This post was originally published through Patreon on August 28, 2016.
Quick note: I’m currently working on “Totem, Part 11,” and plan to release it on November 7 🙂
The world is ending. He can feel it, buzzing like a high tension electrical wire. Like the bass in a celestial orchestra, it began as a rumble, emanating from the core of the Earth itself, and quickly rises to a crescendo. It’s only a matter of hours before the whole thing uncoils like a tightly compressed spring.
He’s witnessed the births and deaths of many worlds, and the end has always fascinated him the most. It’s almost always self-inflicted, a wellspring of violence that erupts from the inside out, blowing the world asunder.
He sometimes likes to imagine he’s the cause—that he’s an Old Testament God, raining down judgement and destruction on an ungrateful world. But of course he is not. He’s only an observer, a cosmic tourist in search of entertainment. He doesn’t want to get involved, and at any rate, humans have done a fine job of destroying the world themselves.
He’ll stick around for the end, and when it’s over—when the Earth is adrift and bereft of life—he’ll move on.
He gazes up at the sky and smiles.
The show is about to begin.
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He sits on a rusty park bench, brushes dirt from his one button suit jacket, and pulls out a copy of the Los Angeles Times. The paper is smooth and uncreased and smells of fresh carbon black. He unties the plastic ribbon that binds the pages together, winds it into a tiny, tightly packed ball, and tosses it into the trash can beside him.
He opens to the front page and begins to read.
The playground behind him is quiet, empty, like an old western ghost town. The kids are in school, and the adults are packed away like rare collectible action figures in neatly trimmed cubicles. He treasures these moments of silence, and he looks forward to tomorrow, when the absence of human activity will become more or less a permanent fixture.
He scans through all the articles in the paper, even the celebrity gossip columns and the sports pages. He finds these humans to be fascinating creatures, with their almost manic obsession over trivial, mundane matters. In a world so cold and chaotic, perhaps it’s their only way to feel as if they’re somehow in control, as if the cosmic rumblings of the universe are of little consequence when compared to the ability to extol a home run by one’s favorite baseball team or to sully a public figure’s reputation.
Like beatles atop a dunghill, he thinks, believing themselves for centuries to be the center of a human-focused cosmos. Tomorrow, when the Earth is wiped clean, when his kind finally reclaim what has always been theirs by birthright, they will be little more than a footnote in the history of the world.
Scattered through the newspaper like rare and precious diamonds are articles that offer brief glimpses of what humanity could become if allowed more time to mature. Op-eds that call for unity in the face of arbitrary political divisions. Scientific columns urging people to become better stewards of the environment. Even news about progress made in the exploration of other worlds.
But tomorrow, none of it will matter. Tomorrow, the slate will be wiped clean, and he and his kind will walk the world in the open once more. The humans had a good run, all things considered, but now it’s time for the Earth’s true masters to take their place on high.
He reaches the ads at the very back, then tosses the paper into the trash and rises to his feet. A meeting will soon take place between himself and others of his species, and he does not wish to be late.
“Enjoy the day, my little dung beatles.” The words come out a dry whisper. “Treasure your remaining hours, because tomorrow, the world is ours.”
He turns from the park and walks away.
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