The End

They're saying the world is going to end this weekend. There was a time when that kind of news made me nervous, but I've lived through several of these predictions now, and have finally accepted that humans have been predicting the end of the world since before we could even call ourselves humans. There have always been and will always be people on the corner with sandwich-board signs saying "The End is Near" and late night evangelists reading from Revelations. And they have always been wrong. So I smile to myself as I drive down the deserted highway home.

It's a beautiful February day with a clear blue sky and a brisk breeze. I know that most people have rushed home to cling to their families in fear, so I'm taking my time and enjoying the complete lack of traffic. I was planning to go home this weekend anyway to visit my parents since I didn't have anything else going on, and it has been several weeks since I last saw them. It isn't a visit of desperation like so many others are currently having. It's just like any other visit, except less stressful, because all the idiots have burrowed themselves into tunnels. It's nice. I don't even listen to the radio this time because there is no need. I don't need any distractions from other drivers because there are no other cars around for miles, and I'm enjoying the wide, luxurious silence as my car glides over hills and turns.

It's dark by the time I roll into town, the sleepy little barely-a-city where I grew up. On my three hour journey I've only met one other vehicle, and what a coincidence, it was someone I knew! An old friend, who smiled and waved in recognition before continuing on her way, clearly also enjoying the rare beauty of such an empty world. As I pass through the business district, I notice that all the lights are off in every store and restaurant and every business sign is dark. I have never seen the boulevard so dark, but this, too, makes me smile. Undoubtedly, come Monday, when the world has yet again failed to end, the lights will flicker back on as everyone sheepishly returns to work and pretends that they aren't as gullible as they really are. In the meantime, I'm sure the environment appreciates at least one eco-friendly night with power switched off, fewer cars on the road, less pollution and waste, if only for a couple of hours.

Only a few lights shine out across town from homes and places of worship, where the faithful and afraid have gathered to ask for mercy. My own church is one of the handful hosting a service tonight. I decide to stop in, not to attend, but to use the restroom, which will be cleaner and more comfortable than a gas station. I hurry in and out, not wanting to be stopped and caught up in conversation, but there are only about a dozen people here, and even the handful that I recognize seem particularly short on words tonight.

By the time I get home, my parents are already in bed, so I let myself in quietly and settle in for the night in my old room; I'll greet them in the morning.

But I must have been more tired than I realize, because I sleep later than I intend to.  Although my parents are both retired, they are still early risers and I expect they have gone on about their normal daily routines. I head to the new science museum where my dad has been volunteering. It's just down the road and I haven't seen it since it opened.

Today is significantly warmer than yesterday, and far warmer than you would normally expect for February, but with global climate change, it's hardly worth remarking on anymore. The evidence of climate change is thick here though, where much of the vegetation has withered under extended drought conditions and the gravel roads have somehow turned to sand.

I arrive at the museum and can am not surprised to find absolutely zero patrons.  Even without the hype about the end of the world, I imagine that this museum doesn't see much traffic, having been unfortunately built in a part of the country that has largely abandoned science. Mom greets me in the gift shop with a tight hug and a smile that lights up her whole face. The girl working in the gift shop explains that she's radioed to Dad that I'm here and he'll be down in a minute. Normally he would need to wait until the end of a tour to leave, but there is no one here today, so it doesn't matter.

While we wait for Dad, Mom and I catch up. We laugh about how out of control the doomsday predictions have gotten, surpassing the old days when only scattered sects would hole up. We decide it probably has something to do with the so-called echo chamber that social media has become.  We laugh about the biggest doomsday failures in recent history, the Mayan Calendar in 2012 and the Y2K panic before that. But here is Dad! He envelopes me in his strong arms and kisses my cheek.  Let's all go back to the house, he suggests, there won't be any visitors to the museum today anyway. He'll give me the full tour later on.

So we wave goodbye to the girl in the gift shop and begin the walk home. It's really heating up today, and the sand has gotten rather hot on our feet. I skip ahead of my parents from shade patch to shade patch and we briefly pause while I share my water bottle with Mom. As she takes a drink, I look up at the clear blue sky. There isn't a cloud anyway, from horizon to horizon, and the sun beats down ferociously.  I feel like it looks... angry? I make an off-hand comment to this effect, and my parents glance skyward before agreeing with me, and we continue our walk home.

As we get almost to the door there is suddenly a flash, so bright that normal daylight seems dark by comparison, and we instinctively lunge through the door.  In that split second my mind leaps to the wildest places. I first wonder if we can go back and start over, before realizing that's impossible. I quickly despair that humanity never had the chance to spread beyond our planet in any real way. Everything we had ever done or made or been was about the be erased without the slightest shred of evidence as the sun exploded and incinerated our entire planet. It was not just my own future lost, it was everyone's future, and everyone's past. My parents and I held each other close, as we had a million times before, and yet like never before, and never again, and waited for the end.

The Library Tree

Beautiful warm sunlight from above, a gentle and refreshing breeze all around, and cool, damp, and fertile soil down below.  The mobile organisms scurry, slope, flit, and slither all around, providing me with delicious carbon dioxide, and sometimes I think there is no better place that I could be.  I’ve seen generations of the mobile ones come and go, changing and aging, as I’ve grown larger, taller, wiser.  Sometimes they are nice, bringing extra nutrients, or admiring my leaves as the seasons change.  It amuses me to watch the young ones try to climb, and I try then not to let them fall to their deaths. Other times they are a nuisance, trying to carve markings into my body.  But mostly they are harmless, with short lifespans and shorter attention spans, so the damage they do is usually temporary.  

Most of what the bipeds do is building things. There’s one here, near me.  They brought stones from far away and stacked them. They brought metals and minerals, melted and stretched thin, and decorated and filled the various holes between the stones.  It’s not a natural look, but so little of what the bipeds do looks natural anymore.  As far as their structures go, this seems to be one of the nicer ones.  I’ve grown accustomed to it over the past seasons, if not fully fond of it.   But don’t let the cool stone deceive you. This structure is full of unspeakable horrors.

I didn’t realize it at first. I was (relatively) young and unconcerned with the comings and goings of the bipeds within their artificial stone outcropping.  In those days I was smaller and more of the young ones would try and climb me, with their feet tickling my limbs and branches as they scurried about like squirrels. I’ve never really understood why so many of the mobile organisms move so quickly, but it does amuse me, how they bustle about in such a hurry, as though they are filled with a raging wind.   

Occasionally, one of the bipeds will stop and rest in my shade either on the way in or out of the stone building, often carrying a small object.  Normally small objects don’t concern me much one way or another.  But there was something so horrifyingly repulsive about this one.  Perhaps the revulsion was in that the item was so small and unassuming, quiet and harmless.  I didn’t notice it at first. Certainly a great many of them had escaped my notice before this one showed me the monsters all around me.

In the hands of this calm, quiet biped, carried out from the silent stone outcropping, were the scraps of my brethren, only barely recognizable after having been shredded and and mashed, mutilated and bleached, burned and bound.  I looked and saw more: nearly every biped entering and exiting that artificial cave had one of these items, often more.  A few had more than they could hold and carried them in bags.  I had not paid much mind to what went on in the artificial cave, but it was largely quiet and still, and I had not considered the carnage housed inside, the evidence of such monumental violence, obviously carried out somewhere, if not just beyond my roots’ reach!  Suddenly it seemed an abandoned abbatoire, a gruesome mausoleum full of haunts.

I cannot view the tomb the same way again, nor the bipeds coming and going from it.  I have become suspicious of them and all their doings. They have gone from harmless follies to unpredictable monsters.  

I saw one last spring digging holes in the open land near the monstrous cavern, and placing saplings of my own kind into the holes. At the time it seemed beautiful, a nurturing act that seems to have become relatively rare on the part of the bipeds toward us stationary organisms.  Now I find myself wondering if the young are being placed there for convenience, to be grown nearby and slaughtered when they are needed.  I wonder if I am in danger, and my brothers nearby.  At times I grow angry thinking about it, and when the wind is in my favor, I break off pieces of my limbs and throw them in rage at the bipeds, their motorized machines, at the unspeakable building itself.

The bipeds would have to pay for such treachery.  I reached out to my brethren through the root network and asked if they knew of this.  Some admitted they did.  Some had heard from farther away about whole forests being cleared, but none of us knew exactly the middle steps between our kind being slaughtered and being carried around in pieces by the monsters around us.  We decided to fight back.  We had been on this planet longer than the bipeds, and we would remain when they were gone.  We slowed down our oxygen production, just slightly enough to cause panic, even though carbon dioxide was more than abundant.  Those of us with hard fruit and nuts instructed the squirrels and chipmunks how to throw it at the bipeds when they least suspected it.  We warned the birds of the treachery and encouraged them to drop their waste on the bipeds when possible, and on their motorized machines when the bipeds themselves were unavailable.  We used the wind to throw whatever of ourselves we could manage. Our efforts had little effect, it seemed, but it felt good to direct our rage back at the bipeds. For a while.  

One calm spring day, when the wind wasn’t strong enough to do much and we had nothing yet for the squirrels to throw, I watched some of the young bipeds running through my domain.  I noticed a small biped clutching a particularly large specimen of my mutilated kin.  Several other bipeds, also small, but larger than the first, were chasing her.  At first I thought they must be practicing their violent ways, growing their anger and honing their rage.  But then I noticed that the smallest one, with her horrible souvenir, was not in a frenzy, but was actually fleeing, afraid of the demons chasing her.  I watched, studying the situation as the others caught the small one and took the prize from her arms. She shrieked in defiance, and I inwardly cheered, siding with the beasts that were apparently also enraged by the sacrilege it represented. The small one continued crying out, pleading with the others, who then encircled her, taunting her with what they had taken. But then I changed sides, for as I looked on, the others took the artifact and waved it, open with the thin shreds of my kind flapping perversely.  The small one made a lunge and fell, and I noticed her face was wet. The others cheered and laughed at her humiliation and, to my horror, began destroying the item they had wrenched from her hands.

The sheets fluttered about like autumn leaves as the small one scrabbled for them and begged the others to return the carcass.  They laughed maliciously, and with a final rip, tossed the now empty shell back at the small one and scattered.  

I was dumbfounded. The small one caught each stray piece of the mangled tome and, still sobbing, sat beneath my boughs and put each one back in its place with a gentle caress.  She seemed to apologize to each scrap as she lovingly smoothed, tucked, and straightened each one back within the covering.  I could no longer be angry with this small biped holding tattered remains of my family. It was painfully clear that this was no monster cherishing a head on a spike.  Whatever had been done to transform mighty trees into this small brick had carried great meaning with it.  My fallen comrades had become the medium that bore greater meaning than we could have imagined.  No biped had ever cried out over a branch we had lost or even one of our great number completely letting go of the earth and falling.  We became so much more important to the souls of these creatures when we carried the markings they burned upon our processed flesh. And while I still wished that we were valued more as living things, my anger subsided to see how dearly the bipeds loved what we became.

I still shudder inwardly, from time to time, at all of the carcasses entombed so nearby, but it’s almost worth it when I see how much meaning the bipeds get from the messages we carry.  And maybe someday we can find a compromise.  

Unfortunately, Not Everyone Likes Sour Gummy Worms

I’ve been swimming in this sea of sour gummy worms for ages now.  Seriously, like three weeks maybe? I’ve nearly lost sight of the shore.  It’s just bright orange, lime green, electric blue, and hot pink, sunshine yellow and neon red all about.  Gorgeous really.  

I asked my friends to come along. It looked like a lot of fun, something I hadn’t done before, maybe a fun adventure.  It was something that I would definitely have jumped right into in my younger days, and I thought they would appreciate that, always reminiscing like they are.

I said to a couple of them, “Look! It’s a sea of sour gummy worms! Doesn’t that look great! Let’s just go for a little swim! Might be fun!”

They looked at me blankly.  I tried to keep a fun, encouraging face, and said, expectantly, “Well?!”

Monica smiled and then said “Hey, remember that time we walked through the chocolate forest? That was funny right? I don’t know about swimming in gummy worms, but the chocolate forest was ah-mazing! All the chocolate right?! Yeah, that was great!”

I smiled and nodded, still wading in the gummy worms, in up to about my ankles. “Yeah, that was fun, this could be fun too. Let’s give it a go!”

Whitney said, in her hip German accent, “You know I don’t really eat sugar anymore. It’s not very gut for you, you know.” Whitney, who used to drag us to the candy shop every weekend.  We bought a whole grocery bag full of candy once, just for the hell of it. But now it’s not good enough for her.  So much for old times’ sake.  All I could do was blink. I turned to Carla.

“For real, though! Look, taste this one, Carla! Feel how squishy it is! Wouldn’t it be a hoot to swim in!”

Carla tasted the the gummy worm I tossed to her.  She nibbled the end thoughtfully.  She smiled, “Yeah that’s not bad,” my eyebrows went up with my hopes. “That’s something I might consider doing in the future.” Eyebrows and hopes crashed back down.

“I’m already in, though! I didn’t mean three weeks from now, I’ve started now! This could be a fun thing for us all to do!” I cried. But I had already lost their attention. They were talking about something else that I couldn’t quite hear and they had started walking down the shore.  With spiteful determination, I turned and faced the sour gummy sea. I stomped out until the gummies reached my knees and then I leapt out, arms outstretched into the rainbow of gelatinous worms.

The beach where I had started was sort of in a cove, and as I paddled and frolicked (swimming in gummy worms is not quite like normal swimming. You do float, but not quite as well as in water.  It’s sort of between swimming and going through a ball pit, so frolicking is still definitely possible, even when you can’t reach the bottom), I noticed one of my other friends out on the shore to my right.  She had always more tolerance for my strange notions, and had had some of her own.  When others failed to appreciate me, she usually did. I waved and called out to her.

“Vanessa!  Look! I’m swimming in a sea of sour gummy worms! Come join me!”  She waved back and smiled. I knew she liked sour gummy worms, so I was hopeful I would finally have some company.  But with a wave of nausea, I remembered that the last several things I had suggested to her had not gone over well.  She hadn’t been thrilled with the sugar glass spectacles I recommended, and thought that the cotton candy wig I told her about had been cute, but not practical enough to really say she “liked” it.  But still! We had both previously enjoyed sour gummy worms, and on a separate occasion, wading through a maple syrup swamp.

“Oh, that looks like fun! Let me go get my goggles!” She shouted back.  

“That’s a good idea! Sometimes the sour sugar gets in and burns a little, but it’s still worth it! I am just having fun, so I won’t be far gone when you return!”

That was two weeks ago, and I haven’t heard back. I thought I saw her coming back over a dune and I jumped and waved, asking if she was coming along, that I was getting lonely, but she either must not have heard me or she decided a sea of sour gummy worms was just too much.  So I bounce along alone.

Sometimes I think the gummy worms are coming alive and keeping me company. They’re always a lot of fun.  Very sarcastic, sour gummy worms are.  Just like you’d expect from a candy that makes you pucker.  Other times, I start to think that maybe I’m becoming a sour gummy worm too.  Part of me knows this isn’t really rational, but there are nights when the full moon shines down and my arms and legs wiggle about a lot like gummy worms, my knees and elbows the middle where the flavor and color changes. Sometimes each of my fingers are gummy worms too!  But when I bite them, it hurts, so I don’t do that so much anymore.

I don’t regret coming out here, even though sometimes the sour sugar gets in my eye, and I’ve got a canker sore on my tongue. I just wish my friends had come along. Who would have known that candy could be so divisive?  The gummy worms are my friends now.  It’ll be alright.