My Modern Apocalypse: Part One

Jacob drives endlessly through what’s left of rural America. It’s been weeks since he crossed paths with anything living. He watches as the Earth slowly reclaims farm houses left vacant by the families they once sheltered.

Mostly it’s just static or Mars Public Radio spitting propaganda over the airwaves but occasionally he picks up a radio signal from a station that plays rap music as if it’s trying to tell him something.

Sara watches each night as more and more stars occupy the sky, knowing each one was a soul left without a life on Earth to occupy. Lately she’s been spending her time in the woods, foraging for wildflowers and herbs, mushrooms and berries and sometimes she walks to the quarry to look for rocks. Sometimes she finds gold there.

When the Mars Transport Stations began to open up and buses started running more often on routes established by the Mars Colony Project, the gold suddenly became abundant again. The people choosing to leave Earth had no use for it, it would only weigh down their spaceships and after they decided to make Mars their new home, any attachment or artificial value assigned to it lost meaning. Once humans grew tired of everything they gained when fighting for it, they started leaving it behind, obsessing over what sort of material they would discover under the surface of their new planet and how they would fight for that one.

Sara never possessed more gold than she could carry around her neck. She didn’t need the stacks left behind in vaults or kept hidden in basements, instead she kept her gold in the shape of something else humanity abandoned when they left Earth, a heart shaped locket that hung from her neck, with hinges that had been worn out by the daughter of the woman whose portrait was stored inside of it.

Jacob sits anxiously staring at a map trying to determine the distance between his ‘99 Subaru’s empty tank and the next gas station. He’s been waking up with the sun and driving until he runs out of gasoline, eager to find something he started searching for long before the Mars Colony Project’s inception. He watched a falcon take flight as he thought about the time he thought he had found it. Until his girlfriend Lauren told him she had taken the TARD-5 vaccine and would no longer be human once the substance was finished rewriting the code of her DNA. He was driving her to visit her father’s grave when she told him and when she asked him to take her to the Mars Transport Station afterwards he pulled the car over and violently removed her from it. She grabbed onto the steering wheel, fighting to stay inside the car at any cost and attempted to take the keys out of the ignition hoping he would calm down. She told him that humanity was already dead and that if he thought he was still human because he had lungs that could breathe in Earth’s air, he needed to ask himself what it meant to be truly human and if it was all worth it.

Jacob pulled all of the junk out of the backseat and took his shoes off before stretching out and attempting to sleep like he did every time the lights went out. This attempt was more successful than usual and while he slept he had a dream about a woman, standing on top of a bridge linking two sides of a gravel road over a small river. The woman’s arms were outstretched parallel to the ground as she watched him approach her. She was silent and calm, and while he studied her a glowing piece of jewelry suspended from her neck caught his attention. Jacob locked eyes with the woman and felt more at peace than he ever did with Lauren even before their constant arguing over the morality of the Mars Colony Project started.

If never waking up again meant he could stay locked in the dream with her forever he would not have hesitated but the sound of the windshield shattering woke him up forcefully and without pausing to put on his shoes he crawled out of the backseat to investigate.

As he walked to the front of the car, a badly injured falcon stared back at him from the pane of broken glass. It’s breath was shallow and Jacob could feel it’s pain and fear as he promised it that he wouldn’t let it die alone. He removed the falcon from the glass by pulling at its wings and he held it in his arms as it cried out. Then he snapped it’s neck.

Covered in blood and damaged feathers, Jacob headed East, without stopping to put on his shoes, toward the last river he remembered crossing over. Once there he washed off the falcon's blood and started walking south along the river bank. He made it to a bridge and climbed up the steep embankment to the road it held together. The rocks dug into the bottom of his feet until he was standing on the concrete bridge. As he stood on the bridge looking down at the water flowing, he felt something crunch underneath his foot. A locket, heart shaped and made of gold. He picked up the necklace and when he looked up, a woman was standing in front of him with a stare so fierce it interrupted his breathing.

“I’m Sara,” she said. “You found my necklace.” Jacob stopped to think maybe he was still dreaming but Sara took his hand and looked into his eyes like no one ever had. Like she was looking at his soul. Like she could read his mind. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she told him as he looked at the locket he was holding and carefully inspected the photograph inside of it. “Augusta?” Jacob looked to Sara for reassurance and without hesitation she gave it to him. “Our daughter.”

She wiped a streak of dried falcon blood from his forehead and told him how much she admired his effortless show of mercy. Jacob was overwhelmed with confusion and calmed himself down by convincing himself he was still dreaming. This allowed him to give into Sara’s power and as he did so, she offered him the only explanation he would ever need.

“Some souls were forged with iron, some with gold,” Sara explained. “Some are born to die, some die to be reborn. Our souls were made in the Earth’s core, not on its surface. This makes us human. Earth makes us human. Men turn us into monsters and stop at nothing to keep our magic hidden. Our souls have been cycling for centuries Jacob and each life brings us together in a different way but for the same reason: to balance power, to fight and to keep the fire burning.”

“What about Augusta?” Jacob asks.

“We were only ever meant to guide her,” Sara explains. “She’s a force and she has her own fight. In this lifetime she was named Ash. Noel is her father.”

“Noel?! The founder of the MCP!?” Jacob asks, overwhelmed by emotions and filled with dread. “What the fuck do we do about that? How can we save her!?”

Calmly, Sara comforts him by explaining, “She doesn’t need saving Jacob. She’s going to save us. We’ve been fighting for centuries to keep her fire burning, adding more kindling in each lifetime. Our fight is here on Earth and hers is on Mars now. We gave her the best of ourselves always and she has every tool she needs and the wisdom to use them.”

“How do you know that? Sara, in one lifetime Noel convinced 90% of the people on Earth to abandon it, sacrifice their humanity and colonize another planet with him. I’ve been asleep, disconnected and unable to do shit for her. What if she was asleep too? What if he got to her? What’s left then?”

“She wasn’t sleeping Jacob. Neither was I. We’ve been working. Since the day Ash was born I’ve been by her side, working for Noel as his nanny, watching as he poses with her in photographs taken only to convince humanity he’s one of them. I watched as he told a story that wasn’t real, watched him use Ash to maintain a sense of normalcy and keep everyone else distracted. He created her to use her as a weapon. A symbol of hope, convincing everyone that if they followed him, they too could have a perfect family, a family well fed and happy. A family no longer accessible by those choosing to live out their days on Earth.

“Why didn’t you just kill him? Why didn’t you stop him?”

“Because Jacob, as Noel used Ash, Ash and I used him. He thought he was creating a weapon in her but she was already a weapon. She was born a weapon. OUR weapon. He was building spaceships to carry everyone to a new planet while we watched helplessly as the Earth burned. It was burning because Noel isn’t the only evil working against us. It feels like we’ve inherited the Earth, the two of us. I don’t get overwhelmed anymore because there are no crowds. There are no obstacles. No distractions. The truth is you can’t inherit what already belongs to you. We’re not the only ones left, Jacob. Every human left on Earth has stayed because they are in love with it. They stayed because it’s worth fighting for, and they are READY to fight.”

We all started as witches. We nurtured the Earth and she provided for us. We were thriving but meanwhile, a distant star was fading, a planet was dying. The race that occupied it got desperate so they built ships like the ones Noel built. They left their planet and came to ours. Mother Earth is a nurturing being and so she welcomed them. She had no way of knowing the impact and influence her kind gesture would have over her children and how it would destroy them. She kept fighting for them, for us, watched as we became something else. Watched us build civilizations only to let them crumble. Watched us try again and again.

She watched helplessly as we took everything from her. She watched as the race from the dying planet stole from her, as it robbed her blind. She stayed silent for thousands of years as they turned her children against her. She watched as they invented false idols and convinced her children to follow them. Children are rebellious by nature and while she loved this about them and raised them to be so, she was powerless to stop them from rebelling against her. She watched as “God” was born. She watched him grow and she watched him generate power. She watched as he divided her children and turned them against her. And each other. She waited. Silently. Cunning. She kept a line of communication open with some of her children and sent spirits to guide them back to her. She whispered to her children at first and now that she has our attention again, she’s screaming. Only a few of us can still hear but we’ve been listening the whole time and preparing. We’ve been traumatized, beaten, raped, murdered all at the hands of the race of the dying planet that our mother kindly welcomed into our home thousands of years ago. The same planet that Noel’s spaceships were built to colonize. Sacrifices had to be made and so our mother isn’t as kind as she used to be. She sat silently for thousands of years and now she’s ready for war.