Thanksgiving 2026

There was much to be thankful for, that year. For the very first time, the annual death toll from Dekoa flu had come down. Some said the decline was due to better medicines; others pointed to the Umoja-spawned public health revolution in Africa. Still others credited the happy news to five years of global economic management by the independent Artificial Intelligences. And there were, of course, the few who insisted that the credit belonged to God, or to Allah, or the Goddess, or the Divine Mao...consensus was not forthcoming.

Nearly a decade of scrub grass and buckyball algae had at last begun to lower carbon dioxide levels, and that summer, traces of ozone had been detected above Antarctica.

That was the year Gail Danube carried off seven Oscars -- including Best Director and Best Supporting Actress -- for her performances in the one-woman virtie classic Three in a Bush. It was the year the Meerkats took the World Series in four games and Kuchen Watabe broke the three-minute mile.

That year, for no good reason that anyone could name, over a thousand U.N. peacekeeping troops -- including 318 American boys and girls -- gave up their lives in Melanesia. It was the year that an Emperor again appeared in Middle China, to take his seat on the vacant throne at Sian; the year that Umoja sent troops to protect Nexus volunteers in the Kurdistan blockade; the year that Tsai Yu-chaio, the first native Martian in sixty-five million years, was born in the back seat of a rover racing toward Gagarin Town....

copyright (c) 2007, Don Sakers

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Find out more in Dance for the Ivory Madonna by Don Sakers

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