The Breath Ever-After

As he sat down, the lamp flickered. He realized he didn’t have much time. He pulled a blank sheet in front of him and grabbed a ragged, old, chewed down pen with only miniscule molecules of ink remaining in its soul. As he placed the tip of the pen on the yellowed surface of the paper, he paused. He wondered what needed to be written. He looked out the tinted window with a cracked glass, as a sandstorm raged outside eroding the remains of the decimated cities that were.

All his life, he had written what he wanted. Fortuitously, it had always turned out to be what the world needed. He didn’t have that liberty this time, he thought. It was completely vital to pass on the crucial information. As he cleared his thoughts to pen them down, he sipped a crystal-clear glass of water. Relishing the taste of a liquid, which was a luxury he would not have had been able to afford had his family not left him a great vat of it in a secret basement, he thought about the days that were now far gone in the history. Days of his present were considered a “dystopian future” in the old novels. Obviously, dystopian had always been a relative term, as the human race had learnt when they observed that there was always a possibility of a much worse future. Nevertheless, the “undying human spirit” tried to keep “dystopian future” a fiction entrapped within some pages that wouldn’t last to see their story take form in reality. For them the future had always been projected as an uphill ride and never as a fall in the valley.

The tip of the pen left the paper as he pondered about the beginning of the message. He had been a victim of writers’ block quite often but this was something different. It was not about what he wanted to write. It was about how he should write it. The message had to be kept as small as possible for transmission. And yet, there was boundless information to be relayed to them. It was particularly challenging for he was addressing an unknown public. And above all that, he was about to share something intimate, something that was not his to share.

In the distant parts of the blurred land, he heard the rumblings. Time was precious. He needed to prepare the message quickly.

This is species Homo Sapiens from the planet Terra, system Solaris, galaxy Milky Way, supercluster Virgo, Laniakea. This is not a distress call by one planet to another. This is the final note before our planet’s death. Our planet’s resources have finally dropped to a level where they may be unable to sustain any form of life and hence it is prudent that this sentient species provide its experiences to younger life forms which may help them ultimately prolong their existence. Any living being or body of living beings which is able to intercept and decode the message into their own language or mode of communication, is advanced enough and sufficiently mature to understand it also. And thus it is highly recommended that this message be shared with the entire population of your planet.

Our species does not represent the entire population of our planet, but we do represent the main cause of its death. Planet Terra, or Earth, revolves around a medium-size star in the outermost rings of the Milky Way galaxy. By our calculations, you shall receive this message when it is probably in its Red Giant phase. By then, the planet would have long been engulfed into the mass of the same star which supported our lifesystems. We have a solitary satellite revolving around the planet. Our sister planets of the system are inhabitable. We had a comfortable climate cycle and reasonable life support systems.

The planet was a home to more than a billion life forms of various kinds and habitats. The planet had a will to thrive, which is why deep in our past, when a cataclysmic event decimated almost the entire life on the planet, life sprouted from the ground with a few centuries. Our species came into existence after that event. We were part of a humongous eco-system with a stable existence. Everything was working out to be perfect until we achieved the next stage of a sentient life form.

Evolution finally willed us into supposedly “smarter” life-forms who could protect themselves with lesser struggle, invent contraptions to reduce labour and discover patterns in the seeming randomness of the nature. We believe that you have reached your present mental acumen via same paths. We learnt to dominate other beings and acquire properties and territories of our own. Enslavement of other species became a common practice, almost essential for survival. Agriculture became the chief source of food. Development became the motto of our species.

Once the Homo Sapiens, or humans, had acquired dominion over other species, it became necessary to establish dominion over itself. Under the pretence of law and order, humans developed numerous constructs to practice the art of politics and administration ranging from villages to countries and from local protection to international armies. Questions of existence and purpose of humans were manipulated to bring out the concept of God which dominated the planet for the entirety of its life. They had finally moved on from lives filled with survival to lives filled with struggle for power. Of course, this shouldn’t seem unusual, since when a player doesn’t receive ample competition, he competes with himself. Humans were now pushing their boundaries to astonishing levels in all fields. Segregation of humans into various groups on the basis of country, religion, ideology and various other aspects meant that competition drove the development. Sure enough, the human civilization was booming.

It should seem interesting to note, that from this point forward, the planet was called “the planet inhabited by humans”. Other species, it seemed, were mere accessories. A flick of destiny and the humans had received a mental boost. It could well have been any other species.

As we neared the end of the times, we had a lot of scuffling. Pointing guns at each other, defaming each other and intimidating by means of nuclear weapons — all this became quite common. Population of our species was too much for our planet to sustain. And if a species has to survive, the other has to die. We had extinctions and clear-cut massacres. Wars and “technological” advancement cleared off massive areas of natural habitats.It was too late to realize that we had crossed the point of no return. Soon enough humanity consumed itself. Wars, diseases and natural disasters — humans had served their purpose.

You need to perceive the crucial component of our annihilation. We had, at the deepest level, interpreted development with moving forward. Everything had to move forwards to improve. All our solutions lay in the future. Past was a lesson for sure, but future was the prize. One always tends to forget the lessons if one needs to grab the prize. Even the pacifists looked for alternatives that maintained the productivity at higher efficiency. Not a single soul was ready to back down. And, its also true that backing down was not really a viable option given that the production at that time lacked to support the population then. It was as if we were held in a dead-hold vice-like grip of our own making.

The purpose of this message was not to expound the life-cycle of our planet. Neither was it to justify our mistakes. No, it was something much more universal. What you need to understand is that in our final days, we had finally started to understand the answer to our existence. We were universe’s next iteration. The breath of every living organism on the planet was a step towards completion. And it was essential that the iteration ended, so that the next one could be initiated. It is the belief of my species that, self awareness among us sentient species is a quality instilled within us by the universe. There is a popular saying at our planet that life shall always find a way. We believe that the universe does not let life on a planet exonerate until it has served its purpose, or as we believe “completed its iteration”. This is why, when that big calamity wiped out almost all life and living conditions on the planet, life still found a way to sprout,for the planet was yet to fulfil its function.

And the universe also makes sure that the planet cleans up after itself. This meant that the humans had to consume not just the others but themselves once they had performed their bit. We send you our information and our conclusions in the hope that you can further the cause of the universe and maybe cherish the existence more. Know that you will be annihilated one day, for that is what happens once you have experience every type of emotion and thought process. Be proud, for you are part of a much bigger game. You are the universe in making. No matter what happens, the existence of us and you has a much profound meaning. It does not matter whether you survive or not, for all that matters is your legacy.

Always cherish your legacy. Legacy is not a treasure for the future generations but an accolade for the past. Your legacy is what defines you in the future. Presumably, our legacy has a dim and depressing tone, but use it and absorb it. Define your actions over our mistakes. Do not let your iteration be in vain. For all we know, we reached a wrong conclusion. Maybe life doesn’t need to end for the iteration to complete itself.

The scribe of this species would like to end this message with a personal note. There used to be a very popular question among the humans. We always used to wonder that, if the world were to end one day and new life was to take birth in it, what one fact should be told to them to give them the biggest leap in progress. Till date, we have been unable to come to consentient answer to the question. But if I were given the choice, it would be to try out an alternative definition of development. We as a race have tried out the version where development could only mean moving forward. I would advise you to consider the alternative and look back once in a while, for in the past lies the fork in the path from where the path to the authentic development leads. Take a dead civilization’s word on that.

As he finished writing, his half-empty glass quivered a little under the tremblings caused by the rumblings of the storm which were now increasing in frequency. Capping the pen and placing it upright in its vintage stand, he took a sigh of relief, having relieved himself from a heavy burden. He was providing a distant race with a review of his species’ life and mistakes. He alone represented the entire human history to them. Of course, he won’t be around for the critics’ reviews. He sipped from his glass as he looked out in the window where all that could be seen was dust and wind. He walked over to the little grey device that was supposed to scan his message and transmit it miles above to the satellite bound to move around the corpse of the planet soaking in the energy of the star illuminated far away. The piece of metal up in the sky was cursed for eternity, to transmit the messages and information pertaining to the planet in the depths of the space for other life forms to gather and study. He had performed his function. He was now truly free. He now enjoyed a freedom, none other human had ever enjoyed. The ground beneath him started shaking vehemently as he sipped on his drink calmly. He listened to the old 21st century records as he closed his eyes and breathed freely for the first time. Much like him, the earth’s breath was nearing its last. He could feel the pull of the wind on his face as the cracked window gave in to the pressure of the wind. Like a smoker, earth had given asylum to some unfriendly particles which had then clogged its breathing and slowly burnt it from the inside as they self-destructed its host body. As the walls gave in, earth breathed its last.