Memory

The tragedy of the end of the world isn't that the world ended. It isn't that humanity died out in the billions, or that once great civilizations full of potential collapsed to nothing. It isn't that we were so close to colonizing space and ensuring our immortality before we fizzled. The tragedy of the end of the world isn't even that some of us survived, though that's starting to get closer to the truth. No, the tragedy of the end of the world is memory.

At our peak humans numbered over 9 billion. We had grown and conquered and were self-aware enough to know what we were doing to damage our home. What's more we had even started taking steps to fix the problem. While some billionaires wasted their fortunes trying to leave the planet, others, more noble, tried fixing it. That's where it all went wrong.

The problem was complicated, I don't pretend to know the details. Suffice to say we had fucked with our environment for decades, hell, centuries even before we finally noticed what we were doing. When we noticed we did nothing, at first, but eventually a few well meaning geniuses with more money than brains decided they could fix things. I'm not sure how many programs were started with the goal of intentionally changing the climate, in an effort to offset all our years of unintentionally changing the climate. I'm not sure which one put things over the edge, maybe it was a combination of several programs, it doesn't matter. What matters is we caused this.

It came in the form of eternal droughts. When God destroyed the world He did it in a great flood, when Man destroyed the world we did the opposite. No rain meant no crops, no crops meant no food, and when civilized humans become hungry they stop being civilized. Some of them stop being human.

The wars that broke out actually extended our species survival by a bit. Millions of deaths meant millions less mouths to feed. Inevitably though world supplies continued to dwindle, and people became more and more desperate. Rumors of cannibalism became shocking reports, reports became less shocking and eventually stopped being news altogether. Like I said, some humans stopped being human.

It's funny, you would think the global rich would last the longest and the global poor would die first, but nobody needs to steal from the poor. The poor are used to hunger, the poor can get by, the poor are invisible. Nobody wants to eat the poor. I do believe that the last humans on this planet may well be the poorest. Some uncontacted tribe in the middle of the Amazon maybe? After all, it is one of the few places left that actually gets rain. They'd have something else going for them too. No memory.

I was too young to remember the world before it died, so you'd think it's easier for me, right? You'd be wrong. I remember. Not in the "I was there and have memories of my own" sense, but more in the "I know there was more to the world than this" sense. You see, as the world ate itself there were those who wanted to preserve our legacy, and so they tried to pass on as much knowledge as they could in the misplaced hope that humanity could save itself, that this was not the end. I was the product of those sadistic efforts.

A group of families found each other and thought we would be safer together, and that if we learned the right lessons from the past we might have a future. That's where Noah comes in. He was the oldest member of our band of 4 families that had coalesced in an abandoned town on the banks of what had once been a raging river, now just a muddy streak. Noah didn't have any living family, his two boys had gone to die in some far off war and his wife used a bullet to numb the pain of their passing. He always preached about remembering them though, as if memory was a good thing. He kept a small heart-shaped locket on his neck with a picture of his dead wife in it.

"To remember her by." He used to say.

Noah thought the world was worth remembering and back then so did I. I was with him in the library when it happened, going through old memories trying to find bits of knowledge worth keeping. We heard them coming about five minutes before they got to us, there isn't much background noise left in the world after all. Noah went outside to greet them while I looked on through the library windows. I don't know what words, if any, passed between them, I just know that they were all twitchy in contrast to Noah's stillness. I didn't see who pulled the gun, I just heard it go off and saw Noah collapse backwards, lifeless.

They heard my screams and the two closest to the library rushed towards the door. As I saw this I ran as fast as I could for the back exit, I flew out the door and ran as fast and as hard as I could. When my lungs were burning and my legs were shaking so bad that I couldn't take another step I kept running. Eventually without even realizing it I must have fallen, and passed out in exhaustion and terror.

I don't know how long I was out, but when I woke my head was pounding, my legs were cramped, and my mouth was so dry and dusty that it hurt to breath. It was night but I could see well enough in the three-quarters moon. Weighing my options I decided I had to make my way back home. My community was back there, and surely they had prevailed against the cannibals.

I walked for hours, making slow progress through the pain and dehydration of my previous efforts. When I was almost home the sky was starting to brighten in the east. I stopped about a quarter mile away and found a good vantage point to scope out the damage. Nothing moved.

By noon I was thirsty enough to risk my approach, though I didn't call out. I started at home to find that everyone was gone along with our meager food and water rations. As I made my way from house to house it was more of the same. Finally, either through courage or desperation I made my way to the library. As I approached the door I found the heart-shaped locket laid out delicately on top of a copy of Damon Knight's To Serve Man. If there is anything worse than cannibals, it's cannibals with a sense of humor.

That was 2 days ago. By now I've determined that I don't have the ability given my limited resources to start anew. I have tried every way I know to gather water and it still doesn't meet my daily needs, let alone the needs of agriculture. I will die here in this library, but before I go I write this here in the margins of To Serve Man. As I said at the beginning, the tragedy of the end of the world isn't that the world ended, it isn't even what happened to Noah and everyone else I ever knew. The tragedy of the end of the world is memory.

I'm sorry to add to your tragedy, but it helps to ease my own. I am facing my own mortality, my own personal end of the world, and the only way I know how to deal with that is to pass it on to you. You now bear my memory, you now bear my tragedy. Remember me.