VOL. MMMCXI · No. 62 · Fri 25 September 2026
The Aftertimes
Dispatches from the future.

LUNDEN-ON-SILT . 24 October 3111

Plague Reenactors Refuse Modern Cure

A clerk sitting on a canvas folding stool holds a copper vaporiser toward a wicker cart where a man in a woollen tunic points to his thigh.

Three historical reenactors are refusing synthetic antibiotics after grafting active bubonic plague nodes onto their thighs.

The three men, who are currently barricaded inside a wicker ox-cart at the annual High-Silt Fair, claim the painful swellings are necessary for tactile period accuracy.

They represent the year 1348.

"We want the authentic limp," said one reenactor, speaking through a gap in the woven wicker.

They have fever.

The regional health guild dispatched a single clerk to resolve the standoff.

She carried a copper vaporiser, a canvas folding stool, and a tube of skin-glue she refused to open during the twelve-hour negotiation.

She has offered them broad-spectrum patch-vaccines.

The men declined.

Under local sanitisation codes, the fair committee must scrub the surrounding soil with vinegar while the cart remains occupied.

The committee has already cancelled the pig-bowling championship to pay for thirty barrels of the cleaning liquid.

Meanwhile, the men have requested three wooden bowls of pease pudding, a cold turnip, and an unwashed priest.

They plan to stay in the cart until Sunday.

Dispatch metadata

Lunden-on-Silt
~1,085 years hence
24 October 3111
Domain: Biotech
>Locator chart for Lunden-on-Silt (~1,085 years hence)