I was at home, reading chicken entrails, when the Ceramic Revolution finally arrived in our town. One minute I was quietly piecing together the future from the liver and lights of a stewing hen, and the next minute people were running down the street yelling at the top of their lungs. I went out to see what all the racket was about, but no one would stop until a young woman actually ran up to me to plant a big kiss on my lips.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she exclaimed. "The tyranny of metal is over! We're all going back to ceramics!" Then she continued running on down the street, freely giving out kisses to complete strangers in a very promiscuous fashion.
I had heard rumors about the growing revulsion to metal by certain groups and creeds. Several state governors and a handful of senators had been elected on an anti-metal/pro-ceramic platform -- but I thought it was just another Luddite fad that would fade with time.
That shows how little I knew of the modern world and its discontents. Apparently open pit mines, the ore itself, and the smelting process were the real culprits in global warming, leaving behind a gigantic and poisonous footprint that led to the extinction of many species of animal and plant life -- such as kangaroos and edelweiss.
Such, at least, was the information I was forced to memorize from a pamphlet brought to my door later that week by a policeman.
"Read this thoroughly and get it memorized" he told me sternly. "There will be pop quizzes throughout the next two months to make sure you understand the blessings of the Ceramic Revolution."
I and my neighbors were forced to turn in our metal utensils, our metal toasters and microwaves, and even our metal belt buckles, to a reclamation center -- where we were issued ceramic knives and forks and spoons and such like things to take back home. You ever try to carve a roast with a ceramic knife? Not a pretty sight.
Next they came for our metal cars. Now that wasn't so bad, really. The young people who knocked on my door were singing and laughing. I thought I recognized the young lady who had planted such a big smack on my lips, and was hoping she'd give me another one. She didn't -- but she held my hand for a long moment, squeezing it with emotion as she gave me a beatific smile. And in return for our metal cars we got small ceramic cars that looked like Cinderella's carriage on the night of the ball. I have no idea what they ran on, and you could only do twenty miles an hour top speed, but since everyone else had the same limitations there was hardly any confusion or hard feelings. Of course, fender benders could be quite grisly. I saw one where the parties involved were sliced to ribbons by the shattered ceramic shards of their own vehicles.
Mothers were issued ceramic baby bottles. Terracotta guns and rifles were everywhere, firing clay bullets. Kilns popped overnight like mushrooms after a rain shower.
Up in Canada they didn't have a Ceramic Revolution. They had a Wood Revolution. Everything had to be made out of wood, not metal nor glass nor plastic nor ceramics.
And just as I feared (and as the chicken intestines had foretold) a few years later Canada declared war on the United States, invading with wooden rifles and pitchforks. We fought back gallantly with our ceramic bazookas and china missiles, but in the end Wood proved mightier than Pottery, and all the enthusiastic young people who had given the Ceramic Revolution such pizazz were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the Yukon. Most were never heard from again. Us older folks, considered harmless and pretty useless, were issued wooden bowls and spoons and told to go forage for our own food and drink wherever we wanted. Our homes were commandeered for lumberjacks and whittlers.
I myself managed to weather the chaos better than most of my contemporaries. That's because I know how to turn out hardwood toothpicks by the hundreds to sell on the black market. So I didn't starve, and the authorities looked the other way as long as I greased their palms with a few exotic bamboo samples. In times like these it's every man for himself, and devil take the splinters . . .
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