Base type Nil

“On Friday morning, a little past eight, Michelangelo left his house after a hasty breakfast, took one step into the street, and was hit by a bus.”

So begins Base Type Nil, a story of dark humour about a man who wakes up in a cartoonish dystopia and has to navigate a civilization nearly destroyed by economic and moral fallacies, some of which are becoming more and more fashionable in today’s real world.

Follow Michelangelo as he takes on this new woke nightmare world one cricket stew at a time and joins forces with the underground resistance movement. Will Michelangelo and the Vax Rejects manage to shut down the supercomputer responsible for brainwashing the population? The answer is in your hands.

Michel has devoted most of his adult life to the defense and promotion of individual liberty. In the 1990s, he co-founded the philosophical discussion group, Les Amis de la Liberté (Friends of Liberty), then contributed to the successful relaunch of one of Canada’s leading independent public policy think tanks.

Over the years, Michel has worked as a lawyer, an entrepreneur, the CEO of an organization devoted to economic education, and the CEO of the main business confederation in Canada. He also provides advisory services to organizations devoted to prosperity and human flourishing around the world. He has published many articles in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines in both French and English. Base Type Nil is his first foray into the fiction genre.

Writing a novella is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

For this initial work of short fiction, I have decided to take an exploratory stroll down the path of surreal dark comedy. Sadly, the harsh reality that has taken hold these past couple of years has provided me with ample material from which to draw.

It is important for me to emphasize that the story you’re about to read is not intended as an oblique criticism of the COVID-19 vaccination process. Know that I am myself fully vaccinated along with all the members of my family. Nor is it my intention to sow skepticism about the efficacy or possible side effects of vaccines in general. I use the COVID vaccine in this novella in an obviously absurd, fictionalized form, for entertainment purposes only. All readers in good faith will comprehend as much.

Rather, what I aim to challenge by way of this humorous, cartoonish dystopia are some of the economic and moral fallacies that have, over the course of several decades, insinuated themselves into the minds of otherwise well-intended citizens as ruthlessly as any virus. If we do not try to boost our immune system, so to speak, by educating the present and emerging generations, I fear the outcome of this disease will ultimately be fatal to our free and prosperous way of life.

Call me an optimist, but I do not think we have lost the battle. Where there is life, there is hope. But hope needs nourishment and a framework of engaging ideas from which to grow. Cultural creations such as fiction, I am convinced, can assist us in this regard.

Several people have offered brilliant comments on the story in progress, most notably Peter St-Onge and Bradley Doucet. I also send a special nod of appreciation to my elusive muse, Dr. Francesca D’Anconia, whose faithful presence has guided my pen from afar.

Michel Kelly-Gagnon
Baie-Saint-Paul, Canada, August 2021

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