Its a Smallwood, After All

At night, Smallwood dreams about an Industrial Reparation and Restitution program, which he would call the Charlatan Accord, that would legalize the expropriation of any company and the arrest of any individual who had ever tricked him into signing an absurdly one-sided deal to the detriment of Newfoundland. The law would require the repayment of ill-gotten gains and a public apology to him, and would be retroactive. Smallwood foresees a long line of figures from his past, starting with the Latvian-born economic adviser Alfred Valdmanis, whose supposed specialty was the stimulation of the economies of underdeveloped countries but whose real specialty was making himself rich to the point of his clients’ near-bankruptcy.

The standard of living has never been better in Newfoundland, which now consists only of what was once called the Avalon Peninsula. The isthmus that once joined Avalon to the main island was long ago submerged when, with the melting of the polar ice caps, the oceans of the world rose a hundred feet. Tourism is at an all-time high because of the many and wondrous not-yet-melted icebergs in the bay. Glacial melting has sunk most of the other tourist meccas of the world—Mecca itself is submerged—so Avalon has benefited from an endless fleet of icebergs, one of the few natural attractions left.

The fish having returned and Smallwood, not wanting a repeat of their disappearance, had a giant banner hung across the narrows of St. John’s harbour. Visible to all boats putting out to sea, it reads: Be Careful What You Fish For.

But the main source of revenue is oil. All is well. Or, as the licence plates of Newfoundland cars now read, Oil Is Well. No sooner does one well run dry than another is discovered. Oil rigs proliferate on the Grand Banks. There are now five hundred of them. When the oil first began to run out in Alberta, all the Newfoundlanders living there were sent back to Newfoundland during what became known as Go Home Year. This was partly in response to 2054, the year before, when, having lost patience with expatriate Newfoundlanders, Smallwood declared it Don’t Come Home Year.

The steamiest, least habitable parts of the world are known as No Zones. In the hothouse that is now the world, oil is used mainly to power air conditioners. When the war was over and other countries of the world protested the plight of the poor Albertans, Smallwood famously said, “Let the Western bastards swelter in the dark.” He hoped that St. John’s would one day be named Petropolis and Newfoundland would be Petroland. Smartly dressed, fastidiously groomed men who make their money from oil are already known as “petrosexuals.”

The massive majority of Newfoundlanders who support Smallwood are called Gruntles, and one of Smallwood’s most important Cabinet portfolios is known as DRUG, the Department for the Restoration of Universal Gruntlement. Gruntlement has yet to achieve universal acceptance, but only Smallwood and his end-o-chronologist are bothered by this, and both know that the electorate generally likes the idea that all things good date from the old days. “What is nostalgia,” Smallwood asked his Cabinet, “but the desire for things to go back to the way they never were”

The liquor of choice is a scotch called scorch, which can be had on a street of bars called Gorge Street, where fish and chips are served free.

Among his plans for the future is the creation of the Department of Jurisdictional Realignment, under which the 200-mile limit would become the 400-mile limit and the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon would be annexed. The Department of Demographic Reassignment, formerly known as the Resettlement Program, has recently moved all Newfoundlanders to five cities on the island of Avalon. Eventually they will need another reassignment, and the renamed Peter and Michelon Islands will feature five-star restaurants.

In the future, one that Smallwood will live to see, all land masses will be swallowed up by water and all people will live in floating metropolises—a civilization of elevated cities built atop movable oil rigs and between which travel will be impossible except by helicopter. He imagines these cities bobbing up and down, each one flying a flickering, flag-like flame. Photographed from above at night, they will look like the cities of the earth once did when seen from outer space. And no nation on earth will have more oil or more floating petro-metros than Newfoundland.