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Thursday, February 4, 2016

Chickens and foxes

On a 5:50 hour bus ride from Toulouse to Barcelona on January 7th I wrote this story with a friend:



Once upon a time, there was a fox. This fox was a special fox because he hated eating rabbit and chicken, and preferred eating vegetables. Unfortunately due to the dietary requirements of fox biological systems, the fox couldn't get enough protein and so it died. Its family wasn't sad but happy when they knew it was dead, actually it was kind of a shame for them, to celebrate its death, they stole three chicks from a farm and made a big dinner with them. But then the farmer discovered the chicken stealers and went to war with the fox family, and The Great Fox War of '16 ensued, killings hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. At the end of the war, only chickens survived and decide to build a huge dictatorial empire. Years passed, then decades, and the decades turned to centuries, and eventually a small group of rebel chickens were fighting against the dictatorship to form a anarcho-communist society. As this group of rebels became bigger and bigger the chick King Cocorrico IX asked for help from the rare foxes who survived the great war to eat all the rebels and thus the first treaty between chicks and foxes was signed. Among the foxes though was a mutant fox who could survive without eating meat and was also a super genius who biologically engineered a virus that could change his fellow fox peers to also make them vegetarians, so he tried to get all the foxes to instead support the rebel chickens by not eating them. By a very persuasive speech the mutant fox became the chief of all the surviving foxes and the group decided to not eat the rebels and to fight against the empire, but as the other foxes were not vegetarian, foxes ate all the chicken who were not from the rebel group; the chief understood at this moment that other foxes accepted to fight with the rebels because they wanted to have more food, and after the dictatorship was eaten he decided to use his virus. At last, a peaceful society emerged and the vegetarian foxes lived happily with the rebel chickens in an anarcho-communist society, and they grew lots of pretty flowers all over the land and cultivated food based on ecologically friendly principles. But one day, a chicken fell in love with a fox and when they made love for the first time the chicken got contaminated by the virus and became a carnivore mutant chicken who cannot live without eating foxes, so she ate her lover. Scared for the future of their society, the council of chickens and foxes had an emergency meeting to decide how to contain the virus. But it's a really difficult point because if foxes don't have the virus in their veins they will eat chickens and if chickens get contaminated by the virus they will eat foxes, so they decided to do an enormous prevention campaign and make a law that foxes and chickens are not allowed to have sex, but as each time something is forbidden people want to break the law and the number of contaminated chicks rise up, so the council decided to have propaganda in media and school to say that sex between two races is horrible and penalized the interracial sex as a crime against the peace.

After a while, the propaganda set in and it became part of their culture. Chickens and foxes were segregated and those that fell in love were lynched. Meanwhile, a chicken scientist developed a way to artificially make fox meat grown in a laboratory without being part of the fox itself, so fox meat could be factory produced in bite-size pieces edible for consumption without harming any foxes.  The chicken part of the council applauded loudly and were very happy but the foxes did not agree at all because they thought that if chickens started to eat fox meat even though it did not come from real foxes they'd be in danger anyway. In fact, the process of making fox meat is very long and demands a lot of energy to produce. If it's produced in big quantities the production process and the distribution would pollute the environment, which is against the principle of eco friendly production in the constitution. There was a big argument in the council about the decriminalization of interracial sex and the distribution of fox meat.

In the meantime, the scientist got back to work to try to figure out this problem on his own through more engineering of viruses. He created a vaccine that could be given to chickens at birth to prevent them from contracting the virus. That way, even if chickens had sex with foxes the virus wouldn't infect them and they wouldn't turn into carnivores. So he came back to the council to submit his solution and the council was amazed. But the scientist wanted to get paid for what he has done for the country and proposed to give the council the formula for the vaccine on one condition. The council told him that they'll accept anything. He told them, "I want to be the owner of Grassy Land," which is the region of the territory that produces the most food and where a lot of people were living.

Since this society was still an anarcho-communist society, the idea of land owners was strictly against their values. If the scientist was given land their society would thus become capitalist again, which would create inherent inequalities and eventually lead to class war, racism, and ecological catastrophe too. The debate continued. 

The council decided to not accept the request of the scientist and asked him if he had another proposition. The scientist was furious and told them that he needed time to think. A week after, he returned to the council and asked for a bigger laboratory and anything he needs for his future research. If the council accepts, he'll give the formula to them.

The council agreed and gave the scientist the demands he asked for. Chickens all over were given the vaccine, so that they could freely love the foxes. Soon after, the segregation between chickens and foxes was deconstructed along with the propaganda in the media and schools. Everyone rejoiced that their society became integrated once again while retaining their vegetarian and eco-friendly ways.

But then people realized that the scientist had disappeared and nobody could find him... 
The scientist actually was in a foreign country, one of the last capitalist countries in the world. He became the boss of a big fast food corporation. This fast food corporation used the same technology as the one that created fox meat he proposed to the chickens and foxes council. Also, thanks to resources he got from the council, he created a very dangerous product which kills plants. He returned to the country he used to live in and thanks to the help of the public authorities of the capitalist country, he used pigeons to spread liters and liters of the grass poison on the field. All plants died and people of the anarchist-communist country had no food. The scientist came to see the country and proposed to them to feed people all over the country thanks to fast food created without any plants.

Although the chicken and fox ancom society tried fighting back, they lost and ended up reluctantly agreeing with the scientist's demands. Since capitalism inherently leads to growth the capitalist country eventually took over the ancom society and soon the whole world too. The planet fell into dark times as global capitalism resulted in widespread pollution, inequality and racism.

There were some small rebellions that tried to resist the capitalist ruling class but all were squashed by the military. Decades passed in this way, rebels try to resist but continue to get squashed. Eventually the world was so polluted it could not sustain itself any longer and there was a grave risk of widespread extinction. Survival looked bleak.

But a glimmer of hope flickered: space exploration. Far away there was an alien planet that had plenty of resources to sustain the chicken and fox population. A fleet of space crafts were created to explore the alien planet and take everything they found of value.

When the chickens and foxes got there however they discovered an alien species thriving in peace and harmony.

The chickens and foxes debated on what to do but ultimately decided that they should invade the alien planet to save themselves from environmental collapse. They were met however with a unique kind of resistance.

The peaceful aliens were experts in biotechnology and engineered a virus that would act in self defense.

A virus was created to test which chickens and foxes were violent or not. The chicken-fox dictator didn't pass the test and sent an army to go to the alien planet. All the violent chickens and foxes staying on their home planet died from the virus including their dictator. However the army was spared since it was flying through space towards the alien planet.

Before the army arrived on the alien planet they heard news of their dictator dying. Upon realizing that they didn't haven't to obey orders anymore they changed their mind and become peaceful, and ended up passing the alien test to live with them in peace.

The chickens and foxes then abandoned their dying planet and old ways of capitalism and joined the aliens in peace and harmony.

Once together in peace, the aliens understood that people can change and regretted what they had done, so they created a memorial day to never forget what happened during this "war".