Not a Lovecraft one, this time, although still being silly and absurd.
There's a problem, though, I have an idea, but I'm not sure how to set up the background to not be too absurd.
The premise for the story is that, in the future, McDonalds is the world's sole provider of food, having taken control of the government and bought out all other sources of food. This is already absurd, but not too absurd. Anyway, McDonalds is eventually run by a massive AI, and no longer needs employees, meaning more people will have to rely on their cheap food. A computer glitch shuts down all the McDonalds (This is the part I have a problem with, I'll get to it in a minute) and millions of people starve. It's the McPocalypse (possibly the title of the story).
In the western US frontier towns have sprung up around the old McDonaldses where people try to eke out a meager living in the desert and try to fix the McDonalds (They use matter replicators to make food, so a working McDonalds is a limitless food supply).
The story proper follows the protagonist, of course. I see him as being some sort of grifter/con artist, having been arrested by townsfolk before he could skip town and, in lieu of being lynched, is sent out to find a way to fix the town's McDonalds. I have this image in my head of a huge McDonalds on massive mechanical legs wandering the desert, and I think I'll have the item to fix the McDonalds (Probably a flash drive or the like) there, kept by some sort of crazy future-western baron, like with one eye and a goatee.
The climax of the story will probably happen in the huge walking McDonalds.
Does that sound retarded? It's meant to be retarded, but there's a point where it becomes too retarded, and I'd like some input on whether or not it passes that point.
One of the big things I'm wondering about is why exactly the McDonalds stops working. The idea came to me when I was driving past a McDonalds, and noticing how everything was McWhatever, and thought "What if they went overboard and made everything an infinitely repeating string of Mcs?" This slowly evolved into "McDonalds is a hivemind and a computer glitch makes everything on the menu an infinitely repeating string of Mcs" which lead to "McDonalds owns the world and the glitch makes millions of people starve"
So there you go. The McDonalds hive mind has a computer error that changes the names of everything on the menu to an infinite string of Mcs. Since no one can satisfy the requirements to order something, everyone starves to death.
That's what really seems too absurd. What does bay12 think? Should I write this? Should I change the McMcMcMcMcBackstory? Should I scrap the idea altogether?
Tell me.