Museum of Extinct Futures
written by: Gloria Ogo
On the edge of Baltimore Harbor
(where the old piers remember salt and steel),
they built a museum for futures
that didn’t survive funding.
You enter through a revolving door
that whirls like a patient reactor.
Admission is free
the cost was already paid in 1987.
In Gallery One
Jetpacks suspended on invisible thread,
their chrome throats packed with dust.
A placard reads
Personal Flight. Delayed Indefinitely.
In Gallery Two
A terrarium of cloned passenger pigeons
rendered in hologram.
They flicker in and out,
data-feathers shedding light.
Extinction, now in high resolution.
Down the corridor
The Mars Colony Diorama.
Tiny red domes under simulated storms.
A looping broadcast from settlers
who never existed
waves at us eternally.
A child presses her hand to the glass.
Why didn’t we go? she asks.
The docent—a retired engineer
smiles.
We went to other places instead, he said.
Sometimes, after closing,
the exhibits rearrange themselves.
Jetpacks drift closer to Mars.
The pigeons perch on server towers.
The colony lights blink in Morse:
still possible.
Security footage shows
only a tremor in the air,
like static thinking.
Outside, the harbor keeps rising.
Water fingers the brick foundations.
The museum updates its displays:
Future of Coastal Cities; Pending.
And in the gift shop
they sell postcards from tomorrow:
skyways over the Chesapeake,
reefs reborn in neon bloom,
a skyline threaded with wind.
No one knows
whether the museum preserves failure
or incubates it.
Some nights the red planet
glows brighter than usual
over the harbor cranes.
The jetpacks rattle softly
against their wires.
Something in the dark
is still rehearsing lift.
- Museum of Extinct Futures - April 25, 2026
- Interview Q&A With Gloria Ogo - March 19, 2026
- The Library Of Alexandria 2.0 - January 1, 2026
