It rolls on with its thousands upon thousands of corpses, it rolls through towns and cities, through prairie and forest, though the mountains and the plains, through heaven and earth, through the valley of the shadow of death, across the meadows with the sunlit radiation of death, and into the towns with the streetlights of death.
And as it comes, piled high with steaming corpses, piled high to the heavens, leaden with the limbs and parts of civilians, all good citizens everywhere prepare accordingly.
As the monstrosity of industrial death approaches, the citizens deploy their response.
Confetti!
Tickertape!
The people line the streets! All good hearts swell, and joy and pride fill the air at the brave drivers of the train, serving us all, piling more corpses on from afar.
The drivers, indeed, are brave. Consider what’s in the train!
However, there remain some few nefarious holdouts, where the train does not enter to parade its contents. Relentlessly pilloried, ridiculed, the inhabitants remember a shadow of a reason why they once sent the train away — but what were the details again? Some were not born when the train last came. Some never wanted it to leave. Some remember the righteous fire of past glories, and share battle scars suffered fighting over issues which once consumed their lives. But all drink from the river Lethe, and all become clouded as to what is actually wrong with the train. There was something in it, wasn’t there?
Nonetheless, time is short. The train wants to parade, the confetti has already been distributed.
“Not everybody can get on board the train! Discrimination!”
“Getting on board the train means I can’t get off! Career coercion!”
“If I get on board and then leave, I’ll be in debt! Financial coercion!”
“If I get on board, I won’t be able to read everything on the internet!”
True enough, and persuasive, or so it seems.
Meanwhile, from the villages of Pakistan, from the villages of Yemen, from the fields of Iraq, the high scores of industrial-scale remote-controlled video games, civilian charred remains, are deposited onto the carriages.
The train is approaching…
The killing train rolls on