Feb 22, 2013 Original Short Stories
The End and the Beginning – A Narrative of a New Race ©By Vijaya Sundaram January 24, 2012
The planet swung around on its appointed course around the sun, dutifully, tiredly, imperceptibly tilting ever more to the right. Lands grew cold and hot and cold and hot again. Forests died, and mountains grew taller. Tsunamis rose up and islands sank. The desert blazed unmercifully. Birds fell out of the sky. Quietly, entire species died, as the decades drifted by like seaweed on dead oceans. The polar caps melted, and methane clouds rose into the air like ghosts promising a holocaust of fire, ready to ignite, ready to unleash their fierce tendrils of blazing death on the straggling populations of weary humans who eked out their lives in the few safe places on earth.
It was into such a world that the Stranger came drifting through the clouds in her vehicle from a faraway universe.
The Stranger stood, light as air on her feet, straddling continents, and gazing hopelessly around, while the vehicle blended into the very air, so as not to set off any methane into instability. Fire-power was not what propelled her vehicle. What propelled her vehicle was a substance which had no name, and would never be discovered by humans.
Sorrow filled her face as she looked at the tiny dwellings of the people huddled in the mountains, the history of the rise and fall of the human race in their eyes, as they gazed about them at the increasingly hostile world they had inherited from their rapacious forbears. Clad in their animal skins, in shelters of scrub and brush, they gazed around, their scarred visages showing apathy and absolute despair. Scattered around them were the bones of animals, and small straggling fields of corn. There was no evidence of fire.
I should never have seeded this planet, she thought to herself. I should have gone to another star system. This very planet is fighting my descendants. The planet hates them. The planet wants to shake them off like fleas. What shall I do?
And an idea came to her. To make it all happen, she needed a hundred years or two. Time passed, as time does. Eventually, what she wanted, willed, worked for, happened. The planet straightened itself to the exact tilt necessary for life to sustain itself. All the methane released from the melting of snows on polar caps was gathered up into her spacecraft, excess carbon dioxide powered it, and fresh, oxygen-rich air swirled hopefully around the planet. Rains fell, tides rose and ebbed in predictable patterns, and new, green forests sprang up where they hadn’t been for a while.
Humans in the tropics looked around them, and saw fresh green where there hadn’t been any for decades. Polar caps began to freeze again. Others on the far northern ends of continents looked up and felt snowflakes falling. Nobody knew what it was, but it felt good.
And the migrations began. But this time, things were different. This time, the earth purred. Humans weren’t fleas. Humans were benign extensions of earth’s self. They lived with nature, freely, joyously. Then, they discovered the use of fire. This time, something held them back. They looked up. The sun smiled down.
And though it all started all over again, humans had evolved. Their bodies held all the heat and light, air and water they needed. A new race began, straightened its shoulders and rose up into the air.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Beginning~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Hope, Aliens, Beginnings, Climate Change, Endings, Evolution, Human Life, Planet Earth, Strangeres