RUPTURE 2121

I pictured this more as being a Graphic Novel but I have absolutely no talent for drawing. I feel like it's a good story and I can see the pieces so clearly in my mind but have no other avenue to get them out of my head other than words. Typing out all the excruciating details in the hopes that I can paint the same picture in your mind with my words.

That being said I tend to let my fingers do what they want with the keyboard should a story, instead of thoughts, happens to find me. I try not to get in my own way and feel like it should at least make sense. I'd love to find someone who'd love to draw it as I feel it's very visual and it was very narrative driven when I wrote it. I find myself floating back to it from time to time to add little tidbits to the "world" it's in.

Anyhow it's minimally edited, but I hope that you enjoy the idea.

RUPTURE 2121

Opening Narrative

March 4th 2021, the Sun launches the most massive solar flare and Geomagnetic Storm at the earth. BOOM! Instantly back to AT LEAST the turn of the 1800’s, cuz ALL of that tech that was being used that day got cooked in an instant never to be revived. In 1859 this had happened before, but back then we barely had electricity let alone 200 year later, basically the phenomenon went largely unnoticed except by all of the telegraph workers who said the lines buzzed and they we able to stick the power wire to the telegraph in the sand and it powered the machine. 

No real effect on people, though I would be worried about people with pacemakers, technology is NO MORE in the blink of an eye. Even without the pacemaker people, that’s pretty bad, cuz now it’s 2021, there are a fuck ton more people, magnitudes more, flying around in vehicles, flying around in airplanes, running EVERYTHING on electricity, people are able to grab info from anywhere in the world via the interwebs and do it from a phone, not to mention a lotta other shit some good, some bad that sparked off in the 1970’s and by 2000 most people have computers etc etc etc, and only 21 years after that the advances in technology and the sciences were STAGGERING. 

I think it took longer than that to get to the moon for sure, and now you have billionaires with their OWN space companies. Fucking Nutty bars if you ask me. 

All That shit……… toast. Like Y2k? Some systems may be affected? A Plane might drop out of the sky… no…… this was all of them. Not all cars were affected, but there were enough of them going however fast they were going and no one having control of the car. Hospitals, the works, right?

Actually we didn’t even really have time to shit our pants, not fully, see the flare was so nuts  the entire earth was basically one charged particle, and the electrons can’t really go back to ground if all of them are like…. Already in there….  You could hear it too, not a loud buzz like you’d think, but one resonant droning hum…… heard world wide. Had to go somewhere, right? See the core had held out, something about magnetic fields and heat resistance and lower conductivity of the molten iron core do to this. See heat is resistance, basically it turned into an electric stove in about 20 minutes, and that resistance, that heat, kept building up, like an electric stove when you leave it on high will eventually glow orange with heat. Since the core is molten and at this point at least resistant to the flow of an earth size current.

The hum… the lightning storms…. There was nothing to do but stand there, don’t wanna get shocked like that. Or vaporized in this instance, so we stood still for a while and the hum got quieter so we waited it out…. Wasn’t even that long really, we looked around as the hum subsided, relieved, we began to look around at the destruction.

Just when we thought we wouldn’t shit our pants anymore, rumbling…… earthquake…. To say that the earth split open and swallowed us whole, wouldn’t even begin… to do justice to this series of ArmageddonSSSS plural. See the earthquake was the preamble to the most catastrophic seismic event since earth settled down and stopped getting hit by planetoids…… The Meteor that wiped out the dinos…. Must’ve been a gut shaker, but most died due to the ash in air changing the climate etc.

In this case I don’t think there were many who would have had the luxury… not to choke to death, but rather just have last moments at all really.

So look, the electric stove, remember that right? Well this was more like it was left on all night, but like….. On a cosmic scale….. The particles melted 40% of the earth's mantle from the inside, in minutes. Also in the process of melted fell toward the core and swept it up in a sea of magma, magnets don’t protect against Lava and it is the hottest it could possibly be. You thought shit was “molten” before, naw before this, the blast was a bitch and it carried a little, but at least the lava is slow…. So slow that’s how islands eventually get born.

There was nothing slow about lava right now. We thought natural disasters were pesky, this was a natural disaster, no human could possibly have possibly had a hand in a global disaster like this. If left to our own devices we would have been able to kill most life on this planet, but as soon as were gone, Mother Nature would take back the gifts that we took from her, not that she’s eager to swallow up things, she knows in time it will come back to her, landscape pretty much unchanged, I mean unless it was a Nuclear thing or a crazy sci-fi bomb or something.

A Planetary Disaster…. No warning, not like that meteor, we would’ve had time to clench our butt cheeks before the hit, but this happened in moments and literally from under our feet.

Anything even closely resembling a mountain, instant volcano. Mentos and Diet Coke…. But ya know super fluid magma. Worldwide.

The ring of fire? Oh it was a ring indeed a series of magma beacons spewing lava as those it were a broken sprinkler head, untold miles into the air.  When entire mountains fly into the air, I’d like to think someone out there had at least a split second to think, “huh…. Those mountains are asteroids now…. Cool!” Why be upset, probably not gonna feel it and you’ll be gone in an instant, everyone will, right? Relax! We’re ALL DEAD!

Best I can figure, pure speculation, but all that hot shit had to set some time, lava cools! It does, but when the whole fucking planet it shitting it EVERYWHERE even for 5 minutes, what do you thing the odds are of us getting out alive?

Zilch.

For the sake of the story within the span of an hour, the landscape changed…. Literally in an instant. In the middle of the ring of fire a large pool of the stuff pushed up the the…. Mariana trench? And turned the Pacific into  a glowing orange pot of boiling water. 

Super volcanoes were indeed SUPER! Ok you know in the movies when you see a manhole cover blow off a sewer like they do in the big cities in the movies? I dunno if that’s actually possible shy of some serious pressure, I’m sorry rambling, back track.

You in the movies when the manhole covers blow up into the air? That, but not a manhole cover…. It was Colorado. The calderas pretty much ate the west coast. Not like anyone anywhere else on this planet was doing any better. 

Now I know you’re thinking to yourself, the ring of fire is in the Pacific, we wouldn't explode…. The Ground, right? No. Not explode, and there’s a few volcanoes elsewhere if I recall, but really the other side of the world didn’t blow up so much as blow apart, again, from underneath our feet. 

Lotta NEW islands born that day…. And they were bigguns! Congrats, you’re healthy baby island weighs in somewhere between a small state and just this side of a continent. Don’t ask me the dimensions….

Once the land wasn’t  playing twister anymore, the oceans  started settling into the lowest points, though a lot more humid as 25% was now in the atmosphere, it’ll rain…. I think…. The magma finally began to cool on the outside, and most of the land settled. The rest of the stuff still piping hot and pushing outta the ground, started to look more like lava, but as the geysers became a stream, the pressure from under surface started pushing a good number of these volcanoes steadily towards the sky, cooling their tops faster as it got colder toward space, but remember COSMIC Disaster…. By the time there were mountains again on the surface some were so talk I’d say if it blew its top, that shit is in space, just sayin’

Humanity Erased, All Things Returned to Mother earth Immediately, and Earth had a complete makeover and was wearing the latest chic new outfit.

I can only imagine how quiet it was once the rumbling stopped. The most serene and tranquil it could possibly be. 

But hey, humans are cockroaches, and like cockroaches some of them made it. Who has any idea how. I mean the fast that the magma was heated so nicely it burned off most of the ash, and you know having islands the size of texas was good, cuz they held together preserving some vegetation and animals in the process, strewn about with building that are laying around the landscape the way legos were spread out on the floor when you first started to play with them.

Who knows how it happened, certainly wasn’t in any secret underground facilities built for the military or rich. I take comfort in the fact that the pieces of shit that left everyone else to die got there FIRST, small comfort, but you know what, it puts a smile on my face.

So we think….. We have no way of knowing for sure, but this cut us from top of the food chain 8 billion strong and growing fast, to endangered species with one swing of the clock.

Been 100 years since then. Things were VERY fuzzy for human history for a minute. Luckily those had survived banded together and were able to use the knowledge we had in our domes to help each other out. At this point if we don’t we’ll be extinct in a week. So I’d like to think in the face of surviving Shiva the Destroyer cracking a whip of fire wiping out your arrogant technology away with one crack, then you know sucker punching your planet….. But with just enough restraint to leave enough of you to warn others….

We behaved ourselves and worked toward surviving. Everyone had to make themselves useful now, we don’t even know where we are anymore. Everywhere is Lost. Best find Shelter, Water, then Food, always in that order. Starving takes a week or 4, Dehydration Death with 72 hours MAX, but unless your giant chunk of brand new wilderness with a large helping of mass destruction happens to end up having perfect weather and no major hazards… it was time to get a move on, who knows what the elements hold now, definitely more humid… like everywhere, some worse than others.

You don’t use every skill, wit and effort towards finding shelter, you’re probably not gonna make it through the night, or you’ll roast in the day.

There are no winners, no losers, no states, no countries, no rich, no poor, no this or that. At this point there’s much fewer of us, we’re now starting to think as a species again. Hell after 100 years, we’re really just getting our shit back to tribal settlements as far as I know. Once you found good resources to keep you going, looking further didn’t seem like such a great idea to some, after all, this is now some place entirely, who knows anymore? Some found a good spot and settled in. Some lived more nomadic lifestyles exploring this strange new planet we now live on.

We got at least stable pretty quick, because we retained what we had in our noggins or were able to scrounge for books among the tinker toys of what used to be our civilization. We didn’t bother with reviving the tech, 80% of what we built or used immediately failed never to be revived. Besides it’ll be a long fucking time before we can rebuild any of that, semi-conductors being pretty fucking low on our list of priorities right now. There is nothing else but living now.

Now since they’re so few of us now, we should be able to forage for good in the wreck of old earth right? Find useful treasures in the stumps of our skyscrapers, vast swaths of humans…. Everything laid garbage larger than any landfill.  Buildings are what you could have called them. Material… materials…. That’s the only name you could give most of them now. Barely and ruin to curl up in as it’s been flung like handfuls of building blocks. The force of of these cities being unrooted and flung all over then place, hitting other shit hard enough to reduce the tallest human buildings, often lined with incredible amounts of glass, lay sparkling over miles like handfuls of glitter thrown into the air handful, after joyful handful, resting on the pretty stones or shells on the beach….. Any large structures that held any sort of shape… not many did, were I Beam skeletons resting on their sides like a person ejected from an open car window and hits the road still going a mighty fast, coming to rest as a heap of broken and twisted parts. 

Let’s just say nothing sensitive, fragile or in most cases, soft in any sense of the word made it. We’d look for bits as we went along, but we quickly realized, while still balancing staying alive or having lived through it in the first place, that relying on anything that we may have made made it. It was now all considered trash, if the world hadn’t nearly ended.

To us it was at least materials we could use to build shelter quickly if the new land didn’t offer any, though I don’t know how keep anyone is on being in a cave right after the WORLD blew its top.but some of us build shelter with pieces of our cities, our “things”… Our homes.

Some were fortunate to still find parts of wilderness still somewhat intact, and of course the skills to live in them without aid of ending the camping trip and going to the store.

Oh! Stores! I mean building materials sure, but in most cases anything softer than an oyster was really just a smear, the smart ones didn’t pass on the supermarket smoothy, some out of panic, other because just because most of it was baby food, it was still food, and free meals would be in short supply now. Any Outdoorsy type would probably luck out with a bunch of dead animals lying around, cuz it happened to them too. But a refrigerator is now not a thing and those giant masses of dead meat will be well on its way to being giant masses of future compost here pretty quick, leaving…. Materials of course, but you better cook up as much of that shit as you can carry,  and ease on down the road a bit before that stink catches up with ya. 

Of course keep in mind that you might be comfy out here, a real survival badass, and good for you, better have a few more skills that are gonna get a lot more handy as time goes on. You can hunt animals, clean them and in some crude way cut them up in the field. There’s no hook to hang this ring with, there’s no home in which to house said hook… also means no stove to cook it on. You can make a fire of course, burn the shit outta the meat just to be sure, you never had to cook anything, but you know what well-done looks like… and that my friend, is well-done. 

Now that I’m fed and warm, thank you animal golgotha, now water, there’s not gonna be a bunch of dead water lying around for you to drink. Ok there’s a huge river not too far from where I….. This is the moment where you realize that you don’t even recognize the terrain anymore. Sure it looks like wood…. But nothing like the woods I used to play in as a boy.

A forest, not your Forest….

And when there’s an earthquake or fire animals flee, and judging by corpses of anything bigger than say a chipmunk who held that ancient tree that didn’t snap in half, littered about the terrain, a radically different terrain, you figure they probably suffered about the same amount of casualties that humans did, given you have yet to bump into another human, who wasn’t a body or a smear, on this your 6 day traveling these forests. Rotting chakras is now a constant companion, but you know the kind you hate, but put up with cuz something… though in this case I highly doubt you secretly love and want the best for carrion stench. It’s cool, at least today you immediately vomit when you just happen to trip into a dead bear or deer. Damn… the maggots are just in Vegas right now, living it up, you heaved a little but managed to downgrade power puke to vomit burp and that my friend, after today is a win….

Of course you press on to find a water source that wasn’t a stagnant puddle with god knows what in it. Food poisoning is now again a more fatal prospect, that’s if it’s not contaminated with water or liquid shit, and in some cases it was liquid shit, or some man made chemical nightmare cuz the coal plant and chemical plant…. Were…. Around then…. Why chance it?

Nope you need a course of fresh water, preferably moving, Uncontaminated (Chems and microbes are your natural predator, and no, just because it’s crystal clear doesn’t mean it’s uncontaminated, especially with the chemical plant that got blown… thrown? Displaced in a violent fashion across untold distances. Pretty fucking sure more than a few of us had our eyes shut the whole fucking time. You have no idea where anything is, or how far it was thrown. For all you know you could drink from a crystal clear “new” mountain spring and crest the hill and find there is a whole storage silo busted open at the crest of the hill. I’d see something huge you say, well you didn’t see cuz the entire thing was cracked open wider than an egg. 

Food isn’t an issue, those fat hunks of burnt fauna are sitting alright, even able to take a few good size pieces as jerks. The issue is the water I was carrying ran out about 8 hours ago. I know from watching reality survival shows, you usually want to keep heading in the same direction, but in this case, don’t think it would’ve done you any good. You just happened to be wearing the right clothes for the job, breathable, cuz it be muggy as fuck now and airflow is crucial to the prevention of ball chaffing. Of course your balls, for once, are the last thing on any list at this moment, but rather you’re trying to find water to save you but in doing so you’re losing more of it. 

The Earth Mother, isn’t without own sense of humor, or maybe in our case, wrathful vengeance… a reminder that you were spared, but from the ‘event’, but not her wrath, from the awesome fury of a hurricane that turns seas into wave pools, to her taking you back that started as a little scratch and became a massive infection. I suppose there are worse ways to go out, painful to be sure, but maybe if you crawl to the right spot to come to rest, make your peace with it before the pain, fever and eventually delirium set in. 

I like to think that if you snuggle hear ever so tight in this spot where your life is rapidly come to a close, and you at the very least have gratitude of that spot, where you now lay unable to stand, where you will expire and join the animals in hosting a maggot getaway resort, nature’s way, her way of returning your materials back out to feed her children, and start the cycle anew, and to see to it that her children are not only not wasted, but help to nourish our living brothers and sisters,  for every living thing was birthed by her and to it it will return. Period. 

You came out to enjoy her splendor not knowing earlier that week it might be your last. The point is, you’re with her again, somehow we will always make our way back to her. She may seem wrathful at times, but she is also very patient. Now that you come to die and return your body to her, you see through the blaring heat of fever, delirious, no longer making human sense, and then you see in your fever dream, you laugh a little, You understand it now, you owe her everything and she gave everything we could get away with, doesn’t matter, you’re home, and she wraps you in her slow and comforting embrace, making use of every part of you to see that we all have a have and will always return to her, in time…..

Good Story, right? Morbid but pretty, that’s kinda how I like to think about it when I see human remains. Eventually most will grow accustomed to it, and while burial is a nice sentiment, after the first few you should be realizing you can’t waste things, even your energy, there is no more I’ll just go get another one. Most things I need will have to be made by hand. Maybe sturdy metal tools survived? Well as the flare made just about every molecule in the planet sing, it’s not melted or fused to anything, you probably want shy away from high concentrations of metals and such, might still be mildly radioactive, no way to know for sure, you don’t have a geiger counter, and even if you did, you also don’t have a suit to help out if you got stuck, probably best to shy away from anything that hold a charge for at least the first few days. 

Scavenge at your own peril, also metal cuts, remember? Unless you happen to have a first aid kit and some antibiotics on you right now, which in all likelihood most of us didn’t, you need to make sure you’re not taking unnecessary risks,  life got a lot more primitive and a lot more thoughtful over those first few years. We managed to cobble together a radio, I remember the joy on some people’s faces, a comfort, maybe a way to reach out if some does the same. Besides, the ‘upheaval’ didn’t send our brains back to the stone age!

But also the terror and distrust on the look of some people’s faces. Remember, all the tech on planet earth that uses any kind of chip is toast, and not like, if I find the right parts, or just happen upon an underground hardened Faraday Cage?! You’d think I’d say fat chance, but that one actually happened, ok, but look, the people that found it are in no rush to do anything but leave it there, and get what knowledge they can out of it. The backup generator will hold out, but you DO NOT have any more fuel. Better start writing some know how down real quick. Maybe start with a little chemistry, engineering, AGRICULTURE, maybe start with some wilderness skills kid. Only a stupid rich, tech guru or some such shit, would have enough dough to build his own bunker (pretty shallow though, dude pisses himself if he turns off and forgets its him, got me?

Pretty sure that egghead didn’t make it anywhere near his rocket ship neither, but he did do something useful for what’s left of the human race. Where we coveted comfort and convenience, none the wise, and man did we think we were hot shit too. Mother Nature still stretches into the stars, I’d like to think……. Everything in The Universe came from the same place. That’s why Universe means One Song, but instead of seeing a beautiful symphony of occurrence that made even what happened that day look like a flea fart….

Why did we stop looking up at the stars and sky in wonder? When did it become more important to dirty our skies and ultimately ourselves, for the sake of profit, gain, but not for the whole of humanity, If I’m being honest, kiddo, towards the end, not our countryman, in some cases not even your neighbors….. Our politics blown away like a dandelion on the wind, and if you didn’t get with the program of helping out…. Wasn’t other humans that were gonna teach you a lesson? 

This is the lesson. Nothing is Guaranteed. HAHA!!!!! So many of us knew that already too, 80% of us always somewhere near the poverty line, stressed the fuck out about everything you needed to do to keep your house, your car, what ever it was…. And it was wiped from the board like a game of scrabble.

Those of us who lived, and honestly the only thing I’m certain of about that day, was The Blink, lights out world wide all at once, in the blink of an eye… but see, remember this all happened in stages, we had a good 15 minutes, I’d like to think….. Plenty of time to see all of the airplanes start to fall from the skies….. Not all of them were nosedives, some of the planes would… cartwheel in the air, brightly colored…. Reminded me of my niece doing cartwheels in the yard, that thought probably saved me from losing it. Now when I say I lost it, like my mind cracked and moved itself around just like the shit that happened just AFTER those planes had hit the ground and exploded.

Next up, flare turns the earth into a fucking lightbulb, about 15 again, the storms were absolutely terrifying, the discharge into the upper atmosphere made the sky look like one of those, kinda donut shaped… a coil of some kind, but that, lightning was just vertical sky…. It was basically nowhere , I was standing in the middle of the street one a small stone bridge, in my damned red galoshes, looking like a schmuck, coming back from having a few beers with the neighbors after a long day. 

I live near an airport, I have the best and and karma, so as I’m coming back a little buzzed, I get to the top of the bridge and look over at The airport, and think to myself, isn’t that guy coming in a little hot, Blink was so quiet I didn’t put 2 and 2 together until those planes started to cartwheel to the ground, the first plane hit the tarmac, there’s just so much going on all at once, all you do is stand a gawk, drool on yourself, I have to laugh now, we were all so smug… perpetual teenagers mixed with spoiled brats….

Since then we’ve spent 100 years trying to get our shit back together and live. Find places to settle and if we were lucky, live with the land instead, of course that’s if the land or other unknown dangers didn’t return you to the mother even after you had the basics stable for a while.

Nothing Guaranteed, it’s a nice reminder to myself to not get too wrapped up in what happened, no one was to blame, no one made a sci-fi device that caused it. I would like to think it was some divine retribution for our hubris as a species, maybe it was, I don’t claim to know. After being around after then let alone still living…. Old as FUCK, hehe…. Who’d have thought I’d be the oldest human alive. The Universe as she wants to do, as she always does…. The Wolf Mother is the true neutralizer, the only thing with the sear awesome force to have our life giving sun lash us all back to the stone stone age, while igniting a fire in Earth mother for the first time in a long time. She was already fighting back, when the Wolf Mother touched Earth Mother, she was reminded that there would be a day where she would come came for the start that lights our home and extinguish it, weather the earth turns to an ice cube our get obliterated in a supernova I believe is a sheer game of chance. She gave us the Earth Mother, but even the Earth Mother, must return to Her some day, quietly, or violently, the embodiment of indifference.

When Wolf Mother began to ignite that fire in Earth Mother, Wolf Mother reminded her, this may or may not be for a longtime, but you’re here…. Use this fire to show them, you are their Mother, you gave them everything, but as with all children, they must return to us someday……

Wolf Mother breaking our toys, in a flash one her way to remind Earth Mother of her own awesome power…..most returned all at once, with more soon to follow, and then she took back her body. Those still fortuitous enough to be around any length of time after that. Life is hard yes, but I have those of my species who banded with me as we found each other over decades, and rebuilt with a few frills, but know us, we know better than the people trying to live with the land, pow pow WOOO we got land to build our really tall things on….. How naive we are… to think we knew better, only consuming everything, when our indigenous brothers and sisters had the right idea the whole time.

Also The Blink made it very clear that we get everything from her and the life giving energy of the Sun…. Man I don’t wanna be around when that thing goes pop, I hear we’d freeze to death before the planet got hit by the shockwave… isn’t that wild? Freeze instead of FRY!

Ok sorry kid got a little lost, too many herbs hehe…

Basically no one I have found thus far wants to experience any part of that again.  It very well could… or couldn’t, we finally got the message the ultimate reprimand. Perhaps if we had treated the Earth Mother as that instead something to be sliced up and owned and exploited….. Maybe, Wolf Mother would have only taken our toys, and millions of my brothers and sisters back to he daughter to give her the strength to fix it, not over time, which Earth Mother would do over time wait after we’re gone and start anew, slowly, but surely until our “achievements'' were overtaken by more and more living things restoring her body and children as she heals herself. 

Wolfmother in perfect line being both the Order and the Chaos we also currently live in, on our only means of surviving where the The Universe was concerned. It wasn’t, to Her, yes you exist within Her domain too, and the only thing that stands between you and annihilation and oblivion, is a spinning marble of Iron, Her heart, I like to think…. And a pillow of air, graciously maintained by our dendren brothers and sisters, the vast network of beautiful sentinels using our byproduct to produce food and their byproduct, which is the very air you can only go for about 10 seconds in the rawness of Nothing. Our fellow planets stand locked in a dance through a galaxy and beyond and beyond, into a den, not her body, that we do not even prey…. Merely ants…. Sometimes less useful than ants… Roaches….. Actually really a virus, rapidly multiplying “thing” in biology, I think it is not even considered living as it does’t reproduce eh whatever…. It just gets in, and starts just making copies of itself until the host dies or the virus is destroyed.

Yeah I know we’re animals, but looking back on that, we really were…. I like to think after 100 years of getting back to living with the Earthmother, and not exploiting her, taking and taking, so few, relatively speaking of course, the size of the earth didn’t change, it just lost a little mass to space, but pretty much the same size. So from then to now, I would say based on the number of people I bumped into in my travels equally spread out on this new planet… that we used to call OUR home, my home, mine mine…. Our home means a hell of a lot more now than it did… 

Oh I forgot to do that math…. I’d have to say there were about……. 400,000 of us left, problem not too much more than that now, maybe 2 generations of babies if you got lucky! No really get it? If ya got LUCKY! I  laugh because I didn’t see another human being for the first time until 3 months after the Blink. 

Remind me to tell you about how miserable I was before the Blink. We’ll circle back, I’m on to something here hehe.

 Basically we got slapped back, to sometime between the renaissance or the end of the Dark Ages. I know what you’re thinking, we fuck like rabbits lol, we really do, nothing wrong with that, but we would’ve had to have been…. Dispersed? In somewhat close proximity, like spread out over say Europe to have even gotten to each other quickly enough to have a population explosion. Took a while to get to a billion…. Hehe that was the force multiplier, but a billion rabbits spread across the globe, can get to each other faster, it was the right amount of people and of course, lots of people wanted kids, I like kids, sometimes I scare ‘em, but I like kids, but instead of hitting 8 billion and going, wait we already have a lot of problems, we doubled down on population growth because God foretold blah blah blah…..

As if we could understand the will of a deity anyway….. Even if it is ALL powerful and loves us…. Until we piss him off, then you spend eternity in the pit, my son, he’s the boss down there, he tried to take over the family biz and I was like naw, kicked his bitch ass out into the pit and turned him into a lizard goat man thing, he’s gonna be down there with you and all the other ungrateful bastards, putting your balls in a vice and other tortures…. Forever……

Yeah well you live as long as I have you find out forever is a long time, we have no concept of this we die! I will one of these days hehe.

We used faith as a cudgel to keep powerful men in power because he has the ear of a god that exists as the Wolfmother does, everywhere, those she does not care to lay claim to before it’s time. She’s not occupying the all of entirety all the time watching to see if you’re gonna be bad then spring it all on ya at the end, you had no-marriage sex so much, eww! ETERNAL TORTURE FOR you….. Those are not the words of an All Loving All Knowing God, these are the words of men using the fear of the Unseen, we found out that there was much more to the Universe that we can’t see and are working to understand.

There’s nothing to understand about the word GAWD but submit or be CRUSHED.

His Son Jesus said some pretty cool shit I’m not gonna lie. Shit I don’t claim to know he really doesn’t exist, but honestly, after surviving a disaster on a scale that still leaves me dumbstruck, unable to move, just stand and be in awe…..

No offense if you have faith, ya know? I just felt like rather than being used as a tool for betterment, cuz I believe Jesus was a real dude, total hippie, right? HAHA! Here I am 137 years after I was born and say we all are now. We didn’t listen to who we thought were the weirdos and didn’t know how the world worked

Pffft…. A select few made it that way dipshits, but I mean we still had disasters, but really Earthmother needn’t present wrath every once in a blue moon right? We thought we knew better, some of the smartest people on the planet basically said we’re poisoning our mother, our grand habitat, having the scales tipped by one kind of her children, the brats who were willing to let their brothers and sisters suffer and die for the promise of money and all the flashy, coveted but ultimately not truly cared for that it would purchase…… 

Of course not everyone had such a…. Passive assault on their personage…… We were AMAZING and returning each other to dust. Killing in droves, taking…. While the men in suits squaddle about what to do but I’m not gonna do it cuz I don’t like it as lives are not just hanging in the balance….  Towards the end there, disease, war in so many places… the fact that where you lived or were born had such an effect on not only your Quality of Life, but I feel those who were in war torn parts of the world well tell those sniveling babies to shut up and let some who has had to work that much harder in life not just to get by and keep the things that may keep him shelter or whatever... But just to survive the day…. Just to make it to Alive… each day, was a blessing.

I lived in New York, I mean I know, The Big Apple got started by ripping off more of our own kind and then started exterminating them and moving them away from their homes to make way for the peoples homes….

Oi…. Don’t even get me started on Slavery, you know…. You know…

I ‘ve gotten more superstitious in my travels…. The whiskey makes me a little fuzzy too.

Oh yeah! I guess I hadn’t thought about it much before the Blink. Honestly I wasn’t a bad guy, I was just kind of a schlub who was content to have my piece of the pie, ya know? I had a house…. It wasn’t fancy, obviously I lived next to the airport, c’mon! But it was mine, my own little safe space, my own personal cave. I bought it fair and square…. I had a lover, some dogs, decent backyard with a kick ass BBQ and a big screen for watching the game…..

We fooled ourselves for so long, some bloke would dupe you into buying something for whatever reason, you’d show it off or whatever, but I mean if it wasn’t something that was expensive and very useful, we slowly resent it or let it fade from memory.

Everyone gets fulfillment from something, then my house definitely made me feel safe and kept the rain off my head… allowed me to sleep comfortably next to my Love and my ridiculous mutts. I am happy at home….. I was utterly miserable at work….. I was a longshoreman, not glamorous, but paid well enough to keep my bills good and still have plenty left over for beer money…..

I hated it, not because I thought it was beneath me, but rather as the years went on… I started doing it when I was 18, my dad said it’ll be a good job with good pay at least, check it out, you’re 18, it doesn’t have to be forever, ya know. 

I went, because my dad didn’t want me to do what he thought I should do, I needed to get out there and first find what works, then move up to finding what you don’t mind doing, work your ever loving ass off and find the thing that fulfills you….

He was a bit rough around the edges, little gruff, great fucking sense of human, if someone wanted to fight you and you were his pal or even just someone who doesn’t need some asshole being threatening, he’d lay ‘em clean out and buy you a beer. Crazy smart too, good with his hands…. Where I got that from… among other things I was so fortunate to have.

Funny thing is, Life gets in the way of having Fun. Work hard, play hard right?

I didn’t just over time I went from being 18 to 37 and I hadn’t even bothered to think about finding different things, it was good pay, kept me in my house, but…. As time went on I kinda noticed that more and more of the stuff I was putting on and hauling off those massive boats was more and more of the garbage, like my TV or BBQ. I spent extra because it’s cool, not because it’s good or I’ll use it….

Day in Day out, now here I am at 37 years old and I’m finally honest with myself, I didn’t try to do anything…. That should’ve been the Eureka moment that got me to at least try…. I’d put it off or make excuses or whatever. Can’t right now, working too much, whatever the bullshit of the day was when my love would encourage me to go out and do other things, or goto school or whatever. She was always so sweet and excited about the dreams of a different future. She was the most loving gal I'd ever been with in my life, but as you know things change….. We weren’t married or nothing and we didn’t break up cuz we didn’t love each other any more. 

She ended up getting a great gig in Seattle, she didn’t ask me to go. Not because she didn’t want to embark on that adventure with me, she didn’t ask because she loved me so much she didn’t want me leaving behind my home. And I loved her enough to let her go on that adventure…. Not a day goes by where I don't at least think about her a little……. It was good.

If I’d have been a different man then or at least not a coward, I woulda told her,  you know I think I want a change of scenery, her fucking adorable ass would be like what like a vacation, wanna road trip me across the country to seattle, just you me and open road, having adventures and shit. Cussed like a sailor and it was the best, soft but rough around the edges…. Just like me. 

I would have… I should have to hear naw I mean like on more uh.. Permanent basis, like some far out west, kinda thinking maybe Seattle.

The nature of my makes it so I can actually see what that would’ve looked like and never fails to bring a tear of joy to my eye. I would’ve sold my run down house in Harlem and went all the way across the country with her. Maybe we’d settle down and talk about kids….

I didn’t go after her. I was such a coward…. Will to be comfortable instead of happy, anything that wasn’t my everyday meat and potatoes was too scary. I stayed at that fucking just until the day humanity fell from its gaudy excesses and cruelty.

I like to think she is somewhere out there, that she survived her plane crash and I might see her one more time. Hehe, I’m a big old softie.

The Blink Obliterated my house then Earthmother changed her body as she saw fit and suddenly even though I stood in that exact spot the whole time, helpless, watching the entire city collapse before my eyes, entire city blocks dropping into pits of open earth, swirling magma and sea water…. 

When the city started to free fall into the wide open earth to be consumed by her fire… to give her the strength she needed to return to Her what was never anyone else’s to begin with. I squeezed my eyes shut really tight, I could watch anymore, I waiting for the end… quietly sobbing against sounds that were so loud, not like a mega rock concert, but I think I heard a cascade of buildings crashing into each other as Her fire took it and made it a part of her once more in an instant rather than waiting for us to poison Her and the rest of our kind of the living, then wait a few thousand years and start the slow process of healing.

After what seemed like an eternity of loud noise, rain, thunder, my tears and a steady stream of urine running down my life….. It slowed, and with a deafening boom and shockwave caused by a mixture of super magma, a good chunk of the Atlantic, and copious amounts of  New York, Earthmother closed her mouth around New York and with a defiant scream that had to be heard in at least that whole half the global, I was on my back sobbing uncontrollably, took me a good 10 minutes to open my eyes a little. Fearing the next wave of Her retribution was right around the corner.

I hyperventilated the hold time I laid there, sobbing as though I was a 3 year old having a meltdown in a now probably non-existent department store.

She was PISSED, I feel like civilization was gone in an hour, but she trembled for 2 days just to keep us on our toes. But yeah, on my back, covered in piss, wailing like a newborn and then BOOM! The loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard in my life, my eyes were open in an instant transfixed on the swirl of clouds that were still in a lazy vortex pattern in the sky…. They vortex gave my bitch as a loud snarl, spider webs of insane lightning crawling out of the vortex like a net… or really a beautiful spider made out of lightning in its web stalking me in Her web, at her mercy.

I was silent not, in awe, something you see and go there is nothing to do here but surrender. And Surrender I did, no more fear, I knew I was about to die and I should try and do one thing in this life with some resolve, instead of missing out on my own moment of death because I felt closing my eyes would somehow make it less scary and painful when I die….

I stared up at this incredible phenomenon of electricity that had taken the shape of  a spider and descended upon me to have me as a light snack after eating New York in its entirety….

She wasn’t just made of tendrils of your run on the mill lightning, Heat lightning, ya know the kind that keeps across the clouds and not down to the ground, saint elmo's fire, causing anything thing she came remotely here to glow, bolts of ball lightning forming the simple but charming pattern on her back.

In that moment I accepted my place in this moment as her prey, her food, her nourishment, well as much as a sad sack coward could for an Aspect…. I stopped talking about God a long time ago, the church was always just too… mean? For me? Silly right? This experience as this shear force of nature creeping ever closer to eventually pounce and I would be no more. I was so in awe at it’s fearsome beauty was beyond anything I had ever seen,  fuck that day was chock

full of that shit, for everyone that made it, but this was just as inspiring as it was terrifying….

Though now that I think about it, I was so enamored I was happy at that moment to have seen it let alone be ended by it. I hadn’t looked away as it got within inches of my body, the two light posts on that tiny old but sturdy bridge where I am not suddenly ready and willing, naw naw….. Humbled… I was humbled that something so incredible would treat me to this final awesome experience and give me peace knowing that for once in my damn life, I faced it head on and didn’t flinch, this was the last chance.

I remember taking a deep breath while staring into what looked to be it’s many eyes, you know how spiders do. I was present, and resolved. This is it, you experienced something different in your life, it was the last thing you did, but ya didn’t it

As I calmly stared it made contact, in that moment no sharp pain or snapping of bones, no fight… as soon as she touched me, I felt every part of me stiff as bored as slow tendrils of raw, but somehow slow moving electricity passed calmly and back to ground.

I stared up at the cloud vortex which settled into a more traditional tropical storm configuration. I laid there between the glowing lamp posts feeling as if I had been charged with electricity too. Look I didn’t think I was a superhero or nothing. Actually I do have one, getting old hehe.

I didn’t let it go to my head, good thing cuz when I sat up, everything I had ever known had been swept away and replaced with newly formed wilderness and a much larger wider swath of ocean that seemed to stretch west as far as……… I mean that another Ocean flat horizon.

I knew then what I would plot out with my own eyes not too much longer after that. I couldn’t say it out loud or it would somehow go against something I knew I had to see to full gasp. I wasn’t a total dumbass, I read a lot you know whatever……..

Basically I was standing on that same bridge I’d been on the whole time….. In front of me what appeared to be a new much more expanded eastern sea…… Eastern Sea…. Maybe Ocean… Ok I would need a boat, I can swim, but no land on site. I finally turn around just in time to see some sun break through the clouds over the most beautiful series of tributaries and delta and is that a mountain?

I sat down on the bridge staring at the stunning but entirely foreign landscape. Completely new terrain…. That was when I realized….sitting on the last evidence that any human had existed let alone built this bridge in the middle of vast new wetland……. Somewhere?

So deliberate you had no choice to accept it. Earthmother came forth to swallow one of Human’s greatest bastions of culture and made it now more, so abhorrent to her, she didn’t bother to replace it with any new land. When I returned to this place a year later, I managed to find 4 others and make our way back to this serene place. I brought the others back here as there was now waste to speak of. No polluted water, as much of New York’s coast was when it existed. We were a group now, and I still believe Earthmother reset everything around it to an image more befitting her declaration.

She told you it wasn’t a warning. It was done, everything I knew lost, having to stake out and figure out how to survive. Luckily my dad and I loved being in nature so much… I hadn’t gone camping or even so much as a hike after he died… and now here I was with no choice and roughing it, and not like ok the campground is in the middle of nowhere but it still has a toilet, I’m talking, city asshole out in REAL wilderness with no clue where he was though he never left that spot.

That was the point She made….. I thought I was a coward who would probably have died when all the planes hit the ground, or hit by flying lava, building sized debris or hyper lightning. As I stood up to pick a direction and start walking in it, in my schlub galoshes, tear soaked T-shirt, and piss drenched sweat pants, I felt oddly good about it, though the outerwear was less than ideal, at least it was spring and nothing to be done now, but get a move on forage, get some kinda shelter up before nightfall, though I knew it would be warm enough based on the time of year and sweet jesus nobody couldn’t froze to death in that humidity….

Gave myself a little nod forward and went to hop off the the only thing left made by the hands of Men and thought better of it when the new Eastern Ocean was literally boiling for miles not 10 minutes ago… So I lay on my stomach and the tip of my finger in the water….. It’s hot, but only like hot tub hot….. But still, don’t want to wade into a pocket of water that is still hot enough to boil the flesh off ya in minutes, but I was ok with not having a choice. Nothing was familiar any more, Earthmother repo’d my house and maybe the whole state when I thought about it.

I told myself, fuck it, at least the hot tub water my easy my aches and I jumped in the air and made a gleeful cannon ball with a yahhoooo! My body didn’t collide with the expectation of hot water….. No, it collided with the middle of a very large and ornate door that somehow made its way from it’s hiding place as I jumped only to land shins first and face planted so hard I couldn’t see for a moment.

Alright, we’ll roll around on this floating door for a minute. Not cute and romantic like that movie about the ship no one ever shut up about. Now I’ll wait for you forever, just me groaning and clutching my shins. Ever the schlub… when I could finally see something other than stars, I rolled over and got up to walk it off. As I’m breathing like an outta shape soccer dad, a few things pop up to the surface of the water, from under the door.

I observe as I catch my breath, mostly pieces of wood so far… what can  I do with that on the  water? I stared as the newly emerged driftwood poles, and thought to myself, wish I ate that spaghetti before I went to drink with the neighbors…. It was from that Italian place I loved to mush…. I laughed when I thought about restaurants not being a thing and more. I laughed even harder as I joked with myself about New York sinking harder and faster than if Venice’s supports snapped all at once and sunk into ocean. Since New Yorkers take everything to the extreme and we do it the best, so we felt, that New York dove into the Earth Mother's mouth the best way.

I was laughing so hard…. Hadn’t laughed like that since my gal left. Alright, I told myself I really needed that, cuz I gotta whole lotta suck left. In thinking of my leftovers and more importantly Venice, I had a Eureka moment. I snatched up a nice long and sturdy pole from the drink, pushed the end until I felt bottom and pushed the stick behind me like a gondolier. It was just me, of course, and I couldn’t help but affect a cheesy Italian song as I got the hang of slowly moving forward. Alright Ornate Door, and Gondolier staff it would appear you stand to make my movement over the water a bit quicker, of course the sky opened up and dumped all of the spring showers. It too was warm and nice for a few moments, but once the clouds stopped power pissing on me and the wind picked up, now I was a little chilly, but needed to get outta these wet clothes before sundown and sweatpants are not known for drying out on their own.

I committed and started off pushing off the bottom with a little more fervor and gusto, happy that I was able to figure this out without killing myself. Of course my feel good was damaged somewhat when the pole got snagged on something  on the bottom causing it to stay and me to keep going, of course had I let go of the pole I coulda jumped in a grabbed, instead I was wrenched into the air as if thrown by one of those Judo guys, my sweat pants flying most o the way off ending me up on my back again, breathing hard, keep it together, you fell down and now you're lying here in your tighty whities and a ratty Mets T-shirt that could no sooner protect you from the elements than it could keep from getting more holes in it……

I stood up and sighed…. I immediately start laughing again as I reach behind myself and touch my bare back and butt. I felt like not an hour ago  that I would have found this to be the fumble that ended it all and would have curled up and cried himself to death on that ornate door half naked. This me on the other hand thought it was hilarious but still being mindful of the need of dry clothes. After the gut laugh and wiping away the tears from the laughter, it was time to get moving again, ass out or no. I grab the pole and  carefully work it around until I feel a noticeable snap vibrate through the pole. Hmm… worst case I can backtrack and get another… or really I should back track anyway and grab them ALL just in case.

I start to pull the pole outta the water to check for damage and as the end comes up it's more weighty, probably plants or mud, no sweat right? As I pull the end up the straps of a decent sized bag are caught in it and there hangs what I can only guess is a day pack coated in a thick layer of mud like it had been buried a few years ago… who knows, can’t hurt to at least use the bag, especially with no pockets and still ass out. 

I get the back set down in the middle of the door, and gently rinse it from its mud cocoon. I inspect what looks to be a pretty nice hiker's day back and even freed from it’s pupa, it still seems to have good weight. I sit down and go to unzip the bag, the last bits of water come out as I begin to take stock of things inside. Let’s see, metal water bottles that were all the rage with the sporty types of the now de facto old world. I smile thinking alright, something useful, now if I can just get a pair of basketball short, even it their wet, they’ll at least not cling to me. 

I rifle through the rest of the main compartment and came up with $40 (useless) Cash, a cell phone not only purified by the Wolfmother, then baptized in the waters Earthmother had freshly put it only to become a very dead, but still good looking phone I toss these in the water, giggling as I perform last rites for the cell phone and the cash, a rite to lay them to rest, here lies Technology & Money: The things Humans warred over, relied on and thought with enough of it, we were unstoppable… now useless and meaningless materials, I pitched the phone and when to do the same for the money…. But I remembered money is paper, sturdy denim paper, writing things down is always handy. I take the $2.15 in change and throw the handful toward the Eastern Ocean and declare the Earthmother’s victory over all things human, computers, cars, structures, you name it, she laid them all to rest that day, and I was eager to give her back as many of her trophies as I was not going to use. 

It was freeing…. I knew enough to forage and such, I was pretty good at making snares and identifying edible berries and plants, flat hunks of metal who’s only value to me was as offering to the Aspect that showed me the most horrifying but beautiful display of raw power, after she made me look, she descended upon me for what I thought was to end my pathetic existence, but instead decided that death was too easy for me and touched me and left me to leave the last bastion of humanity (I again began to laugh as I looked back on that tiny little bridge, still not far, I started back to get my spare gondola pull when I noticed the main compartment of the bag had been sifted, but there were a couple more zippers, didn’t have to much heft anymore after ditching the chaff, but why not have a look.

Upon pulling over the zipper it was revealed to have a much larger than expected hidden compartment. Of course I knew those pockets usually held laptops and tablets etc. All useless to anyone any more. Sure enough, brand new Apple laptop. Hiking professional I muse as I make another enthusiastic offering to the Mother and thank her for freeing me from the bondage of being a schlub to scared to even follow the love of his life anywhere as he should have. I had a pensive moment over that, quiet contemplation over all my friends and family were indeed with the Mother again. I had a brother in Philly, he was a piece of shit anyway, but I did take a moment of silence for the people around me who loved me and tried to shake me out of being a drone.

I close my eyes and give my silent respect, regard and love and take great comfort in the Blink being so powerful, nobody truly suffered, they were here, and now they have returned everything borrowed from the Mother, the entire planet cracked under her return to full strength and reclaim every part of herself…. Save for “crumbs” like myself, she got everything back in an instant, save for myself and hardy wetland vegetation, and hopefully some wild life here and there, she feasted on all our toys, repaired any wounds she might of had, and left only enough of her human children to bear witness, and after the upheaval left to return to living by her grace lest we return to her too is we cannot find a way to work with nature…. There was no more making it work for us, no punching holes in her body to get the black fluid from the deep, the pressurized and liquified corpses of the giants that used to roam this planet. As things are, Wolfmother acted in accordance with her nature and struck the Mother’s Giants from the face to be buried for millennia only to have their liquid bodies pumped up and used to power our vehicles and everything else will poison our own air.

Somehow I couldn’t get mad at the greed of it, but rather the blatant lack of regard to the damage we were doing to everything around us by and for its use. No longer, this is not the Human’s planet anymore, it is all hers once again and it is by Her grace that I was standing on that door, half naked, and not only alive, but in good spirits about the radical change. Out of respect I offer my apologies and swear that I will always act as one of her children and care for her and she has cared for me, harshly at times over the last century. 

I let out a loud refreshed breath and inspected the hidden pocket one last time to find a modest sized dry bag stuffed at the bottom… to whomever left this behind either intentionally or not, I thank you for leaving me behind things to start me on my way. I smile and open the dry bag expecting a phone keys and a wallet, but reach in and instead feel soft and dry fabric! I neatly pull out the bundle to find a fresh pair of hiking pants, a microfiber T-shirt, ya know the fancy ones that keep most of the sweat off your skin, which will be nice as I sweat more than a person ought too, and to top off my sorely appreciated and already cherished gift from one of my sisters or brothers,  things they no longer have use for, but will help me survive as I forge into Her New Earth…..

Song Pairing: System - Manarola

I say a tearful thank you, dry my eyes and carefully put the clothes back in the dry bag, seal it up and put it back in the pack. No sense in throwing them on when it’s Spring and you’re just gotta get pissed on at any…….

Time…. You think as the rain falls from the sky onto you in the 10 minute torrential downpours you get in humidity like this, sometimes without even a cloud, that happened to me when I went to Hawaii once when I was 10. I found this familiar style of rain very comforting, especially familiar won’t be a thing quite sometime.

I look to the sky and shout POINT TAKEN! As I rip the rest of my schlub rags off, naked in the rain,  more pleased and grateful than I’ve ever experienced….. Time to explore, and find things among Her grace that will sustain me as I sing “that’s amore” while pushing myself steadily over the waters of these amazing wetlands, naked and brand new…. I had been alive for 37 years already,  and while I had loved, I did nothing to chase it, so it slipped away from me. I had found comfort in my familiar spots and while I yearned for change and experience, I was too scared to leave my comfort to seek it, and in a stunning twist, instead of dying in the largest distorter probably ever. The Mother wiped everything clean around me, touched my being and left me to journey ahead into the unknown. There was no choice, my comfort was wiped from all but my memory. I will pine for my friends I’m sure, but now wasn’t the time for that…. It was time to get moving and make use of this new life I had been given. To honor absolutely everyone who had ever cared about me, by finally living a real life, for myself first of course……

But also each and every last one of them all over Earth, who were also wiped from the face of everything save the memories of the few that were spared that wrath… I will explore this strange new world. Far be it from me to give it a name… it’s just why I lovingly call Her and it stuck. I would venture forth, naked if I had to, explore and figure out my place on this new planet that changed so radically around me as I squeezed my eyes shut and quietly prayed for her to end it fast and send me to the afterlife, if such a thing exists, or to oblivion, I realized in that moment, it would have been the Ultimate peace… but She had decided sometime between shitting my pants when the planes crashed and sniveling in a ball on that bridge with a snot bubble in my nose crying for my mommy, who had also passed sometime ago…..

I dunno, maybe she didn’t decide until she announced her coming to claim me so loudly I had no choice but to open my eyes, and maybe to her surprise as she stalked ever closer she now longer found a sniveling ball of dough begging for at least a quick death. Instead she found me transfixed, unable to look away, not out of terror, but out of shear wonder and awe. As I pondered for I felt as I stared up at the Aspect, when my eyes snapped open with a start, upon gazing upon Her, there was no fear, no terror, no fight, no begging, no longer cowardly man baby wallowing in front of her, that man died as soon as I laid my gaze upon her. 

There was only beauty, wonder, awe, respect, and if it was time for her to take me, unwavering acceptance. I don’t know if that was the goal or if it was as unexpected for her and it was for myself, maybe she meant to inspire terror in me before she ended, but instead found me looking up at Her with the wild bewilderment and wonder of a child seeing everything for the first time, which as I was paddling steadily through her New majesty, I really was… I was seeing this place I had lived my whole life for the first time. 

She needed a new name, one that described her, instead of what we were standing on in her presence, Earth? Who came up with that shit? Earth is part of what she is made up of, but that’s not her. Also she was covered with more water than land, maybe Aqua or something…. Naw that sounds dumber than earth…. Terra? Nice thought, but it sounds like a snooty girl from SoHo….. Ah I got it….. Her ancient Greek name…… Gaia…. A name all hers.

I did and have always called her by that name hence forth…… Hehe I sound like a Victorian douche….. Now to the business of shelter, food and water. Important to find sooner than later, but I was not all worried about that just yet……

It’s not like I have any place else to be, right?