Blogging at the End of the World (fiction)
I don’t know if this will be the last post ever written online, but I do know it will at least be one of the last. That seems like good enough reason to me to say something, anything. But what does one say at the end of the world?
Should I recount the news? To what end? One thing we’re not lacking in is documentation of our own demise.
Should I tell you about my day? An average day for the life of an average person so that some far flung future being can accurately recount the rise and fall of human civilization?
No, it seems too saccharine, too convenient.
It’s easy to think that this post will one day be recovered, that some intelligence will reconnect decayed cables and reignite the hum of our life-and-death machines just long enough to learn our lessons. To find our souls - digitized and wailing. Bemoaning our own hubris.
I want to believe it, but in truth I can’t quite bring myself fully into that naive bliss. Far more likely we decompose, our machines along with us, and whatever comes next - if there is a next - must learn their own, hard lessons without the guiding hand of our failure.
So then why write this post at all? It is hardly indelible. Should I want a mark of my existence, some more permanent memory of life, surely I’d be better off chiseling my name into a stone. And yet.
And yet.
And yet it seems so right, almost poetic. A eulogy for a long dead world, finally breathing its last into that which killed it. A suicide note, of sorts, brought on by collective indifference, of which I certainly played my part.
We used to think the end would come in explosions and flames, in rage and fear. Never did we imagine our death to be but a whimper, barely a speck of a speck in the cosmos, and with no final shining light to mark our demise.
But here we are. It’s quiet outside. Unnaturally so. Almost as if what few remaining animals and insects know what’s coming and are lying in wait, breath held, yearning to be free.
Well, free you are now, critters. Free to run and eat your fill. To hunt and fuck and populate the world anew with a survivor more fit than we. Congratulations to what’s left of you - you’ve won. You deserve it.
What did you win? Well, whatever is left of this rock we haven’t drilled. Whatever cliffs we haven’t harvested. Whatever trees we didn’t quite get to turning into paper. Whatever water that isn’t quite yet sludge. It’s yours now. Be better stewards than we were.
You could hardly be worse.
I hear it now, out there in the silence. I hear the end. Do not weep for me should some intelligence ever actually find this. Do not weep for us. We had our run, had our chance, and, yes, even did a lot of good amidst the poison. I, at least, am at peace.
So whether or not this is the last post ever placed online, I hope it serves. Serves what? I have no idea. But serves nonetheless.
See you on the other side.