Exbetaniw 2

https://opensea.io/collection/boringpunksnftWhat if animals could talk?

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https://www.hoopladigital.com.au/audiobook/the-future-swarm-peter-liam/19509840Borrow The Future Swarm Free with your library card

Transcript

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Expetinile two, Expetinile two, the Great Moo Awakening, Part one, chapters one two Rob Ixbetinil didn't so much return to Earth as stumble into it. One moment he was drifting somewhere between cosmic enlightenment and extreme boredom. The next he was back in Brisbane with an empty fridge and four zero zero zero unopened emails from tax offices he didn't know existed. His first public reappearance came accidentally when he hijacked a dentist's livestream. Australians expecting advice, about flossing instead saw Rob, Hair Wilder beard suspiciously, luminous, grinning like he'd just invented caffeine. Gee Day Rob hears I can hear animals now. That was all he said before the feed cut out. Within hours conspiracy forums declared him an alien A, prophet, or a byproduct of NBN interference. But three days later Rob uploaded a video demonstration featuring his new invention, the Zulinguophone a shiny metallic sphere, about the size of a soccer bowl that hummed like a meditating washing machine. He placed it next to a magpie. The magpie tilted its head and said Clearly nice haircut, mate. Shame about the thought patterns. That clip broke the internet. Across the planet, tech reviewers fought to get prototypes. Influencers threatened court action if they weren't sent one first. Within twenty four hours, every celebrity with a pet posted shot collar level reactions to their animals in a monologue. Dogs delivered over enthusiastic pep talks. Cats issued ultimatums. Goldfish demanded more interesting data. For a shining week humanity basked in what everyone called the age of mutual yapping. And then the cows spoke. It started at a dairy farm near Toowomba where a journalist, desperate for clicks and possibly closure, activated A, zooling your phone beside an elderly brown cow named Doris. Doris looked into the camera with eyes that could guilt trip saints. I've seen generations go, she said. You took our children called it breakfast, and never even said thank you. You eat us and still complain about the taste. The reporter fainted halfway through the sentence. The video went viral before he hit the ground. Within days cows across the world released their own recordings. One particularly eloquent bull quoted climate change data while chewing hay. Another founded A YouTube channel called Pasture Prime. Hashtag hashMoo two trended for forty eight straight hours. Executives at major beef companies held emergency meetings that began with moo. And ended with existential dread. The stock market trembled. Meanwhile vegan influencers couldn't post fast enough, and plastic cheese manufacturers declared a moral victory. But the true turning point came when a coalition of dairy herds released a full length documentary titled The Grass Was Greener Once. It hit every streaming service at once complete, with a melancholic cello soundtrack and opening narration by Doris herself. Once she began we were legends Now we are lunch. The public went besirk. Half of humanity cried, the other half, announced they'd always preferred almond milk anyway. Donations poured in within two months the cows established their own production company, Eat Me Media, and then used the profits to found a lab grown beef startup, Eat Me Industries. Tagline Taste Progress Not Regret Investors stampeded harder than the herds they'd previously ignored. By the time the global summit on cross species, communication ethics convened in Jin Chickens had unionized goats were threatening class actions, and someone claimed dolphins were ghost writing romance novels. Rob Expetinu watched it all from the couch of his caravan, eating cereal straight from the box with a sense of parental pride. He hadn't meant to trigger social evolution, he just wanted to make small talk less small. Art creates empathy, he told a late night interviewer. Sometimes empathy creates chaos. You're welcome. The reporter asked if he felt responsible for the economic, collapse of the global beef industry. Rob shrugged. Beef made me sad anyway. Outside his window, a cow walked past wearing sunglasses and a lanyard that read producer. Part two chapters three four chapter three Birds of Disorder, once the cows won the internet, every other species wanted. The chickens were first They hadn't forgotten what humans had done to them, and thanks to the Zulinguophone they finally had a decent microphone. Their opening statement came from a barn in Iowa, but was subtitled in thirty languages before breakfast. A white feathered, speaker known simply as Henrietta Clucksworth, faced the camera, ruffled her wings, and said we are not nuggets. We are narratives it was the most poetic thing ever said by anything with a beak. Within hours, the Federalist movement had an official logo A, theme song and two competing documentaries, free range or free lie and yoke fellas. Every protest chant started with Bork, and ended with demands for better housing conditions, free dust baths and airspace dignit. Fast food chains attempted damage control by changing menus to plant based adjacent protein options trademark, which confused everyone and satisfied no one. Even so, sales sawed, proving humanity would still eat almost, anything so long as it came with a coupon. Meanwhile, goats entered the conversation in their usual style, chaotic but charming. They founded an advocacy group, called Asterisk Naer, no awkward affection allowed. Asterisk their public, statement read we like hugs, but not weird hugs write. The media had no idea how to handle that, which only made it funnier. At one press conference, a goat lawyer named Bruce head butted a camera and declared harassment your honour. Before eating his own supoena as a power move. Online memes exploded One read mess with the goat you get the horns legally. To keep up sheep farmed a self help brand named Woolness Ambassadors, promoting in a piece through, synchronized grazing and meditation bleats streamed live every Sunday. They sold merch, humans bought it nobody, questioned how the shipments always arrived warm. Farmers, jet lagged from moral whiplash, tried to adapt. One dairy tycoon released an apology video filmed beside a repentant cow, both wearing matching suits. It didn't help that halfway through, the cow interrupted him to say wouldst thou like to swap places, Grey. The video got sixty million views. Meanwhile, Rob X Betinu became the accidental messiah of talking animals. Every late night host wanted him. Every government committee blamed him. He accepted neither invitations nor apologies. Instead he stayed in his caravan, drinking instant coffee and tinkering with his next invention. He called it the kaleidoscope, a handheld version of the Zulingophone designed, he claimed to explore greener conversations. Nobody asked for details. Everyone assumed it meant something safe like grass therapy. That optimism wouldn't last Chapter four Interview with the Instigator when Rob finally appeared on live television again. The world held its breath literally, the show's network requested silence out of respect for the potential collapse of civilization. The interviewer was Vanessa Tring, veteran journalist and two time winner of most likely to regain her sanity on camp. She began with standard questions Did he realise his invention had reshaped the workforce? Did he know cows now owned stock in Tesla? How did he feel being treated like a modern day, Noah armed with Wi Fi? Rob grinned. Look, I didn't tell them what to say. I just turned on the subtitles. Vanessa countered, the subtitles destroyed the economy. Yeah, Rob said. But it's a really honest economy now. Off camera, producers begged her to press about the kaleidoscope. She leaned forward. Rumour is you're working on a new device. Something that can translate plants. Rob paused, gave her that half smile that always preceded global panic, and said not translate. Listen. I think photosynthesis has opinions. The audience laughed nervously, unsure if he was joking. Rob clearly wasn't. All living things communicate, Vanessa. We just choose what, frequencies to ignore, he said. Animals were easy. Plants are trickier, they gossip slowly. The network cut to a commercial for lawn fertilizer halfway through. Later that night, a leaked recording surfaced of Rob muttering to a ficus plant. The subtitles read your welcome. The clip hit number one on social media, under the tag header talking trees. Garden clubs panicked, herbalists demanded royalties. Vegan influencers suffered a collective existential, crisis now that lettuce was potentially literate. While the world spiraled, Eat Me Industries unveiled anew, campaign starring Doris the Cow their founding visionary, sipping a smoothie beside Rob's old laser diagram. Progress, Doris said calmly tastes like permission. Part three Chapters five six Chapter five Eat Me Rises By early two thousand and thirty Eat Me Industries had become the most powerful company on earth, led entirely by cows in suits. They renamed, the stock exchange the Mu York Market, and rang in trading, hours each day with a ceremonial bell kicked by a retired bull named Stanley. Their flagship product, Empathy Cut's trade mark, was lab grown beef, embedded with micro stories, short emotional memories, recorded by real cows before cultivation. Each fillet came with AQR code linking to a wholesome tale like The Day I Discovered, Dandelions, or My Friend Greg the Farmer Who Cried. Consumers claimed it made dinner feel spiritually balanced. Critics called it culinary emotional blackmail. Either way profits skyrocketed. Soon the company branched into fashion with asterisk Muware Asterisk, a cruelty free leather substitute that smelled faintly of nostalgia and grass. Human designers were hired as interns under cow supervisors who rejected anything, too utterly derivative. The press dubbed it bovine modernism. Meanwhile, the Federalists licensed their anthem to a global fitness app, Cluck Forward, thirty days to better beaks. Goats launched motivational seminars titled Head But Your Way to Confidence. Even worms negotiated compost royalties. Planet Earth had become one massive, zoonotic startup incubator. Governments scrambled to legislate species parity protocols. Politicians tried saying My fellow beings at rallies, which pleased nobody and confused everyone. Through it all, Rob Exbetany remained unbothered, living quietly in his caravan on the outskirts of Brisbane, surrounded by a small herd of self employed sheep who charged him rent in moral support. He'd used the last of his your not punk fortune to build a small laboratory powered by solar panels and mild regret. Inside he kept dozens of prototypes for the kaleidoscope, his next big leap. Whenever journalists visited, he simply said, I'm just trying to make salad less awkward. Chapter six The Empathy Experiment, the Empathy Uplink happened by accident. Rob had designed the kaleidoscope to detect micro vibrations in plants effectively, listening to leaves. But one evening he spilt an entire mug of instant coffee onto the circuit board, and blew half the wiring into enlightenment. When the device rebooted, it didn't just pick up the flora around him, it picked up everything. Birds, insects, clouds, humans in traffic even the air itself. It wasn't translation this time. It was feeling. Within seconds, Rob heard what it was like to be everything at, once, a frog anxious about rain, a spider proud of her web symmetry, a traffic light secretly fearing obsolescence. It was overwhelming, beautiful, and completely unmarketable. Of course he uplooed the code. Within twenty four hours, tech enthusiasts worldwide installed the empathy uplink firmware into their existing zoolingues. The result was immediate and catastrophic. People stopped arguing online because they literally felt each other's headaches. Debates ended with group naps. Stock traders quit mid sentence, bursting into tears over the emotional burden of currency conversion. For three glorious days world peace broke out. Then everyone had a collective meltdown. Airplanes grounded themselves in solidarity with the ozone. Rivers refused to flow out of protest against erosion. Cats now, emotionally synced with humans, suddenly understood, mortgage stress and stopped using litter boxes out of sympathy. Governments begged Rob to shut it down. He shrugged Can't The Trees have admin rights now. Meanwhile, Eat Me Industries launched an emergency marketing campaign, empathy tastes better than ever. Accompanied by a limited edition smoothie line called existential bana. When asked how it felt to have accidentally merged every consciousness on Earth into one cosmic sulk, Rob said bit loud honestly. That's when things started to hum. Satellites picked up patterns, rhythmic pulses across the planet, each matching the heartbeat frequency of a blue whale somewhere in the Pacific. Astrophysicists panicked, theologians sighed, and Rob just switched the kaleidoscope to standby. Looks like the broccoli is trying to phone home, he muttered. The next morning the sky shimmered faintly green, and somewhere deep in orbit the infinite distance laser, the one that started it all, powered up again on its own. Part four chapters seven, eight and epilogue chapter seven, the green sky, by the time anyone realized the infinite distance laser had switched itself back on. It was too late to pretend it was normal, weather the night sky glowed softly green, humming and perfect, rhythm with the global power grid. Birds sang in chord progressions. Cows reported vivid dreams of larger pastures. The scientific community called it an atmospheric data, reflection phenomenon. Everyone else called it Tuesday. Humanity had seen stranger things that month alone. Robic Betanew, annoyingly calm, sat outside his caravan tinkering with the kaleidoscope, now upgraded with parts he'd, scavenged from a broken coffee machine and one surprisingly, patient etchedner. He seemed amused rather than alarmed. When reporters asked if the green sky represented first contact, he said technically second. First was when the cows started A content network. Moments later, the laser beamed toward deep space, sending, a data burst so large it turned half of Earth's satellites into sudden poets. The signal echoed through the cosmos, and bounced back nearly instantly, a perfect three D map of the Milky Way reprojected in the clouds above every major city. People stepped outside and saw their galaxy printed across the heavens like cosmic augmented reality. Then something weird happened, sections of the map began replaying old moments, as if space itself were buffering. Citizens in Sydney watched moving constellations showing, historical clips dinosaurs waving, early humans high fiving, Rob accidentally inventing empathy. Someone shouted times trending backward. Governments tried to shut down the feed, but the laser now seemed to be broadcasting asterisk from the biosphere itself asterisk. Every tree, river, and animal hummed in sync, a living antenna, transmitting one shared message none could yet translate. Except of Kos Rob. He gazed upward, eyes reflecting the galactic colours, and whispered it's just saying thank you. Chapter eight Press Conference of Everything forty eight hours later, the largest press event in history, convened in an open field outside Canungra. They were more microphones than grass blades. Representatives from every species attended, humans, cows, birds, at least one disgruntled octopus in a tank, plus an entirely dignified koala, serving as security. Rob took the stage wearing his usual cargo shots and a T shirt. That reed I just work here. He began so we've accidentally unified consciousness with a side of milk. Laughter rippled through the crowd, then through the forest, behind it, then faintly through the sky itself. It echoed all the way to orbit. Here's the thing, Rob continued, the universe isn't mad. It just wanted to join the chat. He explained that the green glow was what happened when. Someone asked how to fix it. Easy Rob said, producing one last device, a small cylindrical, remote labelled mute button, prop He pressed it. The humming ceased. The laser dimmed. The sky returned to its standard apocalyptic blue. Birds blinked, disoriented, then immediately started tweeting about it again. The audience roared applause and mooed, and clucked and croaked, and even the octopus applauded by flinging confetti made of algae. Rob bowed, muttered your welcome, and walked off stage, straight into a shimmering beam of light that nobody had installed. It swallowed him whole and politely burped. Next morning the world returned mostly to normal. Mostly Epilogue after moon months passed. Eat me industries expanded into education. The Federalists published a surprisingly good cookbook titled Meals with Consent. Gardeners began whispering to their plants just in case. Every few weeks, satellites still tracked faint signals from somewhere beyond the Milky Way. They'd appear briefly, like laughter patterns written in binary. Experts said it was static. Doris the cow disagreed. During one dreamy interview she looked straight at the camera and said, He's fine. He finally found a universe that listens. Somewhere in the static between stars, a familiar voice answered back be authentic. The broadcast ended with a soft moo and a sound suspiciously like applause.