SEATTLE—After a search for a new location lasting more than a year, a massive dome was seen descending from the sky and enclosing the whole nation Friday as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced to a horrified American populace that it was now living inside his company’s second headquarters.
The impenetrable steel dome, which reportedly stretches from coast to coast and from the Mexican to the Canadian border, will house a state-of-the-art campus that serves as the online retailer’s long-awaited new base of operations. Amazon executives said that while they were impressed with the many proposals they received from cities across the country, they ultimately decided the location best suited to their ever-growing needs was the entirety of the continental United States.
“We’re proud to welcome all 325 million new employees to the Amazon team,” said Bezos, his deafening voice causing Americans to clutch their ears in agony as the sun was suddenly blocked out and the image of his smiling face was projected onto the dome’s surface by the millions of Alexa-enabled devices in homes nationwide. “We believe we have finally found the best way to provide our customers with the lowest possible prices and the utmost convenience.”
“Now, please, begin working—all of you,” Bezos added as a dark cloud of buzzing drones appeared on the horizon, depositing uniforms, orientation packets, and a pile of boxes to sort on the doorstep of every American home.
Witnesses confirmed that as Bezos spoke, the national scene turned to chaos, with driverless bulldozers knocking down houses and screaming citizens running through the streets as they attempted to dodge giant pallets of consumer goods being airdropped from above. At least 23 flights entering or exiting U.S. airspace at the time of the dome’s descent were reported to have slammed into the structure and exploded, while thousands of people on the nation’s beaches and in its border towns are believed to have been crushed as the 40-foot-thick edges of the structure crashed down upon them.
In eastern Kentucky, a forklift was seen loading cages full of people into a shipping container, reportedly so they could be relocated to new workplaces in different parts of the country, where they will clock 18-hour daily shifts with no bathroom breaks. According to sources, a large swath of the Midwest will soon be razed to make way for a single enormous Amazon Fulfillment Center, while the entire state of Texas will be replaced with a 269,000-square-mile facility used exclusively to house cardboard boxes, tape, and inflatable packaging materials.
Sources also told reporters that societal order will be maintained by Amazon’s approximately 100,000 warehouse robots, which have been modified to perform new tasks such as consolidating the nation’s food supply into the company’s AmazonFresh service and distributing 1,000-calorie daily rations to each citizen-employee. Though every man, woman, and child is now required to work, and every school in the country has been demolished, the educational resource program AmazonInspire is expected to offer learning opportunities at the detention camps it is now tasked with operating.
“We’re confident our employees will enjoy working for the rest of their lives on this scenic campus, where they can take in sights like Glacier National Park, make use of the recreational opportunities provided by the Appalachian Trail, or be drafted into our new standing army,” said Bezos, his voice continuing to reverberate through the giant dome. “For the sake of convenience, your Prime membership fees will be automatically deducted each pay period, and all wages will be paid in the form of Amazon gift cards. What’s more, every employee in good standing will receive one free Audible download per month!”
At press time, as Bezos was hinting that Amazon might begin construction on a third headquarters, an immense titanium shell was seen enclosing the planet Earth.