The Surveillance Bunny
By the time of the Great Solar Event of 2043, humans were psychologically dependent on constant electronic surveillance.
In 2043, the only part of a person’s life that really mattered to them was the part that was shared with digital video and available to a global audience.
If a networked camera didn’t capture and upload an event, it didn’t happen, at least not in a way that was vital to the post-human psyche.
Consequently, people experienced extreme psychological distress when electronic surveillance was temporarily interrupted by technical difficulties, and they could not function during emergencies, and so natural disasters claimed many more lives than in previous generations.
In response, healthcare professionals encouraged people to think of their pets as the eyes of the world watching everything they said and did, figuring that irrational delusions were OK if that is what it took for people to function during natural disasters when surveillance was not available.
In this role, the concept of emotional support animals experienced a renaissance. Cat and dog people argued which animal was the best watcher, and both groups made fun of people who had to rely on things like gerbils and newts. New creatures were also made for this market.
The Surveillance Bunny was genetically engineered to have one large staring eye and was marketed as a dual-purpose emergency supply on doomsday prepper websites, but not many of them were sold.
The ads for the Surveillance Bunny were terrible and probably account for the poor sales. The tagline was: How is your family going to survive the zombie apocalypse without “the meat that watches you?”
The ad shows a little boy in tears petting a Surveillance Bunny in his lap while his older sister holds a knife and fork and grins hungrily over his shoulder. Nearby, dad looks on and laughs while he tightens the connection to a generator with a wrench. In the background, Mom is welding shut the doors of the blast shield.
Then the Great Solar Event of 2043 fried every computer on earth that wasn’t down a mine shaft or inside a nuclear submarine or some place like that, and the Surveillance Bunny became quite popular.
Fun Fact:
The average person overacting for the camera is so embarrassingly stupid and dull that many Surveillance Bunnies committed suicide by chewing their own feet off rather than watch.
In fact, pro-gamer Youtube channels are so bad that they can be used to deworm cats (and teach young children how to behave like complete assholes.)
Habitat:
Post-apocalyptic wastelands where jackasses still behave like there are cameras filming their shit.
More Improbable Creatures:
This trading card is part of a series titled “Uncle Joe’s Field Guide to Improbable Creatures” by Jethro Sleestak. View more Improbable Creatures.
