our daily bread and glass of alcohol! Let me say a toast to this Black Friday, which happened to the European values together with the foolish governments of the Both Worlds. I can’t say much to the human beings, who spend their miserable lives in crowded towns, because they are surrounded with harsh deserts of nuclear anomaly, but anyway let them live, amen!” - said James Slaughter aiming his glass to the ceiling of tiny cabin, which only can be available as a shelter for him. Luckily, not so many cats wander around islanders' premises. (2014)