Saturday, 20 February 2016

Prose 500 2016 Longlist Biswadeep Ghosh Hazra

Five Minute Story

Circa 2378 A.D
Mankind is lingering on the edge of its nascent existence. The world has changed; earthquakes and volcanoes have reshaped continents and landmasses alike. Oceans and seas have formed and ended abruptly in unknown places. Most fishes are dead and rendered unusable for food due to poisonous and toxic materials fouling the waters. Storms resulted in erosion, which in turn resulted in the wearing away of the top soil. Topsoil, which contains the much needed minerals for plant growth. Greenery is no more. Dead. Only random remaining patches here and there. The planet was not blue anymore, instead it was a gray, dull and dying pregnant with waste which was continuously erupting at a pace faster than the volcanoes. 

Circa 2412 A.D
Experts have given us all a maximum of ten-fifteen protensive years, after which there would be no visible difference between the Earth, and any other planet out there, incapable of supporting life. The water cycle has been disrupted beyond repair; imagine the plight of pluviophiles like me who have not seen a single drop of water fall from the sky in as many as twenty years. The toxic materials emanated from factories forms huge dumps, sometimes surpassing the local hills and mountains. Earth is a living hell. People have nowhere left to go. Massive exodus ships have tried to sustain and survive in space but in vain, something or the other always coerced them into landing.

Circa 2416 A.D
The Pope along with all religious leaders have officially declared that God has left Earth and turned his attention elsewhere; that this is the result of blasphemous behavior of millions if not billions of individuals spanning centuries. The experts were severely wrong, it took only four years for ‘Humankind’ to finish itself. The air un-breathable, the soil toxic, the water poisonous and the food, the less said about it, the better. Man has been compared to a virus, proliferating in great numbers, vying for resources. If the resources are available steadily, then they multiply until there is a tension. The resources gradually dulls, and so does their reproductive rate. Ultimately the competition eradicates the weak and the strong survives. But in complete absence of resources, nobody survives.
Humankind was extinct, Earth survived. The extinction was a result of factors that were more of an intrinsic nature than extrinsic. Volcanoes, quakes, storms and floods only accelerated the process. As the last human died, a gigantic organism suddenly felt groggily sick and nauseated. The distance of a billion light years equaled only some feet in case of the organism.

Circa 2568 A.D
Earth is completely free of humans, though their signature is still visible in the amount of damage they caused. The organism quickly found out that it had a sudden deficit in a vital nutrient it needed. The Earth is the organism and humankind, the necessary evil nutrient. Both could not survive without one another.

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