Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Post Script from The Author
Now that I've finished the story, I've decided to call it "The Hosts of Earth", which, you can guess, comes from the fifth and final chapter. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. May there be many more weird stories to come...
Chapter 5 - Postlude
Excerpt from "A Brief History of Human Affairs in the Post-Millennial Age", Allard Ulrich Squires, Ph.D., Pub. 7/03/2215
A new era of prosperity marked the early years of the 21st century. Following the mass deaths, mass industrialization, and mass migrations of the previous century, the post-2000 world experienced peace, economic stability, and social equality on a scale previously unknown in human history. However, while the GDP of the planet's industrialized and developing nations continued to rise, so did the potential for risk of market meltdown and environmental encroachment. The prolific interconnection of national economies achieved by globalization drove exponential demand for profit and, consequently, placed a premium on minimizing production costs and product quality. This appetite for ever-cheapening labor, resources, and products, which led to riskier speculation and stratifying corporate profits, eventually culminated in the Great Recession of 2008 that crippled the planet's economies.
Stock markets plummeted, budget deficits swelled, and unemployment doubled. On top of this, during the summer of 2009, tremendous seismic forces rocked the 4.5 billion-year-old planet to its magma core. All across the seven continents, gigantic subterranean explosions devastated cities and contributed to the death of nearly 100 million human beings. One week of peace preceded another round of megaton blasts that split every continent into several drifting fragments, which produced earthquakes that more than tripled the highest measure (10) of what scientists once called the Richter Scale. The length of this second round of terra-carnage remains unclear, but present estimates place a figure at around 15 days. Even less clear is the death toll that this cataclysm exacted. Overall estimates range from 6-6.5 billion individuals, roughly 95% of the world's human population.
Another 300 million perished over the course of year as mass starvation and war over remaining resources pushed humanity to its collective physical and mental brink. Some 65 years would pass before human societies would surface from the rubble of the Cataclysms, and when they did, the remaining survivors found out that they had much in common. Scientific studies indicate that the number of survivors per continent was independent of population size. In fact, current evidence suggests that roughly one million people per continent emerged from underground caverns that were allegedly in place before the Great Cataclysms of 2009. Only after these groups emerged from beneath the Earth's surface could life remotely return to what pre-2009 human beings considered normal, i.e., living above the ground and seeing the sky, water, etc.
One curious observation that shines brighter than all others of the immediate post-Cataclysms period is the fact that one man alone is credited with corralling all of the subterranean survivors just days before the first blasts. Noted post-Cataclysms historian and archivist Renald Fernald wrote about his personal encounter with this unknown man, now called Poe after the 19th-century poet who rhymed like this old man supposedly did, in his monumental "Journals of a Post-Cataclysmic Hominid" about the events leading up to, and following, the quakes that devastated the surface of the planet. He states, "At the old City Hall one day, an old man with a gray fedora hat and trench coat warned me that something awful loomed on the horizon; he led me underground and showed me the Hosts of Earth... They were unlike anything I had hitherto seen, yet they were as familiar as common garden worms" (Fernald, Vol. 1, 34).
Fernald never found out who the man was; nor did he reveal what exactly the "Hosts of Earth" were, but they were almost certainly the cause of the Cataclysms. On the day he died, it is said that Dr. Fernald told the friends and family who surrounded his bed what the Hosts of Earth were, which "they" permitted him to do only in his final days of life. Tradition holds that these family members and friends had to keep the secret to themselves lest they incur the wrath of the Hosts, who remain unknown to the public to this very day. The Fernald family thus holds a key position in post-Cataclysms society; they are the bearers of an ultimate knowledge that may never be revealed to the rest of humanity.
Dr. Fernald's closing words in his "Journals" serve as a warning that is still held dear by all to this day:
"Love each other, love the good earth, and cherish the gift of life, for the pain and horror wrought by the negation of these
sacred truths would surely lead to the extinction of mankind. That is a guarantee from the Hosts of Earth" (Fernald, Vol. 76,
869).
A new era of prosperity marked the early years of the 21st century. Following the mass deaths, mass industrialization, and mass migrations of the previous century, the post-2000 world experienced peace, economic stability, and social equality on a scale previously unknown in human history. However, while the GDP of the planet's industrialized and developing nations continued to rise, so did the potential for risk of market meltdown and environmental encroachment. The prolific interconnection of national economies achieved by globalization drove exponential demand for profit and, consequently, placed a premium on minimizing production costs and product quality. This appetite for ever-cheapening labor, resources, and products, which led to riskier speculation and stratifying corporate profits, eventually culminated in the Great Recession of 2008 that crippled the planet's economies.
Stock markets plummeted, budget deficits swelled, and unemployment doubled. On top of this, during the summer of 2009, tremendous seismic forces rocked the 4.5 billion-year-old planet to its magma core. All across the seven continents, gigantic subterranean explosions devastated cities and contributed to the death of nearly 100 million human beings. One week of peace preceded another round of megaton blasts that split every continent into several drifting fragments, which produced earthquakes that more than tripled the highest measure (10) of what scientists once called the Richter Scale. The length of this second round of terra-carnage remains unclear, but present estimates place a figure at around 15 days. Even less clear is the death toll that this cataclysm exacted. Overall estimates range from 6-6.5 billion individuals, roughly 95% of the world's human population.
Another 300 million perished over the course of year as mass starvation and war over remaining resources pushed humanity to its collective physical and mental brink. Some 65 years would pass before human societies would surface from the rubble of the Cataclysms, and when they did, the remaining survivors found out that they had much in common. Scientific studies indicate that the number of survivors per continent was independent of population size. In fact, current evidence suggests that roughly one million people per continent emerged from underground caverns that were allegedly in place before the Great Cataclysms of 2009. Only after these groups emerged from beneath the Earth's surface could life remotely return to what pre-2009 human beings considered normal, i.e., living above the ground and seeing the sky, water, etc.
One curious observation that shines brighter than all others of the immediate post-Cataclysms period is the fact that one man alone is credited with corralling all of the subterranean survivors just days before the first blasts. Noted post-Cataclysms historian and archivist Renald Fernald wrote about his personal encounter with this unknown man, now called Poe after the 19th-century poet who rhymed like this old man supposedly did, in his monumental "Journals of a Post-Cataclysmic Hominid" about the events leading up to, and following, the quakes that devastated the surface of the planet. He states, "At the old City Hall one day, an old man with a gray fedora hat and trench coat warned me that something awful loomed on the horizon; he led me underground and showed me the Hosts of Earth... They were unlike anything I had hitherto seen, yet they were as familiar as common garden worms" (Fernald, Vol. 1, 34).
Fernald never found out who the man was; nor did he reveal what exactly the "Hosts of Earth" were, but they were almost certainly the cause of the Cataclysms. On the day he died, it is said that Dr. Fernald told the friends and family who surrounded his bed what the Hosts of Earth were, which "they" permitted him to do only in his final days of life. Tradition holds that these family members and friends had to keep the secret to themselves lest they incur the wrath of the Hosts, who remain unknown to the public to this very day. The Fernald family thus holds a key position in post-Cataclysms society; they are the bearers of an ultimate knowledge that may never be revealed to the rest of humanity.
Dr. Fernald's closing words in his "Journals" serve as a warning that is still held dear by all to this day:
"Love each other, love the good earth, and cherish the gift of life, for the pain and horror wrought by the negation of these
sacred truths would surely lead to the extinction of mankind. That is a guarantee from the Hosts of Earth" (Fernald, Vol. 76,
869).
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