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‘Twas the Night Before iMas™

A poem about the holidays set in the not-too-distant future.

By J. Otis HaasPublished 2 years ago • 2 min read
Top Story - November 2024
‘Twas the Night Before iMas™
Photo by Traxer on Unsplash

‘Twas the night before iMas™, and all through the house

Echoed the clicking of my iMouse™.

Nonfungible stockings had been minted with care,

In hope of amassing promised market share.

.

The children were all afixed to their screens,

Consuming brainrotting content with rapid cutscenes.

With iMOM™ charging, behind my iGoggles™,

I furiously flipped my crypto trade toggles.

.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I immediately Googled™ what could be the matter.

With no helpful results on the search page,

I Tweeted™ “Who heard that?” in my outrage.

.

It quickly garnered one like, then two,

But no real answer was coming through,

So finally I turned the iCameras™ on,

To see what could be out there on the lawn.

.

The image was grainy, quite hard to discern,

But soon I did spy a rotor’s slow turn,

And out in the night, a blinking red light

That quickly turned my fear into fright.

.

Pulling on pants I ran out the door,

And grabbed my iShotgun™, just to be sure

That I’d be ready were trouble to follow.

Stepping outside my heart truly felt hollow.

.

”Damn, I was right,” I thought, with despair,

“Sometimes life just isn’t fair.“

Laying there smashed: a delivery drone,

Weighed down with presents, whose motors had blown.

.

I knew I must quickly open a session,

Or risk getting charged with unlawful possession

Or, worse, harming corporate profit lines,

Crimes that involved insurmountable fines.

.

Also present were the clear dangers,

Presented to me by whatever strangers,

Might have caught sight of the drone in distress,

Presently approaching my home address.

.

Standing out there, in the nippy night air,

It quickly became apparent there,

Wasn’t a chance I knew my password,

As I entered it two times and then a third.

.

I knew I had to scan every code

On every package of the drone’s load.

But first I had to simply sign on,

Which I couldn’t manage, out on the lawn.

.

Resetting requires 42 factors of bioauthentication,

Necessitated by the state of the nation,

With so many cases of identity theft,

Hardly a shred of privacy left.

.

I called for my children to bring the iProbe™,

But couldn’t get through one hijacked frontal lobe.

Then, to my alarm, at the iFence™ line,

The snipping of wires, one at a time.

.

Pirates were coming through the iFence™,

Which reviews had all said, wasn’t good for defense.

Suddenly I realized, with much chagrin,

That my iShotgun™ had not been plugged in.

.

Seeing the blinking, red battery bar,

Caught breath in my chest, as if in a jar.

“Freeze!” from above, a spotlight appeared,

As a police helicopter silently neared.

.

It must have disrupted our WiFi connection,

As my bleary-eyed children, in a motley collection,

All of a sudden ran out into the night,

Turned into day by the police light.

.

Pirates still lurking out in the gloom,

So many terrible vectors of doom.

“Look, presents there! Oh, what fun!”

Then, from above, “HE’S GOT A GUN!”

Holiday

About the Creator

J. Otis Haas

Space Case

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    Written by J. Otis Haas