The Army of the 12 Bagels

Prepare yourselves my friends.

I come from a future in which a plague has decimated most of the world's population.

My mission is simple, to find what caused the plague and if I can, stop this deadly virus, saving the lives of millions.

In the future we believe that the deadly plague was released by the Army of the 12 Bagels.

I have arrived here and embarked upon a mission to create 12 Bagels to prove my worth to this group so that I can meet them and stop them.

By any means necessary.

Firstly, I put together the dough. It's a dry affair. Much like the wastelands of the future.

After that, I decide that these Bagels need something in them. I settle on butter. Only because I don't know how to make cream cheese.

I had better get on with making some.

In the future we use machines for everything. So I use my future skills to churn the cream with a machine we enlightened call a food mixer.

When it looks like scrambled egg you know you are on the trail of a population destroying virus.

I squeeze the remaining liquid out of it. In the future, water is scarce and we never throw out anything wet. Even annoying ex-girlfriends.

Sometimes, I almost forgot that the future is a blighted wasteland and allow myself a smile.

Now the butter is done. I just have to attract the attention of the 12 Bagel Army.

And for that, I will need my dry and desperate dough.

I cut it into 12, feeling the enormity of what I am about to do press down on me.

I roll the pieces into rings.

And set them to boiling like the dead seas of the future earth.

Then I bake them in a grievous furnace of heat until they are crisp on the outside yet chewy in the middle.

Some, I even sprinkle black seeds on. Like the forlorn hopes of the bedraggled survivors of the nightmare to come.

I am interrupted by knocking on my door. I run and answer. Could this be the 12 Bagel Army? Alas, no. It is my neighbour with a parcel for me.

Whilst thanking him I sneeze.

I think nothing of it.

The Bagels are done and the 12 Bagel Army have not arrived.

And yet, all our intelligence points definitively to the world ending virus beginning with a 12 Bagel Army?

I feel a bit shivery as I tuck into my bagel.

Perhaps I am coming down with something.