On the north side of Austin, a local car salesman placed his Jaguar dealership right in a mid-range strip mall, near a grocery store, cheap Tex-Mex restaurant, a dry cleaners, and a vietnamese nail salon. This Jaguar dealership seemed like a textbook bad idea, something you'd find right next to "U-Skin-Em Mink Coats." I wasn't surprised when I saw a washed and shaved homeless man out front, making a few bucks on Saturday by wearing a sandwich sign. The sign was black with orange and yellow neon letters. It read, "Liquidator has taken control! Everything must go!"
When the next civilization excavates our ruins, they will find this sign among the ruined Jaguars, the nail chemicals, and the eternally sealed food containers. Scholars will argue about the significance of the sign. Was the panic and chaos of the time because of this Liquidator? How widespread were Liquidator forces? There will be a movie-of-the-week. It will have an all-star cast, and it will suck. Pundits will talk about why the Liquidator movie sucked. Then there will be a second Liquidator movie, with a bunch of no-name actors. This will be quite good and stick to the facts. Everyone will agree that the script sank the first movie, except the writer, who will find a new job.
Eventually some donor will endow a University with enough money to start a Liquidator Studies Program. The Program will hold a conference. At the conference, a radical young scholar will present a paper that claims the Liquidator had nothing, nothing, to do with the yearly bloodrites at the Superbowl. She will be discredited and shunned. Another donor will give another University enough money to hire her and her grad student. They will start a rival center and hold their own conference. Anyone who knows anything (and let's face it, only a handful of people can even speak knowledgeably on this subject) will go to the new conference, as the Chair of the Center for the Study of Human Development, Anthropology, Public Policy, Ethnography, Marine Science and the Liquidator in Civilization (CSHDAPPEMSLinC) has grant money.
A small Liquidator cult will arise. They will claim to be descendants of the man who wore the sign, and possess the following holy relics: 1 wire cart with wheels, 3 black shoes (28 mm long), 1 paper bus transfer, 1 oblong glass pipe, 2 pairs denim pants, 1 piece plastic strapping, measuring 60 mm in length. The plastic strapping is the most interesting item, as it may have actually carried the Sign. The cult will steadfastly refuse to allow DNA testing out of respect for the dead.
In time, the President himself will weigh in on the controversy with a short statement. "As we all know, the nation of Southern Canada was ruled wisely and long by the Burger King. Intelligent people may have differing opinions about the power of the Liquidator, but there's no doubt that what's done is done." The President will soon fire his speechwriter, in a fit of hindsight.