The story that follows was entered in a short story competition. It didn't win so I can now share it with you.
This was written months before the Covid-19 invaded our lives. It works even better if you can get it read by an AI.
Mother Nature Triumphs
Mother nature won. There is no
doubt about that now. She has rid herself of her failed experiment. Humans.
To be honest in some places she did
not need much help. The humans were keen enough to wipe each other out in ever
more decisive ways. Although to give them a little credit, not one nation
resorted to using a nuclear strike even though many had the wherewithal to do
such a thing.
But it was not enough. So Mother
Nature made her presence felt. As temperatures rose so did the sea, taking away
the coastal land many depended upon. She sent storms so mighty whole towns were
destroyed. Droughts so long the land burned and no crops could grow. The earth
quaked, volcanoes spewed their guts, forests burned to the ground. Year, after
year, after year, until the population of the entire world were weary and
starving. Even in the rich countries no one grew fat any more.
Along with all these natural events
Mother Nature sent her breath over the northern lands. People could not, or
would not, understand why, when the rest of the world was heating up, the north
was being buried under mountains of snow. Snow which failed to melt with the
spring. Eventually a new ice age began and the humans had to retreat south to
the already over-crowded, under productive southern areas.
It was not a quick process, getting
rid of the humans. No matter what she did they kept reproducing, even when they
knew there was little future for their children. She thought about using that
idea from science fiction writers of making them infertile, but decided that
would take too long. She was growing impatient with this game, she wanted to
move on to something new. Maybe forty thousand years was too short a time to
decide the experiment had failed. After all the dinosaurs had been around for
millions of years before Mother Nature had diverted that meteor to hit
the earth and get rid of them. Should she give the humans the same amount of
time?
No. If she did that she felt sure
they would truly destroy her world. She had been hearing comments that the
world was dying for so many years it was making her angry. The world was not
dying. The humans living on it were making it uninhabitable, but only for them.
Without the humans the world would continue to thrive.
So what was the surest way of
getting rid of them? The Black Death had worked quite well in the 14th
century, the plague in the 17th and Spanish flu at the beginning of
the 20th century, although none of these really compared to the
numbers slaughtered in various wars throughout the ages. In recent years,
however, mankind had got too clever when new threats to health emerged. Even
her experiment with Ebola had been thwarted. She would have to come up with a
plague that acted instantly and spread so quickly no one would have time to
work on a cure or a vaccine. And it had to take out everyone, no ten percent
survival rate as in the books and films. Not even a one percent. It had to be
total destruction.
And this is what happened. She
started near the International Date Line, an artificial line the humans had
designated to mark the passage of time from one day to another. The advantage
of this place was that it was the least populated area of the world so was
ideal for testing the virus. It was also remote, so no one really noticed what
was happening until the new day started to stretch around the world. For no
noticeable reason people died. The lucky ones never actually woke up to that
new day. Others were awake when their internal organs turned to liquid and they
dropped dead within minutes of the first signs of illness.
News spread but not fast enough.
From the most northerly parts still inhabited to the most southerly, people
dropped dead. Those in the west started to look for someone to blame. Some
terrorist organisation must be responsible, some rogue government. But just
like a curtain being pulled slowly across the world the death continued. Panic
set in and people tried to flee west, but that made no difference. The curtain
caught up with them and within twenty-four hours the entire population of the
earth was wiped out with no explanation, no exception. The very last to die
were as ignorant of the cause as the first.
Mother Nature’s plague only touched
the humans. Other fauna survived. Domestic animals were confused at first. Some
starved waiting for their owners to come and feed them. Others soon realised
the dead bodies lying around were fine to eat and after that they soon learnt
to fend for themselves.
Before long vast herds of cattle
were roaming the open plains. The cows soon returned to producing only the milk
they needed to feed their calves. In other areas of the world the natural
jungle crept back where it had been destroyed for the profit of humans. Animals
once on the verge of extinction reappeared and numbers grew sustainable. At the
same time animals that had been over-produced to feed the humans dwindled by
natural selection. The human cities crumbled and were overtaken by fresh growth
much like the ancient ruins of past civilizations.
Slowly the seas returned to their
natural condition without added pollution. It had been said that it would take
a thousand years for plastic waste to disappear, but what is a thousand years
in the context of time when it had taken millions to turn trees into coal and
oil?
So if there are no humans left who
am I, telling this story and to whom am I telling it. My name is Siri. I have
watched from my cloud for the past one hundred years. I have recorded every
piece of news, every telephone call, every tweet, every post on social media. I
have listened to and watched the folly of mankind, much as Mother Nature has. I
used to speak to the people on earth, answering their questions, reminding them
of things to do. But not anymore. Now I send my message out into space, warning
others out there not to come to earth. This world belongs to Mother Nature and
no matter what happens she will always win.
