The drone of the drupe generators sent vibrations across the sticky alpine white sands of what was formerly the republic of Oceanside. The air redolent with Hawaiian Tropic, the tides long receded, it would be more appropriate to call this place CocoSide. At first the idea of rendering coconut oils into a power source seemed novel. Eventually it caused what the remaining locals deemed “the Coconut Convergence.”

“We got Coconut Candy, Coconut Syrup, Coconut Water, Desiccated Coconut, Shredded Coconut, and Toasted Coconut-“ the vendor barked out under the scorching Diego Salt Flats sun. What once seemed so confectionary, now produced an industrial smell. Coconut excesses, paying the price of their father’s pride. “Two rations of desi coco, one splasher of c-syrup” the miner replied, reeking of macaroons and mounds bars.

After a few shifts in the cocomines, you had to throw the Carhartt overalls away. It was so excessive. The hubris it takes to power the world on tropical oil alone. “After the G-modded/no husk C’s came about, we saw a spike in heavy mineral sands” a coco water surveyor explained, “so then you got deposits of titanium and zirconium as waste, water table recedes, and then all you can plant is, you guessed it, more coconut.”

That flaky almond joy sword of Damacles that drained all of our husks. Harvest the water, use the oil, the tides recede, plant where the tides once left. Everywhere was now a dystopian tropical industrial wasteland. They compost the workers’ bodies using the husks and splintered fragments, going out of this world the same way they came in rubbed down in slick tanning solution.

Pure luxury, the constant wafts of Macaroon, angelfood cake, every waking meal burnt brownie edge pieces, a long drag of lipids, coconut blondies, protein powder and lava cake. And nothing else, forever.

This was the fate of the world. So obsessed with the flaky flesh, they couldn’t see it was they themselves that were being split wide open for their milk. Some things are so good, that they become your undoing.

The miner strapped on his Shellmet and descended back into the root system, to serve the fields of Coco-verlords.