Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story … humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing … and as unobtrusive.
– Ray Bradbury
Tag: humanity
Quotable 331
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity and humanity.
– William Zinsser
#quikfic 106
All the night, with each drip of the leaky faucet, Ed counted another grievance against humanity, both generally and specifically.
Fiction: Lunch Break
Lisandro hadn’t seen a cockroach for a couple of hours, but he knew they were still around. Soon, they would be all that was around.
He chided himself for being so pessimistic. Other life forms still wandered the surface of the warm, wet planet and swam in its seas and flew in its skies. They would adapt and survive and evolve. Perhaps the planet’s next sentient race would take better care of it.
And although he did not realize it as he died, Lisandro was the last human on Earth.
Hovering in and out of the Earth’s plane of existence, a formless Being took back the last spark of life It had deposited on Earth and became whole again for the first time in many millennia.
The Being that had been every human ever to live reflected on Its multitude of experiences. It thought about the lives and loves and losses of the nearly 200 billion individuals it had been. About how some parts of itself warred against other parts. How some parts were bold and others timid. How some parts created and other parts destroyed.
Long, long ago the Being had realized that It was being changed by Its human experiences — that even as increasing numbers went out, the sparks that returned had mutated ever so slightly. The changes had been subtle at first, and by the time the Being thought to worry those experiences within demanded that humanity be allowed to continue. And so it did, one lifespark of the Being at a time.
Now it was over.
“Are you finished?” another Being asked.
“With being human … it seems so,” Being One replied. “But I’m not sure what to think about what I have known and felt when so much of me was human.”
If Being Two had had a body and lungs it would have sighed. “Think while we travel. We only stopped here to indulge your silly, antiquated fascination with eating, remember?”
Being One remembered. “Only by being corporeal could I enjoy all that this beautiful planet had to offer as food.”
“And all the humans you were eventually ruined it,” Being Two said.
Being One paused. “Yes… I don’t understand why I let that happen.”
“Let’s go. You can ponder all you want while we catch up with the others.” And Being Two moved in time and space and material plane away from the Earth.
Being One regarded the planet It had dominated only too well, and was sad as It left.
The apples were especially good, It thought.