The Pantheon

Tiny Little Rock of Eternal Doom

July 07, 2021 Joshua White
The Pantheon
Tiny Little Rock of Eternal Doom
Show Notes Transcript

Otherwise known as the fanfiction explaining why there is no known human habitation of Earth in the 25th century. 

It is such a pain to make this stuff cohesive, partially because it is is borne of insanity, and partially because these time scales are too big, with events too vast for everything to click together and be compelling in little one off things. So each story will reveal a little portion of a much bigger thing. If you think about them in tandem they'll make a bit more sense, but not even the Pantheon (proper) series will elucidate everything. Mostly because I haven't explained everything to myself. 

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Oh, tiny little rock of eternal doom, have I ever told you how much I love you? From your golden beaches to the polar ice caps, and every little piece of dust in between. I might have. I might have a thousand times. But I just needed to say it once more.

Oh, tiny little rock of eternal doom, what have we done to you? It was our fault, of course. We will tell ourselves again and again that we had no part in your devastation. We will skate by our culpability by saying we have no free will. That we had to eat ourselves, and, in the process, you. But are hypocrites. We do not levy that same logic at ourselves when we think about what we will have for breakfast, or who should get the quarterly bonus, now do we?

Oh, tiny little rock of eternal doom, I feel sorry for you. Even the name I give you is unfair. But is it inaccurate? There are still those of our kind who tread your coasts, who ferry fish from your seas. And where they shall be, doom shall be. And they shall be with you always. I am sorry.

I will probably be the last of our kind to escape. A little bit less doom on your soil. But the others shall sit there, forgotten. They will forget that we forgot them. Such is how terrible we are. And, in time, they will fall into our old patterns. The same wars, the same industry, all on less resources. We never will learn, will we, oh tiny little rock of eternal doom?

When you look upon us, do you ask yourself the same question? Do you fear and despise yourself for siring us? Because, let’s get this straight, even if you did not help us become what we are today, you had every opportunity, every step of the way, to keep us from becoming such engines of utter consumption. Why did you not crush us? Were you afraid of the consequences for yourself? Unwilling to make one small sacrifice of yourself so that the universe could be saved eons of pain? Perhaps we really are your children, oh little rock of eternal doom. We are so similar.

Enjoy the turmoil of our last few siblings, little rock. I’ve petitioned regional again and again. They are down there. What use is a total evacuation if it is not total? We are so afraid of you, rock, that we would rather no human ever saw you again. But we do not care enough to follow through with our promises. Are you not proud of us, little rock?

Our ancestors fleed to here before, promising to themselves that they would have a better life on the frontier than on your shores. And they were right, for a time. A hundred years, at most. But even though they fled to the farthest reaches of space, they could never flee themselves, or the mark you had left on us all. The war called to every planet, whether the residents traveled by train or foot. All because of you, oh little rock. You taught us to be fickle. 

Now I have to deal with turmoil in my own head. I do not care for the evacuation. Even though you are our home, rock, you are not special. Nor are we, not really. A thousand different types of our kind will appear on a thousand different rocks in one thousandth of the percentage of the universe’s lifespan. Nothing special about you, me, the others. So there is no reason to be lamenting any of this, no? I ought to accept my orders, no? Act as my ancestors did, as you did. Just because I cannot immediately see another path, I am supposed to say that it doesn’t exist.

But I have scans of them, rock. A good fifty thousand souls. Just enough for my fleet to carry to food and shelter. Fifty thousand other lives. Sure, they are not special. But then I am not special either. Nor will the most powerful computer in existence ever be special. All of us have predecessors, all of us will have descendants. Where on the chain we are does not matter. But command will see them, won’t they, rock? It is too much of an effort for me to hide fifty thousand people. Possible with the resources of the entire empire, perhaps, but not my meager little freighter fleet. I will be defying direct orders. They will have my head.

So what say you, tiny little rock of eternal doom? I know what you would say. And I will not listen.