Well, this is was a sort of creative assignment we had to do for our English class, and I figured I’d adapt it for these forums. So, it's kind of short, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
***
Life After Death
“War, war never changes. The end of the world occurred pretty much as we had predicted, too many humans, not enough space or resources to go around. The details are trivial and pointless: the reasons as always, purely human ones. The earth was nearly wiped clean of life, a great cleansing. An atomic spark struck by human hands, quickly raged out of control. Spears of nuclear fire rained from the skies, continents were swallowed in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Humanity was almost extinguished, their spirits becoming part of the background radiation that blanketed the earth. A quiet darkness fell across the planet lasting many years.” – Fallout 2
Yet there remained life. Men, along with cockroaches and rats, survived. Though the world around them changed rapidly, tiny groups of people remained, hidden in the basements of decaying buildings, and the nuclear shelters, which proved to do nothing against the omnipresent radiation. Unlike other animals, humans remained pretty much the same. They still had two arms, and two legs, and five fingers on each hand. Though they have become almost blind, and absolutely bald. Vision was the toll that radiation took on all of them. Many had perished through exposure to the deadly energy, and only those that built up a certain amount of resistance survived.
A miserable being indeed, was the man of the nuclear winter. Crawling in the darkness of his shelter, in search of food – tiny hairless animals of unknown species, hiding for each and every noise, for it might as well turn out to be a humongous mutated dog, hungry for some flesh. Yet the only true nature of man – that of striving for superiority over others didn’t change. In the world, where the only goal of every living creature was survival, humans were able to preserve the class structure. Of course, money wasn’t the sign of prosperity any more. Rats were. The most well-to-do families kept packs of rats (some of those even had fur, which was the ultimate sign of well-being of their owners) in the rotting buildings they called homes – a living supply of nourishment, a sign of security. “Insurance” they called those animals, because they could be sure they would have food for the next couple of days.
And then the darkness lifted. And the sun shone again. And the people saw the world around them. Not the green planet they knew from the books left over from before the War, but a barren desert, covered in places by thin layers of glass that formed from sand due to exposure to unbearable heat during the day, and by a thin layer of frost during the night. Many tears were shed in memory of nature. What fools men had been to exploit it, and beat it into submission, and what would they not give to have at least a small forest inhabited by animals, and a tiny lake filled with fish back! They had learned the hard way.
Sooner or later, a miracle happened. The prayers of the humanity spread thin over the scarred face of the Earth were heard: it turned out that in some distant places, life had been preserved in its original form. Not the thin brown-leaved brush that covered most of the land, and not the two-headed cows and giant rats that served as the only source of food for the people, but large-trunked oaks, and ever-green pines, and maples that gave sweet sap. At first, those who found those cradles of life were reluctant to let others know about the discovery. They feared intrusion, and extermination of what life there remained, to serve the needs of man. Yet the word spread fast in this post-nuclear world, and the people rushed to the last remnants of non-human life to experience the senses some of them never knew existed: a walk among the pines on a cool morning, with dew still settling among the trees; a swim in the river on a hot day, with knowledge that water will not kill you... right away; a sight of a rabbit’s tracks in the fresh snow. Everybody wanted this and much more back.
Yet the influx of humans into the last remaining “natural zones,” as they came to be known, didn’t produce the devastating effect that the original discoverers of these areas foretold. During the years of nuclear winter: the years of crawling in the darkness, the years feeding on tiny animals, half-dead of radiation, the years of hiding from every rustle – the humanity’s mentality had changed. The people had learned the hard way, but they learned. And the result was all that counted, as when this new opportunity opened itself to them, they did not let it slip.
As men and women came into the “natural areas,” they settled among, or upon, the trees; they fed on small animals, and became prey to larger ones. The natural order was being preserved, and no single species gained any particular advantage over another. The people thought their “progress” would end there, and they would always continue their ape-like existence, prisoners of their former stupidity. Yet that was better than nuclear winter.
Half a millennium has passed since then, and this city, this country, this planet, is the result of humanity’s peaceful co-existence with nature. I feel that now is the time to recall our most important advances, as they are becoming so common, people are forgetting what they owe them to, even though just five hundred years ago – not so long ago by Earth’s time – our planet was not much more than a desert. It is time to recall and be grateful.
Living houses serve us. They have become so common nowadays, that people often forget how truly marvelous these creations are. Indeed, who would have though in that barbaric world before the Rebirth to plant trees in a circular shape, and bend their branches down, so that their trunks would serve as walls, and their crowns – as roof. Who, would have thought to employ a plant’s ability to move to create doors and windows? Indeed, before the War, the only plants that were able to move were the Venus Flytraps that would catch flies in their flowers, which could snap shut. Now, we use a similar mechanism in plants for doors in our houses.
We live in symbiosis with the environment. From the books of the past, we know about the manufacturing processes that turned the children of nature into poisonous matter, not fit for anything but being buried deep in the ground or shot towards the Sun. Now, we live in harmony with our environment. All of the waste we produce is reclaimed by nature, and all of the pollution we make is really just a source of energy for other organisms. No longer do we treat wild animals as a threat to our survival, but try to adapt ourselves so that we wouldn’t bother them, and they wouldn’t bother us.
We produce more energy and nutrients than we can consume, yet no excess is wasted. It all goes back to the environment and serves to support larger populations of plants, animals, and humans. It is strange to read about the overpopulation problems of the past, as we don’t have it now, nor are about to face it. Our population still grows exponentially, yet so do our production capabilities. With every birth, we know that the man or woman, that grows up from that baby, will not only produce enough energy and resources to sustain her or himself, but for three more people. It is thus, that we have grown and prospered over the years.
Look around you. All that you know and love might not have been there. Learn to appreciate all those things, and teach others to, as well, lest we repeat our former mistakes.
Enjoy tonight’s celebration, and remember that you owe it to the efforts of generations of men and women who promoted our lifestyle throughout the planet and turned it from a barren desert into a flourishing green world.
Reinhard.
(December 31, 499 After-Rebirth; Official New Year Address to the Nation; Draft 3)
[APPROVED]
