Skip to main content

Day 9 - If Only

100 Day Writing Challenge
Day #9
Prompt: “The Third Terra was going the way of the First…”



Humanity has encountered extinction twice before. Once a couple millennia ago on the planet Earth, and again circa 500 years ago on the planet Horus. Both times humanity drove its home planet into an inhabitable, unsustainable land stripped of all its resources.

No one likes to take responsibility, but I personally blame the obvious offenders: Overpopulation, greed, power-mongering, radical religions, and narcissism. It’s rather easy to burn at the stake the big companies for polluting the water supplies, corrupting the media, or sucking the planets dry of all their life-blood. Notwithstanding, it is individuals who enterprise those vile corporations.

Individuals over-breed their populations out of carelessness, ideologies, or criminal pursuits of passion and power. Corporations only sell what individuals will consume and only fabricate what the listeners will accept as truth. The general population in both planets spent more time gazing into the mirror than glancing out the window. They each saw their own lifestyles as right and all others as toxic, always unyielding to a new change of life.

And yet here we are, once again, staring into the dark eyes of the monster ready to devour humanity. We poked and prodded this vile creature ever since we learned to manipulate the world around us to benefit ourselves. We nearly escaped the ravaging jaws as we fled the crumbling planets of Earth and Horus, abandoning our self-made disasters to become parasites on another.

We were only here for a couple hundred years on the Third Terra, and the eyes of the Great Monster preyed upon us once more with a rage stoked by our insolence and narcissism. Despite our past encounters with this monster, the monstrosity within our own humanity has plunged us into the way of the First Terra one more time.

And this time, I don’t think we can survive.
We barely reached the atmosphere of this Terra centuries ago before our engines failed. We have since been unable to recreate the technologies of our former civilizations. Not that we could have been better off had we reinvented the wheel on this new planet, but this Terra was the last inhabitable resource-filled planet in any of the surrounding galaxies.

Third Terra was our last hope. And we squandered it, spitting vomit in the face of our ever-watchful predator. We infuriated it with our disregard for other life upon our home planets. We mocked it with each new chance presented to us. The sins of Planet Earth could have been forgiven. We were innocent children in the eyes of nature. We knew not our folly. But to realize the dangers our mishandling of life bled into the Second Terra in the wake of Planet Earth’s demise was unforgivable.

Our enraged predator wiped the bile from his face that we spewed upon him and glared with an unquenchable hatred that burned to consume us. He charged for us with jaws clenched, nostrils flaring, and eyes locked on. His throat growled in hunger. We were his prey yet again with no escape.

Our extinction was nigh and we were the ones who pulled the trigger. No one was to blame except ourselves. I am to blame. You are to blame. If only our ancestors could look into the soulless eyes of our predator and come to realize the dangers of their insolence. If only our ancestors could shatter their mirrors into shards and open their windows to see the world for what it is. If only our ancestors could embrace the beauty of all nature and life that surrounded them and enter into a harmonious existence.

If only.


- (c) Kevin Barrick 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holy Witches: A Salem Retelling

We were hunted for our spells. They accused us of using black magic; they torched our sisters for their involvement in witchcraft. Our flesh burnt while children and other villagers watched through the haze. We were monsters, deviants, devil-worshipers. We were the bane of the sanctity of our village. We were humanity’s last hope. Salem was a hallowed land, endowed by the auras of the ancient ones to protect the world from the dark void that threatened to devour all life. The void vacuumed the life from our sister planet, Mars, several centuries ago. Only we witches knew of the fate of the ancient world. We saw through the cosmos and mourned for Mars. We began practicing a holy art that would wrestle against the void. We sang enchantments beneath the full moon; we infused nature in our alchemy cauldrons. We sought to create, to nourish, to rejuvenate. We were the ambassadors to the sacred life that breathed in every part of Mother Earth. But the mortals of Salem were the ...
5 comments
Read more

Paris, Tea, and a Fight

Day 14 Prompt : " I wanted to fight. He wanted to finish his tea." She breathed in the aromatic scents wafting around her. The coffee brewing within the cafe. The crisp morning air. The flowers blossoming in boxes that hung from the railing. The beginnings of exhaust mingling into the otherwise clean breeze. She sipped on her espresso and peered off into the distance. Glinting with the rising sun loomed the Eiffle Tower on the horizon. Paris had been her calling for years, and she finally was able to escape away and explore the gem of the city, unburdened with university. Her study abroad semester in Madrid, Spain made her feel isolated, shackled to her books, and unable to venture out into the unknown. She booked this trip as her graduation gift to herself. Her only regret was that this was her last day of a 3-week excursion. She beckoned for another cup of coffee.  Her plane didn’t leave until evening, so she had no intention of bustling about. She wou...
3 comments
Read more

5 Books to Get Your Creativity Flowing!

Many people are curious how I became an indie author. Some ask because they want to join in on the fun; others are simply curious why I chose to self-publish rather than go the traditional route. Before I really begin, let me define what it means to be an indie author. There are two categories that people generally fall into. An indie author is someone 1. who publishes through an independent publisher (small publishing house as opposed to mainstream houses like Penguin or MacMillan), and 2. who self-publishes through services like Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) or Ingram Spark. I fall into the second category where I have self-published through KDP. It is a very easy process and anyone can do it! (Caveat: due to the easy access, there are thousands upon thousands of books. If you think your book is quality level, then in order to stand out from the rest I recommend spending hours and hours on your cover if you can’t afford to pay someone. Obviously proofread and edit you...
2 comments
Read more