James Griffin: An update from The Zone

Within The Zone it is getting more difficult to filter truth from fiction in what little information the MPI allows us to receive. Photo / Doug Sherring

Dear citizens of the Free World, I bring you further missives from The Zone, the suburb formerly known as Grey Lynn, now suffering under martial law pertaining to the movement of fruits and vegetables to and from our brothers and sisters outside The Zone.

These are strange times in The Zone, where rumour and gossip have become the order of the day, while actual facts are rarer than, well, fruit flies. At the time of my writing, the MPI say that 14 flies have been captured but they also say that larvae are now being found. Surely the discovery of larvae means that adults are out there, doing whatever unholy business it is fruit flies do to create larvae.

Meanwhile, on the ground, gangs of MPI biosecurity operatives roam the streets in high-visibility vests, with their clipboards and sprayers full of toxic God-knows-what. However, there are those who claim to have seen MPI operatives, on hot days, squirting each other with their sprayers to stay cool. I have no personal verification of this, but I have also yet to see an actual Queensland fruit fly.

One story, whispered at dinner parties within The Zone, is of a man overheard at local survivalist supply bunker Farro's, loudly proclaiming that his children were suffering because they could not take fruit to their out-of-zone school. What sort of true Grey Lynner does not send his children to school within The Zone? Was the Grammar Zone full? Also, many parents ask, upon hearing this story, what sort of children are these who seem to want to willingly eat fruit? And where can we get some? Rumours that the man was last seen being loaded into an unmarked helicopter in the carpark of Farro's have yet to be confirmed.

Now there are even rumours of vegan extremists gathering under the trees in Grey Lynn Park to protest that the current situation is unfairly anti-fruitist. They apparently feel that the current focus on the fruit fly is a slur against them personally, because it somehow demonises fruit and therefore, apparently, their veganistic choice. They are demanding: (a) a name-change for the Queensland fruit fly to something that doesn't demean the word 'fruit'; and (b) that the MPI introduce a similar ban on the transport of meat in and out of The Zone because "meat is murder whereas the so-called fruit fly is merely an economic pest".

There are further rumours that within this group a splinter group is forming called the True Organic Army. Apparently this group believes that so-called 'pests' like the Queensland fruit fly are simply part of the gifts Gaia imparts to us and that if we happen to eat fruit riddled with fruit fly larvae, then that is as Gaia intended and also a good source of protein. There are those who say the True Organic Army want to turn The Zone into an independent fundamentalist-organic state.

Within The Zone it is getting increasingly more difficult to filter truth from fiction in what little information the MPI allows us to receive through our Sky dishes. There are stories, for example, that in the world outside The Zone the Dark Lord Winston is plotting a return in the North. They also say that he has a dragon or a bus or something that he rides around on/in. This cannot be true, can it? Wasn't he vanquished back to Mordor after the last election? Please say this is more crazy talk.

In the cafes of Grey Lynn people talk furtively over their lattes, wondering now if Stephen King's Under The Dome is less a work of fiction and potentially the template for the next step in MPI pest containment, wherein the entire suburb is enclosed in a giant up-turned fishbowl, probably developed in conjunction with the scientists at Kelly Tarlton's. Unable to face this terrible potential reality people then use humour to hide their fears by debating whether it would be better to live under the dome of the Under The Dome TV series or the one in The Simpsons Movie. And then there are those who think that living under a dome, cut off from the rest of the world, might not be such a bad thing for Grey Lynn, as long we can still stream Better Call Saul on Lightbox.

Personally, I wonder if one of the ways the Queensland fruit fly is spreading is by nesting in the beards and other extravagant facial hair of Grey Lynn hipsters as they roam freely through the neighbourhood. Maybe MPI should hang a trap from a hipster to test out this theory

But as you can see, logic and reason are not in great supply in The Zone - unlike fruit, of which we have heaps, just we can't take it anywhere.