The Twilight Zone: “Signs of the Times”

By Bear Howard

Opening Narration – Rod Serling’s voice

A man, in a dark suit, steps into frame. A cigarette glows, smoke curls. His voice is calm, clipped, and merciless.

“America. The year is 2035. A land once united by creed, now divided by creed. Not by rivers or borders, but by signs in the window. What once read ‘Whites Only’  now reads ‘No MAGA Served’. What once locked out the color of skin now locks out the color of belief. Tonight, you walk a street where neon burns not with welcome, but with warning. Tonight… you enter the Twilight Zone.”

Downtown anywhere, USA.

A café door with a sign: “No MAGA Served.”
Across the street, a diner window with its reply: “Liberals Not Welcome.”
The sidewalks are full. The eyes are empty.

Signs once used to keep out strangers now keep out neighbors.
And neighbors, divided long enough, become enemies.

The fracture began decades earlier. 2016. A man with no patience for compromise, and even less for institutions, made grievance a throne and crowned himself its king. He called it MAGA. Others called it salvation. What it became was metastasis.

But the split—ah, the split—was older than the man. For decades, blue states sent more dollars to Washington than they ever saw again. They funded highways in Alabama, farm checks in Iowa, and sprawling military bases in Texas. It was charity without a name, an arrangement as invisible as it was necessary. Blue built. Red borrowed. And the bargain held.

Until one day, it didn’t!

Now to the farmlands

Tractors rust. Engines cold. Credit gone.

Farmers of MAGA country, once promised greatness, could no longer afford the machines their fathers drove. Debt piled up. Banks closed in. And what remained was sweat.

Men and women bent their backs to the soil, planting by hand, hoeing by hand, harvesting by hand. A way of life thought buried in the 19th century returned in the 21st.

And still, it was hailed as a blessing in the blue states. MAGA, was their religion of self-righteousness. Providing solace, but not substance.

They called it “revival.”
“Honest work for honest hands.”
But the truth was harsher: stoop labor was all that was left.

For many, the ancestors of the “masters” of the plantations were now toiling in the fields, while the ancestors of the enslaved had moved on, settled in the “liberal” blue states as equals, and flourished. Jim Crow was nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, in the other America, the harvest was commanded by drones. Crops were monitored by satellites, machines guided by AI. Food was cheap. Profits rich. Futures secured.

One America lived in tomorrow. The other in yesterday.

The split was written most clearly in the lives of women.

In the blue states, women flourished.
They built companies.
They ran universities.
They piloted ships to Mars.

In the red states, women diminished.
They stayed home.
They raised children.
They kept the cheap beer cold for husbands returning from the fields.

For one blue America, daughters were leaders.
For the other, daughters were wombs.

And when questions were asked—why did one side rise while the other fell?—the answers were not found in textbooks but in pulpits.

Faith filled the vacuum where opportunity had fled. Megachurches promised that struggle was virtue, that pain was prophecy, that poverty was proof of divine testing.

No hospitals? The Lord will heal.
No schools? The Bible will teach.
No wages? Heaven will pay.

A second coming was always on the horizon.
Always promised.
Never arriving.

Even Washington split

One half gleamed—steel towers, glass lobbies, buzzing with technocrats.
The other half crumbled—marble cracked, offices shuttered, flags unraised.

The Capitol itself became a mirror of the republic: half alive, half dead.

Beyond America’s shores, life went on.

The other ninety-six percent of humanity, once tethered to the fortunes of the United States, found new partners, new patterns, new power.

The blue states, acting like a nation of their own, joined the world stage as equals. They sold grain to Europe, shared biotech with Asia, and built research hubs with Africa. They opened their doors to culture, trade, and students.

The red states—cut off, insular, angry—had nothing to sell but nostalgia. Their allies were sermons. Their exports, grievance. Their imports, promises that never arrived.

And while one half of America clung to the hope of a second coming, the rest of the world discovered something simpler: the joy of each other.

On the streets, the signs became banners. The banners became chants. The chants became clashes.

America’s first civil war was fought with muskets, over chains of iron.
The second… was taking shape over chains of thought.

Closing Narration – Serling’s voice

The man in the dark suit steps back into frame. He speaks

“This is America, 2035. A country that mistook politics for identity, and identity for destiny. A country that painted its fracture not in borders on a map, but in signs on a window. Where a café closed its door not to strangers, but to neighbors. And where a nation that once pledged itself indivisible now prays for deliverance, one half from the other.

The world has moved on. Much of the ninety-six percent living in a democratic form of society builds, trades, celebrates, and prospers—while America learns what it means to be left behind. Ironically, the nations that evolved into democracies took the original American constitution and made it their rulebook for prosperity and a better life.

 The signs may be words. Or they may be omens. Either way, they point not to a future, but to a warning. Because when a nation forgets its union… it remembers only its enemies.

And that is the moment it steps… into the Twilight Zone.”