The Tithing

January 5, 2045

Mabel walked out of her apartment on one of those balmy New England January days. It was the type of weather where you optimistically leave with a jacket, hoping for a bit of cold. Instead, the wind and dust pick up, and if you forgot your neck gaiter, you would be retching up mucous and dust for days. New England humbles you like that. The last of the snow had mostly melted away in a gray thaw, with some plow piles remaining in the shadows - a wan, grey color littered with grit and take-out wrappers, hardly considered snow by that point.

Mabel wasn’t surprised to see snow left in the gutters; it had been the longest winter in memory, spanning from Thanksgiving to the Winter Solstice. For weeks the weekly news featured experts excitedly predicting that this prolonged winter, combined with the dismantling of home heating infrastructure, would result in the largest loss of life yet. The numbers did not meet their calculations, and with only 10% dead, the next year was looking exceptionally bleak.

She rounded the corner to the ration station and topped up her plastic ration card, printed by Nostro-Corp. The rations had been cut annually. The less you consume, the less you damage, and cutting back further on food was the least people could do to help The Greater Good. In light of the lower than normal death toll this winter, Mabel happily noticed her rations had been cut even more. The attendant working the stand asked if she wanted to forgo her rations entirely for that week. The desire to eat was self-serving and did not help The Greater Good. Mabel obliged. She could do so much to help!

She walked past the soaped-up windows of the stores and restaurants that used to flank her block. Her neighborhood had been hit hard by The Tithing, a tradition where each town had to tithe 10% of its population annually to do its part to reduce its carbon footprint. The tithed were so useful. They became fertilizer, volunteer laborers, or pioneered studies on selflessness. Every town was supposed to tithe the same, but it seemed like some got hit more than others. Initially, the measures weren’t so drastic. The local government typically sent forth those who consume the most resources - the overweight, households with multiple children, paper wasters like teachers, and people with superfluous jobs that helped the personal good rather than The Greater Good - hairstylists, masseuses, and restauranteurs to name a few. However, people began to idolize the tithed. Eventually, the title became coveted, and The Tithing was opened to the highest donors of The Big Three: Nostro-Crop, Sinestra Financial, or Schumaker Auto.

These measures all started around 2025. The first movements to curb global warming were misdirected in their shameful focus on the major corporations. Finally, after The Awakening, a full-scale moral reckoning for consumers, launched by the government and sponsored by The Big Three, people finally began to realize they were at fault for this. It wasn’t the big three at fault for this, no. It was the people who passed their money onto these places. The companies argued they would have to need to produce if the people were not asking to buy. These selfish people insisted on driving two cars per household, using plastic bags, living in their own housing unit, and reproducing for their own selfish reasons despite having a “There Is No Planet B” sticker on their electric vehicle. The companies knew these batteries could not be safely disposed of and that the strip mines for these lithium batteries would eventually lead to the collapse of all South American biodiversity. The companies didn’t want to make those batteries, but the demand was just too overwhelming. And it was better than gasoline, they told themselves.

The people readily accepted the changes required to absolve themselves of their fault in the dying planet. Sure, some people resisted. Mabel thought back to the early days before the dust began to blow throughout the earth. This was earlier on when there were still trees and prairie grasses keeping the dust at bay. Before, the coasts had moved inland. A vocal majority said that The Big Three unfairly blamed them and that the politicians were corporate shills. The supervisory task force trolled their social media for any selfish activities. They were made spectacles of, shown to be detrimental for the greater good, and eventually, anything that benefitted the individual meant exile. After the first thousand were publically shamed, the dissent stopped. It was easy to unite people against a common enemy once they began starving as dust choked out the crops.

April 22, 2045

Earth day. Once Earth Day was a day where people selfishly picked up trash and planted trees for likes. They sacrificed nothing and only asked The Big Three to donate more and more. Now people see the error of their ways. They had to sacrifice. Their greed, desire for progeny, and need to consume were the cause of the dying earth. The Big Three launched a new series of ads leading up to Earth Day, reminding people that the best way to help was to stay home, reduce their food consumption for the day, and consider donating water rations so that way they could increase bottled water distribution.

Anyways, Earth Day was a thing of the past, Mabel thought as she gladly poured her daily water ration down the drain so it would go directly back to The Big Three. Everyone knew Earth Night was what mattered. In the past, people had been so concerned with self-preservation they did not realize how this went against The Greater Good. She felt so fortunate to be born into a time where such selfish measures were behind humankind. On that night, only the most devout, only the most selfless, would be hand-selected by their local officials for The Tithe.

Mabel heard the procession making their way across town. Some households were shamed by silence as they failed the selection. Occasionally a shot or a reverberated as The Tithers had chosen some fortunate selfless person. Sometimes their families would cry in a brash display of selfishness after one was Tithed. Mabel had no one. She had chosen solitude, sterilization, and starvation to leave the smallest footprint. When Mabel heard the procession turn onto her road she stood smiling at the threshold, walked through the door, and turned her face up towards the gun.