The Telling

The Bible states that the Earth was created in six days, but we destroyed it in one. Granted, the Earth had been slowly suffocating over a millennia, but make no mistake it was the human element that spread like a virus. In the span of one thousand years the population of Earth swelled from less than fifty-million to ten-billion squandering through the planets natural resources. In the span of one-hundred years mankind evolved from the horse and buggy to interplanetary travel, but by the early twenty-first century, we had filled the atmosphere with toxic pollutants and poisoned the oceans with continents of plastics and waste. There were plenty of people who saw the trajectory we were on. They realized that we were going to be the cause of our own extinction. They tried to spread the word, they tried to save the planet, but so much damage had already been done.

Whatever it was, it was in the air, and people all over the world were getting sick. At first the doctors and scientists thought it was just a variant of a recent pandemic that the world had endured a decade prior. Unfortunately, the doctors and scientists were not the ones making life and death decisions. No, those decisions were made by the ones that the we put in power, but were only interested in serving their own selfish needs. Their belief system had been morally corrupted, living in a perpetual state of denial, they believed they were immune to the mysterious disease, they were not.

It is referred to as End-Day, though it isn’t much spoken about anymore except for in this yearly Telling. One-hundred twenty-four winters have past since those men that were tasked with our safety failed us. They panicked. Up until that point in history, Mankind had been driven by sin. Mankind’s greed, envy, wrath and pride led to the development of terrible mass extinction weapons that were controlled through the push of a button by world leaders. Fearing that their enemies had released a biological weapon, it only took one man to push his first. Many parts of the world vanished in the blink of an eye, most major cities and the millions living in them were reduced to embers. Those responsible for lighting the world on fire failed to take into account what impact those bombs would have on the Earth itself.

According to The Elders, the Earth quaked, volcanos erupted, and the ashes of the dead fell like snow blanketing the globe. The air became unbreathable, pockets of survivors found shelter where they could. For years if the fallout didn’t kill you, the Affected did. They were human once, but the prolonged exposure to the elements mutated them into something else. The Elders believe the sickness that led to End-Day still plagued the planet. The Affected are rabid animals, anyone bitten or scratched by one becomes one. Many were lost. All these years later and they are still out there scavanging the surface, now though we know how to defend ourselves and overtime we have been able to destroy them if and when we come into contact.

Our forbearers were led here by my ancestor, the mother of my mother’s mother Esperanza. She wore this ruby heart around her neck, inside the lockett were the coordinates for this haven, it was she who led us in the beginning to rebuild our society. In the old world, she would have been referred to as a saint or envied as a God, but she refused such accolades and her ability to exemplify virtue became ingrained in all of us. I wear this heart lockett now, and my daughter Hope will wear it when I am gone as a constant reminder of how far we have come. However, the work is not done, nor will it be in our lifetime. Our responsibility is to survive, the dangers are still very present. The Affected still roam the surface, the air is still not sustainable, but one day generations from now our descendants will once again rise and rejoin the recreation of the Earth.