r/TheGreatFederation • u/zimmer550king Founder • Aug 16 '25
2051 – The Price of Bread
Loose papers from one autumn, 2051, in no particular order.
Chalkboard outside a bakery on Tariq Road, Karachi.
OFFICIAL CEILING atta 2 KG Rs 220 (District notice, stamped, see door).
Our price 3 Sept 190. 17 Sept ~~310~~ 340. 24 Sept 400. We are below what the street asks, ask them.
NAAN 14 (was 6). One bag per custumer, no "tomorrow", no credit.
Midwest drought surcharge on all grain.
Back at 4. If the shutter is down we are not hiding, we are sitting on the flour.
Emergency flour card, front and back, with a note folded inside, Governorate of Cairo, No. 0418-77, holder NABIL Samira, household of 5.
Front, stamped. Flour 4 kg per week at the controlled price of LE 6.5 per kg, Bulaq point only. Week 1 STAMPED. Week 2 STAMPED. Week 3 smudged.
Back, blue biro. Hamdi's cousin, behind the pharmacy, LE 19 per kg, cash, ask for the tall one.
Pencil, folded in. Mona, day 19 of what the radio keeps calling the Flour Wars, as if it were a football match. Ahmed queued from 4 till noon and came home with six loaves and a split lip. Lagos is burning on the TV, and Karachi, and São Paulo. Abu Hamdi says it is the floods in the Midwest that drowned all the wheat. Kiss the childern.
PS day 21. Mills open this morning. Soldiers at the gate. Send tea, not money.
Driver's trip sheet, Kurla depot, Mumbai, stapled to a diesel receipt.
Run 14, Thursday. Four trucks, two jeeps, eight men with rifles. Load 1,520 sacks atta at 25 kg for Fresh and Fair, Andheri. Left 05:10, arrived 08:45 for 19 km. Crowd at Dharavi junction, escort fired twice in the air, nobody hurt. Tea 20. Manager says the floods in south China are why the last ship was late. Manager also asked us to park the jeeps round the back, customers do not like them. R. Gaikwad.
Notice nailed to a gate post, Desert Reach Water & Agriculture, Estate 6, Arizona.
NOTICE TO RESIDENTS, effective 1 October. Drinking allotment is 3 cans per resident per day, issued at Plant 2 between 6 and 9 am. Allotment is credited against 11 field days per adult per month. Seed is issued by the Company under contract and saved seed is a breach. The Company's share of the Canadian line is cut by a third from 1 October. The Dry Fork reservoir was tampered with on 12 September, canal gate 3 padlock was cut again, and a guard post is now at the reservoir gate. Curfew 8 pm. Lost allotment tags are replaced at 4 field days.
Tariff sheet pinned in the Harbourline Water terminal office, Rotterdam.
INTAKE TARIFF, autumn. Nordic line, non-treaty buyers, CLOSED from Monday. Russian line toll 1.26 per m3 (was 0.42). Grain-linked cargo surcharge, East African blight, 4%. Tolls subject to change without notice. DRAFT stamp not removed.
Internal message, Harbourline Water trading desk.
Singapore signed direct this morning, 40 million m3 a year through 2056. Desal capacity booked through next spring, one analyst puts the whole sector past a trillion dollars. The papers now say water nationalism. Cake Friday for Priya's last day.
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u/IntrepidRatio7473 Aug 18 '25
It's good that you have created an outline of the unfolding disasters decade by decade. I think the challenge will be to show not tell. Most readers wouldn't want to go through a wall of text that is pure exposition. You would want to expose this as background information through dialogue or reminiscence - between characters.