The world burned. There was nothing we could do about it. Pure ‘Darwinism’ took place and I’m just a lucky bastard that falls in the plus or minus tolerance. But the world burned. Even in the last few desperate decades of human existence and ‘western civilization’ and ‘eastern civilization’ and ‘Christianity’ and ‘god’, we tried to please them – I’m as guilty as anyone. We lowered carbon emissions and cut the cord of our dependence on the oil industry. We did everything we could, and still the world burned.
First the ocean rose and states in the U.S., provinces and countries that lay next to an ocean got swallowed up. The United States proposed a World Tragedy Task Force (W.T.F.) to the U.N. and it was approved unanimously. The U.S. of A. officially controlled the world. Of course, the world was shrinking.
That was in the early days. The days when WTF ‘peace officers’ – a joke we all got, but no one laughed – walked the streets with machine guns and body armor and visors that hid the eyes. I never could trust a man that hid his eyes.
All conflict became ‘domestic’ all money became the same. A man – woman’s – face didn’t grace these ‘dollars’. The last thing the ‘people’ voted on: who should be on the dollar bill. The vote was a joke, and I say that nicely. Armed squads of the WTF posted up outside polls and controlled the voting habits one county at a time, one person at a time. No one knew the name of the hideous bust that graced the front currency now.
The world burned anyway. Despite the gangs and the votes and the blind faith and the religions (and the grotesque ‘face’ that graced all currency), the world burned. No one knew much anymore. But there were remnants.
Mostly glass stuff, because glass didn’t burn that well. Neither did bodies, even though the Nazi’s figured it out way back when, bodies didn’t go the way civilization went. They didn’t fall to pieces and fade from the few memories that remained, the bodies stayed. I don’t mean they littered the streets or were heaped up in massive piles on the outskirts of towns – back when there were towns.
I didn’t talk to anyone when there were still people around and about to talk to, but I listened. Most people thought the WTF was loading up the bodies and taking them somewhere. I watched and I didn’t believe, sure the WTF ‘storm troopers’ did a lot of terrible things in those days, but I never saw large trucks or stretchers or anything that looked like body removal operations. Hell, the troops kept their distance, crossing streets or turning on heel when they came upon a body in their way.
I didn’t talk to anyone, but I listened. Disease was the first headline in the collective conscience. Some ‘wrath of god’ thing was popular in America – originated with the AIDS epidemic, now come to fruition. “AIDS was a test,” they’d say. Now god was using fire instead of the flood he’d used back in Noah’s time.
Funny how what used to be trends: hairstyles, brand names, cell phones; traded places with something so drastic: why the world was falling apart. After the ‘wrath of god’ theory faded, people started whispering about other countries, like China or Iran, having a ‘secret weapon’. The tragedy that had befallen the world belonged not to our own lives and actions but those of others. That’s when things got really heated.
Even peaceful countries and nations couldn’t hold back their contempt for ‘those responsible’. Militias popped up all over the world but the WTF was ever stronger, ever bigger. Always in control. At least that’s what they thought. They crumbled, too, along with everything else.
Except this sickly yellow sky and the dark thunderheads in the west that never moved any nearer. I was sitting looking out at this beautiful burned out world, sifting through some things I had collected over the last few days. Trying not to look west, those thunderheads scared me. A man can come to accept many things. The world falling apart – burning out – would be the hardest, you’d think. But those thunderheads, they were worse. They scared me.
“I’m Eve,” a voice sounded behind me and I jumped. You don’t hear many voices now, not many people left.
I turned and looked into a face of pure innocence. The look of a newborn’s first sight of the world, void of all prejudice and judgment, met my look of skepticism and guarded thought. Such blue eyes, so beautiful, in this little girl, I almost wept – but my guard was still up, you can never be too careful.
“As in,” I started to reply in my cracked and broken voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment