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    The Last Cigarette: The Priceless Final Puff
    The Last Cigarette: The Priceless Final Puff
    The Last Cigarette: The Priceless Final Puff
    Ebook51 pages37 minutes

    The Last Cigarette: The Priceless Final Puff

    By Alexander G. Johnson

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This short novella takes you to a bleak future, to a day in the year 2099. The world is ruled by one central government seated in Hong Kong. Beef and pork production has been severely restricted and the official languages are Mandarin, Spanish and English. Smoking and growing of tobacco has been outlawed. In Britain's London, an auction of the last remaining legal cigarette is about to begin. The surrounding events taking place on the same day make it a smoke to remember…
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateSep 10, 2021
    ISBN9781794831537
    The Last Cigarette: The Priceless Final Puff

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      Book preview

      The Last Cigarette - Alexander G. Johnson

      The Last Cigarette

      The Priceless Final Puff

      by

      Alexander G. Johnson

      Extended Edition

      Imprint

      The Last Cigarette

      The Priceless Final Puff

      A Short Novella by Alexander G. Johnson

      © 2011-2023 Seven Beland Publishing Switzerland

      www.sevenbeland.com

      ISBN 978-1-7948-3153-7

      Contains a mild mature scene.

      All rights reserved.

      A Day in the Future

      Prologue

      山羊

      It is the year 2099, or the Year of the Goat according to the Chinese calendar. Summer is slowly leaving the Northern Hemisphere. In a few months, the new Millennium will have completed its first century. Life during the past decades have seen the planet exponentially taking quantum leaps of change. It would no longer be recognisable to a time traveller from the twentieth century.

      The globe is now governed by a single political system. Its ideology is defined by a mixture of communism and capitalism, administered by a universal executive congress, the Union of Global Governments, colloquially known as UGG.

      Money, the formerly dominant means of cash payment in the form of coins and banknotes, has become a footnote in the financial archives. At first, the UGG decreed that all the world's legal tenders, including crypto-currencies, were replaced by a standard unit of exchange, the Renminbi, named after China's official currency. However, in the past decade, the aim to abolish banks and have a non-cash monetary unit had been reached sooner than expected. The Renminbi was replaced by the cashless unit Solvents‟ and introduced to all areas of the economy and private life. From salaries to living expenses to buying a property, all financial transactions are remunerated by Solvents, which are credited or debited on a chip implanted on the left forearm. Additional plastic cards with smaller balances are still tolerated. In the street jargon Solvents are more commonly known as Sols".

      Vehicles of the Transporter brand dominate all classes of road conveyance, with the exception of industrial vehicles such as heavy goods carriers, which are known as Transfreighters. The electrically propelled Transporter has long replaced the fossil-fuelled means of conveyances. Its slim, aerodynamic, carbon fibered body is both aesthetic and extremely functional. In addition to the numerous online services available, such as WiFi, cloud access, media and entertainment, the more upmarket models communicate autonomously with other vehicles as well as the infrastructure, such as road guidance systems and buildings, by means of various sensors. 

      The Transporters are considered safe and are known for their high quality standards, even though the sole manufacturer of this mode of transport is controlled by the UGG, like most large commercial enterprises. 

      State-of-the-art humanoids and robots have gradually replaced many of the mundane monotonous tasks that used to be carried out by human workers. There has been a great upheaval in the world of work. Many people are now employed in entirely new professions.

      The development of androids has also been driven to near on perfection. The exclusive, human robots are so accomplished that the average person can hardly distinguish them from a real human being at first glance.

      .

      K-A-A-A-BOOM!

      Trevor does not have a chance to be shocked by the explosion. The auctioneer's rostrum, shaken by the blast, had toppled on top of him, knocking him out but saving his life in the process. A

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