By James Fowler

A boomerang epidemic in the 2020s, COVID 27, dropped IQs by double digits worldwide. The new variant sidestepped all vaccines and within a couple years had infected practically the whole human race. While its kill rate was low, its ability to produce long-term symptoms was unsurpassed. Chief among these was brain fog, a sensation of being packed in mental gauze. Higher-order thinking proved impossible for most. Even daily routines involved a grueling uphill struggle.

At first the medical community believed the condition largely psychosomatic, a mass hysterical response fed by media frenzy. When doctors themselves reported having the viral “dum-dums” though, rendering them unable to report to work, this escalating crisis quickly became an international priority. The global supply chain was in danger of collapsing. Workers at every link could barely summon the clarity to get their job done. Tasks, machines they had long mastered now grew bewildering. Everyone now felt like an apprentice, none too sharp at that. 

Produce rotted in fields as farmers lost control of their harvesters, which seemed too complicated to operate. (Airline pilots felt the same about their grounded jets.) All they could manage with what migrant help could be scared up was to pick a portion of their acreage by hand. Then, instead of dealing with middle-man logistics, they simply set up roadside stands and sold things for whole dollar amounts. Pick-your-own sites also proliferated. As people found it ever more difficult to fuel, charge, or even drive vehicles, walk-up business steadily climbed. Those who relied on self-driving features were subject to increasingly glitchy navigation systems. Paper maps grew in demand, though reading them seemed a lost art.

Power grids, the Internet, water supply became on-again, off-again services run by skeleton crews with their wits more or less about them. Financial networks were disrupted. Cryptocurrencies cratered. The cash economy returned, along with barter. In country after country, all loan payments were suspended and evictions banned. Civilization was in a holding pattern until the crippling microbe relented, if ever.

Among those who could still form ideas, mainly Mensa types whose intellects functioned passably even after being shaved, some thought modern technology a contributing factor. They argued that the internet, like television on steroids, had laid the groundwork by damaging attention spans, sustained reasoning, and memory capacity as people off-shored neural processes and storage to coded surrogates. The remnants of their ideation went as far as conspiracy theories and falsehoods vehemently repeated on social media. Ironically enough, human culture’s best short-term hope seemed to call for turning over general management to AI. As its organic tenders grew less able to monitor systems, perhaps it could learn to take up the slack, become autonomous. Of course, it might come to decide that its bipedal creators were superfluous and pull the plug on them. A wrinkle in evolution, so to speak.

For this reason, a vanguard of Brahmins has emerged, insisting that the best way forward is a path of simplicity, turning the cultural clock back to its setting before the Industrial Revolution. As much work as possible is to be done by hand, using basic tools. Let the various grids shut down. Amish communities are held up as models. This view assumes that human population will shrink drastically, that the scale of sustainability will be a fraction of its former magnitude. To be simple, according to these sages, is more than a gift. It is the fittest survival skill in a new landscape. 

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James Fowler has published two poetry volumes—The Pain Trader (Golden Antelope Press, 2020); Postcards from Home (Kelsay Books, 2024)—and a collection of short stories, Field Trip (Cornerpost Press, 2022). His short fiction has appeared in such journals as Caesura, DASH, the Southern Review, Gambling the Aisle, and Cave Region Review.