Treatise on the End of the Human Race

             The year is 2592, and the last of humanity has just died. She didn’t have a name. She didn’t have a place of residence. Long had humanity abandoned sedentary living places after the cataclysms that befell them. She died at the ripe old age of 43. Old for the time at least. In the past century, many barely made it to 30. She had no language; coherent words being of little use with no one to speak to.

She was alone on a quiet world, devoid of almost all complex life or vegetation, scrapping by on what little food and water she could manage to obtain. Her mate had passed on nearly 2 years ago, but she had little concept of years. She knew that it was man moon cycles, and that he had gone in his sleep, never to wake up. She had no concept of an afterlife. For her, there were only two states; here, and gone.

As she ventured through the desolate wastelands of which we used to roam, she regarded things she saw, but had no concept of. Old, overgrown monuments of rock and stone, with boxy shapes and holes throughout. Cold metal husks larger than her littered the pathways frequently. Were these the bones of some ancient bygone animal? She did not know. What she did know, was that there was nothing for her here, so she moved on.

In her time, there was no history anymore. History had died with the civilizations who chronicled it. Indeed, it was largely useless by the time humanity realized that it was too late, but it would have been a small comfort to know that our legacy lived on, but that was a comfort that would not come to pass. The computers of old blinked out. The paper, so brittle in life, faded and tore into nothingness as the weather turned against us. Our monuments fared somewhat better, but nature took its course, reclaiming the stone and natural materials we had stolen from her womb. All that remained, was what could not be returned to the soil. But even nature could not weather the future.

In our hubris, we had thought we could conquer nature. Beat it into submission until it bowed down to us. And, for a time, it did. But, as all things are, nature is an unbeatable force that cannot be tamed. But it can be harmed, and changed. And change it we did. Our pollutants, our weapons, eventually even our breath, became too much for nature to endure. And in her death throws, mother nature sealed our fate. No longer could we sail seas that gave no quarter, or fly on winds that thundered and blew so fierce that we could not adapt. The dirt with which we held for granted, became spoiled. No crops would grow, no minerals could be mined. Our forests, once a bastion of harmony with nature, withered away until trees were but a distant memory.

But the worst of it all, was when we became the sole inhabitants of our earth. The animals, some of which we held dear, others which we butchered, passed on into myth and legend. No longer were dogs walking alongside us, having turned feral before their inevitable extinction. Primates, our genetic cousins, blinked out without many, save for the most caring, having sympathy. The whales of the oceans stopped singing, and the dolphins and sharks left their old hunting grounds, never to be seen again. The birds in the sky scattered, unable to discern where to go anymore, and eventually fell back to earth, grounded, forever.

However, it was the insects which signaled natures true end. Long thought insignificant, we could not have understood the value in that which we so foolishly maligned. Or maybe we did, and we simply did not care. But without the bees to pollinate or the worms to churn soil, we swiftly felt the ramifications of our actions. And it was too late.

Some tried to leave, abandon earth for the stars, hoping to live on elsewhere. But without having put stock in those who foresaw our deathly future, we were sorely unprepared for long-term space life, and so, passed out of existence quietly, in the blackness of the void. Our kind, who had long put emphasis on discovery and science, turned blindly against these two principles, and toward only power and gain. But power means little in a world of ash. Gain means nothing to those who judge us after. And so, it came to pass that our civilizations fell. Whether to war, or to famine, or simply to a slow listless death, we all faded into nothingness. So great was our legacy, that there are none left to speak of our accomplishments.

But the woman knew none of this. Little did she know, that she was the last in a long line of inventors, explorers, geniuses and poets. She had the lineage of great humans passed on down to her, each greater than the last. We had written profound works of art, painted affecting masterpieces, sung and played music to stir the soul. And now it was all gone. Forgotten. Nothing but footnotes in the history of a world that would never again be told. And we did it to ourselves.

As she lay down in the dirt, cold and alone, she thought simple thoughts. She wished for her mate to be beside her. She wished for food in her belly, and for the pain of existence to go away. She wished for something besides what lay beneath her. As she drifted off to sleep, her breath left her body, one last time. And then the world was silent. So complete was our failure, that the only mark we had left on the universe, was silence.