Worlds
There was once a dying planet, in dire need of a new place to continue on.
The inhabitants, humans, believed such a feat to be impossible, but like many impossible things, like electricity and life, it happened anyway.
Many people moved to this artificial galaxy, evolving into their own life forms and creating their own homes, their own lives, their own art. These worlds became whole other planets, separate from their Mother Earth.
However, many humans refused to leave Earth, and stayed on their dying planet in ferocious obstinacy. As humans on other worlds developed key traits to survive in these new places, the Earthbound humans refused to evolve.
And one day, a nuclear bomb tested at just the right spot caused the Earth to finally reach its limit. Buildings across the globe, collapsed. Radiation spread faster than wildfires in a desert. The earth had died. And still, humans, through resiliency or fear, refused to leave. They built underground bunkers, lined with lead to keep out the air. They developed a cure for radiation poisoning. They survived.
But those living on other worlds didn't know this. They told legends of Earth's end. They cautioned their children; "beware of your pride and your stubbornness, for this is what will follow."
Until one day, the end came for their galaxy as well. Earthquakes ruptured their artificial planets down to their core, and the population was forced to evacuate.
Everyone was loaded onto ships, destined for another planet. Anywhere but here; only prolonging the inevitable end. For one by one, each planet would die, unless something was done about it.
Little did they know, that answer would be found on a planet that everyone thought was barren and dead.
Mother Earth, the key to their destruction, also holds the key to their survival.
For stubbornness and resiliency come with strength and determination. With refusal to change comes the ability to fight.
And with willingness to leave, comes willingness to adapt to whatever may come next.
Only through fusing these two separate ideologies can their Worlds be saved.
Fractured
In the beginning, there was the Earth.
Just as it is now, except for one tiny thing in a hidden corner of the world.
And that one thing grew, and grew, and grew, until people noticed it.
And when they noticed it, they saw what it was doing:
birds fell fell out of the sky, dead mid-flight.
trees collapsed it spread up them, the dust-turned trunk unable to hold the still-green leaves.
lakes evaporated, leaving behind flopping fish that quickly perished too.
boulders fractured and split apart, leaving behind only a dusting of the finest sand.
air stood still without the joyous buzzing of bugs to fill it and give it life.
turning their beloved land to dust and ashes, gone and inhospitable.
They tried to stop it, built walls and shelters to hide from it, but as it grew it moved faster and faster, killing all they knew.
But the world did not want to die.
It wanted its birds and trees and water and fish and rocks and bugs and everything to survive.
It did not want its creations, all its work, to die.
It would not let this disease kill everything it had made.
But it could not stop its corruption.
So it cut off part of itself,
severed off a section of world before the plague infected it,
and this small fraction of the great world survived,
on its own,
forcibly abandoned by its creator,
in isolation,
alone,
but alive.
That is the world we know today,
The sole surviving piece of a world once much greater, bigger,
Incomplete but existing,
a miracle, from a sacrifice.
Lets Try Again Shall We?
Weaving and turning and bending and stretching, comparison and compression a new world was formed, covering the progress of previous generations, the work of people with five fingers and multi-colored skin. Our world evolving, changing, destroying and making, giving and taking. Until it was just as it was before. But with overflowing greenery that climbs it's way up and over, through and through, to fill the cracks of the building we once occupied. The lush grass covering the cracked and shaky roads, while this world slowly erodes and starts anew. And through it all a new life emerges uprooted from the dewy grass, with five-fingered hands and brown eyes. Tanned skin and white teeth. Ladies and gentlemen I introduce Adam & Eve...2.0.
Gen-assist
In the beginning. I was not consulted. My approval was not necessary to be. So often times I was disregarded. Coming up you see? Any opinions I presented thoughtfully we’re laughed at. Went so far as calling me retarded. Mocked by adults once my. For acting my. Showing their age. Instilling in me for a time considerable unnerving rage.
Which in turn generally resulted in producing that I’d previously pleaded for less intensely. Dually noted. Bookmarked by the humiliation endured for to sheepishly quoting. By the babbling buffoons on the other side of my peep holes.
Hell before the so called great minds of this planets got around to communicating with me. I’d had already been engaged in such with my head’ shoulders, knees, and toes for some time. Before we next spoke I swore to them in their language the best I could.
"This is no fucking joke. You got any brains up there. A Dead head would at least have a few far flung ideas."
Again they mocked my attempts to wheel and deal. So I screamed.
"Look at me! Count and subtract nine from ten"
Exposing just one middle finger.
“I left only one you understand? Two my contempt for you may not expose”
I thought for sure. This time I wouldn’t be taking so lightly. They thought how peculiar. Pulled out their phones. And recorded themselves making a fool out of me. Went so far as uploading it to YouTube. So I can forever be That Dude. That tiny pissed off little dude giving everyone the bird on YouTube. How thoughtful.
"In the beginning"
You have their word. And you can trust such will serve themselves in the end.
Castor, Virginia, USA
There was one city, seven territories, and twenty-two neighborhoods. A city, a world of its own, comprised of 389,717 people. Everyone lived by different laws, but we all followed the same two. You don’t ask questions. You don’t give answers. That is our reality.
There was a time it wasn't like that; A time before my family immigrated. You see, it all started in the mid-1700s. After another bloody war between the Scots and the English, a bunch of Scots immigrated to America. They settled in the colonies and even created some of their own. One such colony became known as New Aberdeen. Not long afterward, some Dutch moved next door and founded First Ward. Some more people would come into the area, but Castor was not a city until the 1850s. Then, all of a sudden, Russians, Hungarians, Greeks, Italians, Englishmen, Welsh, and all sorts of Hispanics moved into the area.
See, but these weren't normal people. They all seemed a little different. The Scottish could heal just about anybody, and the Hungarians seemed to be nocturnal and had an odd amount of murderers or hospital workers. They were the nicest people though, always doing blood drives.
It was a haven for magical creatures and people. People say magic used to hum in the air. There were rivalries between groups over the years, but it never involved the persecution of magic.
Then, my grandfather came to town.
He was a Welshman who came to live with his second cousin. No one even took notice as he arrived from Ellis Island up north.
Twenty years later, he ran the streets. His second in command was mayor. His best friend was the chief of police. Through fear, the city was his. People stopped asking the question. The idiots who still asked? They never got answers.
You think the Italian Mafia was a story? You haven't heard anything yet.
GRANTED
When the Elders tell it, it sounds like pure fiction.
The things of legend and myths, but they insist it's true. I don't dare to question how they know that considering that all the information they have from 'Before' is all they have read and what has been passed down to them but, like I said, they insist it's true. And I am finding that conviction is a hard thing to displace.
'Before', if you dare to believe it, the earth was green. Yes, green. All the plants grew comfortably on the outside rather than the dome-raised temperature-conscious things we have that in some seasons will not produce any food. We've had several episodes of mass starvation deaths. It's nothing new.
And there was water! Freely flowing water - not the stuff we work for. Masses and masses of water. The separated what the Elders call 'continents'. The story is that all the different tribes lived on different continents back then. Nothing like the giant sun-scotched land mass we have now. Somedays I stare at the map and I can't believe it was ever any different.
Today though, I start on my journey to demystify the myths. If I can't come up with a better answer in three months for the fall, I will have to take up my new position as the Colony's farmer. If this hasn't been clear yet, no one in their right minds would volunteer for this job because starvation is a given and I will be the pariah that failed to stop it.
Long Before there was Earth, there was Nothing.
And then there was everything. But before everything had spread it was one thing and that one things name was Ayomide. Now, since Ayomide was everything, it meant they had nothing. Was surrounded by a constant, silent, nothing. As quickly as Ayomide came into birth, they drew tired of that constant, silent, nothing and began to instead look inside themselves to get away from it. You see Ayomide was made out of drega, which is a type of mystical gas, and when they began to ball themselves up to take a closer look, well we all know what happens when gas compacts itself too tightly. Thus the universe was born through the death of an understandably bored deity.