Humanity

A Story by Denny

A short story about a world given no hope.

Four hundred years, 9 billion people, one ball of fire.

On the first of April 2043 a sound was broadcast throughout the galaxy. A sound that no-one had expected to hear in their lifetimes. A sound so innocuous a lesser mind would have likely ignored it. But humanity didn’t. They sent probes millions of kilometres from earth, spinning like toys on a glass tabletop. The breathtaking magnitude of man at its scientific peak lost amongst the news - the sun was dying, and with it, the earth and everything living on it would die too.

It took months, and billions of dollars to give the earth a timeline - three years. Everything ever touched by humans would vanish in what - when weighed against all human history - seemed like an instant. The panic was immediate, looters ransacking cities, industries around the planet grinding to a halt overnight. No-one had planned for this, no one could plan for this. 9 billion dreams suddenly reduced to dust, everything anyone had ever worked towards in the history of our entire species was suddenly worthless. The countless scientific breakthroughs, incredible artwork, breathtaking literature, all of it in vain, all of it a sad testament to humanity’s failure to overcome the one thing it could not find a way to control - the universe.

Some worked towards solutions, hoping they could be the ones to save their species, to save themselves. But it would never work, the earth would die. The sun would disappear from the sky, day would turn into night and whoever was left, human or animal, would die a quick death. Billions of people fled from their cities that were built so high, so full of life, of potential. Most of them travelled into the wilderness, to connect with nature while they could, to make peace with their demise. They filled highways around the planet, abandoning their vehicles, leaving them as husks of what their lives once were. Looking down from above they looked like shells dotted along a million lonely beaches.

Of course not all production stopped, around the world more and more people started writing, painting, recording their thoughts for a world that would never appreciate them the way they had always wanted. Soon, everyone was writing as much as they could. Recipes, sheet music, obscure historical facts, stories about every corner of the universe. Around the world, humans discovered a love for the written word that had never existed before. Suddenly, as if in the blink of an eye, the earth’s population had churned out more information than had ever been recorded up to that point in history. The inevitability of their passing lost on them, humanity -as it always had - found a way to turn its darkest day into something worth keeping alive.

This, of course, has been very interesting to me. I’ve been keeping a close eye on these people for some time now. Never have I seen so much devastation produce such an incredible response, these 9 billion people may be slowly dying, but they are far from dead.