Mother Earth - R.I.P. | Commentaries |Axisoflogic.com

Good morning, class. We're here to discuss your next assignment in abstract imagination. First, I'll need to give you the background.

Early in what they called the 'twenty-first century', the planet Earth entered its darkest period. Up to that point, the history of the species who believed they were the only species of value -- humans -- had been filled with war, conquest, enslavement, brutality on massive scales. This sordid history was punctuated by incredible progress, astounding acts of courage and sacrifice and intelligence, and boundless creativity wrought by the human spirit. While many people assert that it officially began to come apart at the seams on one day in November 2000 (in the Terran reckoning), the downfall actually began many years earlier.

Our historians have tried to piece together where
the breakdown started but arriving at a definitive home point -- a ground zero, so to speak -- has proved elusive. Much of the record was sanitized or destroyed by the masters of the day, trying to hide what they had done from their people, and much was lost in the massive conflagration that followed their final blunder.

The records that have survived were clearly not meant to tell the truth although they appear to have been the popular form of news dissemination at the time. It seems that people were easily persuaded that trust and integrity were the same things as pretty faces and good hair styles so they eagerly assimilated the official information released by the human writers of history.

We know from the history of other worlds that the stories are usually written after the events. But, on Earth, history was often being scripted before the occurrence of events, and very quickly rewritten if something didn't go quite according to plan.

About twenty centuries before that fateful day in November 2000, some guy got himself nailed to a cheap wooden post for saying what a good thing it might be for everyone to try to get along for a change. But, over the next two millennia, people continued to not get along and killed each other off, often in fighting about just what the guy had meant, or if someone else might have a better idea.

Terrans proved to be a clever bunch and they were constantly inventing new things. Over those twenty centuries, there was tremendous progress in easing the burdens of life. Of course, you had to be the right color or belong to the right groups or live in the right places to enjoy that progress, but at least some people got to have a good time.

But, mostly, those clever Terrans were extraordinarily innovative at finding new ways of killing each other.

They fought over the most inane things. They would murder themselves in the millions over pieces of ground; they would kill each other off for not agreeing about which of their many gods was in charge; wars erupted over systems of economics and distribution of wealth. They had an incredible sense of moral outrage as well; even though they all seem to have engaged from time to time in horrid acts of brutality and murder, they were never able to see their actions as being the same as the things they hated in their enemies.

Legend has it that the Terran people originated from some sort of primordial ooze or swamp. In its later years, large parts of Earth became ruined by the actions and inactions of the Terrans and some of our historians have speculated that this might have been a deliberate attempt to return to that swamp.

But on that November day in 2000, the most powerful of all the political entities on Earth (they were called countries), chose to put their fate and their trust in someone who has come to be known to history as The Village Idiot. That appears to have been the final straw in a long series of misadventures that had plagued the history of the planet.

That man, or VI as I like to call him, was only really the mouthpiece for a cabal of some of the most evil humans ever to have darkened planet Earth. It is hard to tell if he was a willing pawn or just plain stupid, but he let those evil men lead the world to the beginning of its final days. He picked a vicious fight for no reason other than the fact that he could, and the resulting conflagration put the whole thing up in smoke. Battle after battle erupted everywhere and all those weapons that they had all been building for so many years finally got to do what they were made to do -- kill everybody.

I know you have seen the pictures of the planet as it is today and have been shocked by the devastation these people brought upon themselves. But there was a time when it was green and blue, things grew, it was full of animals and fish of all kinds. Now, there are ruins and uninhabitable areas; scrabble and scrub is the only vegetation; the predominant species is the insects. The few humans who survived the last war are pathetic and mostly living in caves, frightened by their own shadows.

So, Class, here is your assignment -- and remember this is speculative fiction -- I want you to imagine how the history of Earth might have turned out if the Terrans had seriously listened to that guy who got nailed to the cheap wooden post. And write me a story with a happier ending than the one they really had.

Alternatively, write about how the history of Earth might have turned out if the humans had never crawled out of that swamp.

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