The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
– Mary Oliver
Tag: Earth
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.
Fiction: Memento
“Can you believe this?” Tachibana asked. “T-minus four hours and counting and suddenly the captain has an unscheduled errand for us to run.”
Svitenko shrugged. “She’s the captain,” she said. “At least we’re here in the cockpit and don’t have to suit up.”
“That’s the other thing. She is the captain. She should have a million things to do this close to leaving Earth. Instead, she’s doing this herself and is going EVA.”
“Must be something pretty important to bobble up the schedule like this at the last minute,” Svitenko suggested.
“Given our landing coordinates it looks more like a pilgrimage. Chief Tak was pretty upset with losing us and the shuttle; he’ll be hopping mad if this isn’t a crucial trip.”
Fiction: Illegal Aliens
For all practical purposes, it was just the two of us in the little bar in Las Tres Mujeres, New Mexico. There were five other guys in the place, but two of them had passed out, two were more legitimately asleep, and the fifth was an intensely quiet drunk off in his own little world. That left me and the Mexican-American bar owner named Germán.
The bar, El Cantinero Solo, boasted few modern amenities save the cooler for the cerveza and the satellite TV. The drunks didn’t seem to mind so I overlooked it too.
The TV was showing an American newscast; a superannuated U.S. senator was halfway through a sound bite. I’d been mildly captivated by the fifth drunk and caught only the last part of it.