So Far So Good


...can expect delays. Those high winds also mean disruption for airships and ornithopters at Shyminsky Field, though Parody Bay's paddle-wheel ferries are returning to a normal schedule. Over in Parodopolis, Mr Featherstonehaugh's Patent Public Wind-Up Monorail is running like clockwork. Finally, mechanical conveyances of all kinds are backed up at Englehart Bridge while police conduct spot-checks of drivers' mandatory leather helmets and brass-rimmed goggles. That's all for now. Stacey.

STACEY: Thanks Dan. Dan there with the steampunk travel news. This is WGMY 104.1, serving GothaMetropolis York and the greater Parody Bay area. It's eight-seventeen.

STATION IDENT: Stacey Sturridge! In the morning! WGMY, wooooh!

STACEY: And this particular morning we're privileged to welcome the Mayan goddess Ixtab.

IXTAB: Good morning, lovely to be here.

STACEY: On this particular morning, December the twenty-second.

IXTAB: Yes.

STACEY: The world having not ended.

IXTAB: Indeed.

STACEY: Your thoughts on the evident non-arrival of your scheduled apocalypse?

IXTAB: I think it's been a very interesting couple of days, and that we can all now move on from this.

STACEY: Sure, let's move on. We'll just pretend the end of the world never happened. Oh wait.

IXTAB: I rather resent that, Stacey, because this is yet another example of the broadcast media failing to treat these issues with -

STACEY: It's an example of your Mayan hype department writing cheques your eschatology can't cash.

IXTAB: Nonsense. No figure from within the Mayan pantheon made any specific claim that the world would be ending yesterday.

STACEY: There were a lot of worried people out there. You're satisfied you did nothing to stoke the widespread anxiety? No scaremongering? Nothing to encourage a little panic?

IXTAB: Of course not. That would be irresponsible.

STACEY: So the goddess Ixchel's comments about "black clashing skies, bloody sleet, the plagued maize withering before the earth is rent asunder and chaos engulfs"?

IXTAB: I think she was quite clear about that being a metaphor.

STACEY: And her subsequent Twitter post: "all shall perish as this doomed world burns, hashtag that's all folks"?

IXTAB: I notice she gives no indication of timeframe. And that's important, because - to return to my original point - no Mayan deity has at any time specifically stated that the world was actually going to end yesterday.

STACEY: Perhaps. But nor did any figure come out to deny it. Through this whole sorry affair you've been sitting in your ziggurats, rubbing your hands, letting the mortals work themselves up into a fearful frenzy.

IXTAB: That's a pretty strong accusation, Stacey.

STACEY: You think? Let's put it this way: many out there are expressing a view that your Mayan pantheon have, if not engineered the situation, then at least capitalised upon it in an effort to bring an ailing belief system back into the public eye.

IXTAB: That's outrageous. Look, Stacey, the end of the thirteenth baktun - that's what happened yesterday - had been coming for thousands of your years. The Mayan deities and their subscribers, their many subscribers from all walks of life, were preparing to mark it in traditional solemn fashion. The wider upwelling of public interest was very sudden, very intense and it simply took us by surprise.

STACEY: Uh-huh.

IXTAB: A very welcome upwelling of interest, I admit. But if people are concerned about the Mayan calendar, or if your listeners would just like to know more about the Mayan deities and the services we can provide, then I'd like to point them to our website, where they can -

STACEY: Bit late for that, Ixtab. Any visitors to your site will see it's been defaced by hacktivists from the Just End It Now Network.

IXTAB: The what?

STACEY: That's what they're calling themselves. And it's your next challenge, because like those believers who queued for days to see Phantom Menace, it seems many people had high hopes for the impending apocalypse. They're now feeling horribly let down. Roving reporter Red Lester sent this from the tented village.

LESTER: I'm outside the Parodopolis offices of Stepped Pyramid Pantheons, the Mesoamerican religious conglomerate. A huge crowd has gathered here, all voicing their dissatisfaction at the world's irredeemable uselessness and their fury at its failure to end as advertised. It's a remarkable cross-section of society. There's a group from comicbook fundamentalists Mobilised Against Liefeld's Continued Existence, or MALiCE; I see fans of soccer team the Parodopolis Pudus, who last night extended their losing streak to a remarkable 127 games; there's any number of washed-up supervillains; and I can see pretty much everyone involved in troubled reality show Pagan Idol, which continues weekly to redefine the concept of "on hiatus". What unites them is their anger at the Mayan deities. They accuse the pantheon of giving them false hope of a fiery end to all their troubles, and say they're not leaving until the situation is rectified.

STACEY: Red Lester there. So the Just End It Now movement gathers pace. Already you've got seven legal actions pending and a fifty-thousand-name online petition demanding that you at least smite humanity back into the mud age so we can give this civilisation thing a fresh go. Your response?

IXTAB: I think it's wonderful to see the Mayan belief system can still bring so many people together.

STACEY: Ixtab, thanks for joining us. Dan has the weather.

DAN: Seems like the forecast bloody sleet has failed to materialise, so today we're back to the usual kind...




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