69 Hues of Meta: Hosting a Podcast for the End of the World

About the Author:

Currently at the forefront on studies regarding the effects of boners on the aerodynamics of the human body, Buster Manwomb is not allowed back at the orgy until they promise to stop jumping at people from behind the buffet table dressed as a wolf.

Chapter 1: Friday Night Fanfiction goes Underground

The year is 2030. Late Stage capitalism has given way to Later Stage Capitalism. The bloody conclusion of a ruinous corporate war between Disney, Nestle, General Electric, and King Donair left the world a barely habitable husk. Property ownership is a rumor of a memory in peoples' minds as they take out lines of credit to afford lines of credit to afford non-irradiated air and their state-required subscriptions to Disneybook+. The shining spires of the smoggy metropolises existed for the pleasure of the paltry thousands that form the economic elite, while the tens of billions that form their ceaselessly exploited workforce spend their lives packed into the dark and rusted hive cities that span across the land, threatening to form a brutalist ecumenopolis were it not for the stretches of hellfire-scorched nothingness that formed the borders the corporate powers carved out and warred extensively for control of.

In the crumbling streets of Old New Baltimore, Disney's Thought Police, adorned in stormtrooper armor with mouse ears, patrolled the irradiated wastes for union sympathizers and copyright infringers. One sad mutant who had become more tentacle than human was unfortunate to imagine how funny it would have been for Daffy and Donald duck to do gay stuff, setting off the Storm Troopers' psychic copyright infringement detector, and giving away her position. Within seconds, she was blown to smithereens.

Below the crumbling streets of Old New Baltimore, a ragtag group of fugitives, determined to ensure that the steamy art of copyright-defying fiction is never completely deprived from the masses, huddle around a coffee tin hosting a small campfire in the clandestine sewer headquarters of Nighthorse Media.

"At last!" Stevo declared, unplugging a flash drive from his laptop. "It's taken years, and hundreds of episodes, but Sonic's Ultimate Harem will finally be available, read by us in its entirety!"

"To the trash manticore!" Shawn declared triumphantly.

"Dammit, Shawn!" Stevo remarked. "Stop calling my distribution network a trash manticore!"

"I mean, it isn't much of a manticore anyway." Logan commented. "If anything, it's a garbage griffin!"

"No!" Stevo shot bluntly.

The Nighthorse Media sewer headquarters did not have internet. It had rats, in abundance which they taped to nearly-as-plentiful mutated pigeons. The resulting amalgam had all the strengths of the rat and the pigeon combined, and was the perfect creature for carrying flash drives. After the first few months of constantly losing flash drives, they managed to train the trash manticores to navigate the pipe-ridden undercities. They spread their podcasty goodness to all that cared to plug a screaming flurry of fur and feathers into their computers to enjoy the roasting of the worst quality fanfictions to have been preserved before the Great Web Purge. The cost was great, and much like the original Friday Night Fanfiction podcast, far too few people listened to it, but it was a bastion of absurd artistic rebellion in a land where such a thing was nearly too dangerous to attempt.

Stevo taped the flash drive containing Friday Night Fanfiction, season thirteen, episode three hundred and two: 'Fystical Ninja Donkey Cuck' to a particularly well-trained garbage griffin, fed it a stale piece of cheese, and sent it into the darkness.

"Alright, what's next?" David asked.

"Uhhh... Nothing." Stevo said, tapping a few keys on his laptop. "Sonic's Ultimate Harem was the last fanfiction we hadn't covered that I had saved."

"What about the newer stuff people send in?" David asked.

"We've been so starved for content, we've been covering those as soon as we got them!"

"So what you're saying is..." Shawn started.

"Yep." Stevo declared. "We've run out of fanfiction."

"Ahhhh fuck." Logan said. "What do we do now?"

"You guys!" Val called out, running into the headquarters with the timely mindfulness that can only come from a crackfic writer putting slightly more effort into a story for once. "There's stormtroopers in the sewer!"

"God damn it!" Stevo perked up concernedly. "How far are they?"

As if to answer, a laser blast flew through the darkness and barely missed everyone.

"Too close!" Shawn yelled, opening a secret door. "Quick, to the escape sewer!"

"Attention, fanfiction dealers!" Someone shouted on a megaphone farther down the sewer. "You are all suspected and found guilty of circulating copyright defying fiction! Stop and we'll shoot!"

"Stop and we'll shoot?" Logan retorted as he was stepping into the escape sewer. "If you're going to shoot, why should we stop?"

"Second guessing the law is a capital offense, too!" someone yelled before a volley of laser blasts missed them all. "You've hereby received two consecutive death sentences!"

"Logan, get in the fucking sewer!" Stevo said, shooting back at the stormtroopers with his own laser gun on his way into the Sewer.

Fifteen minutes had passed with the Friday Night Fanfiction hosts negotiating the labyrinthine sewer tunnels, gaining distance but failing to evade their pursuers.

"Don't move!" the stormtroopers could be heard screaming behind them. "Get on the ground! Don't Move! Stop Resisting!"

"Wait a minute! Where's Xavier?" Val exclaimed after an unreasonably long time for a responsible parent to realize their child hasn't appeared in the entire story thus far. Not that this is an indictment of the anyone's parenting abilities. I just forgot, and have made the mistake of finishing a weed brownie before the first bite had kicked in. I'm really feeling the effects now and don't want to jeopardize what I've written so far and possibly sacrifice coherence in the name of pacing.

"He's working on his Podcast!" Stevo answered from the back. "He's fine!"

…. .. -. … .-.. .- -. -.. . .-. ..-

Meanwhile, in the middle of the pacific garbage patch, the Piratebay (a subsidiary of King Donair) fleet hid amongst the colonies of nomadic plastic farmers. One of the largest ships in the fleet was a hijacked Disney cruise liner with a plethora of radio towers welded to its main deck.

"And we're back!" Xavier broadcasted from the headquarters of the multimedia juggernaut Saturday Morning Fanfiction had become. "You were listening to 'top tips for surviving an irradiated wasteland' every day at 6 pm, garbage patch standard time on Nighthorse Pacific Radio! Coming up next, we're resuming our current entry on Saturday Morning Fanfiction. Take it away, Robot Chalmers!"

"Thank you, Professor X." A Stephen Hawking-esque voice emanated from Superintendent Chalmers, Xavier's cybernetically enhanced doggo, sitting on a chair across from Xavier with a refurbished Dell Venue laptop. "We are returning to our most popular fanfiction of the year, 'Star Wars Episode Seven: The Rise of Abeloth by George Lucas. Chapter Nine: Glup Shitto builds her new lightsaber…"

.. … -. - - -..

Unfortunately, that sidetrack happened in real time, and by the time the narration returned to the Friday Night Fanfiction hosts, Stevo and Logan have been captured. David, Shawn, and Val barely make their escape.