Tarina blew in through the portal, and hovered to a stop. Her mind was spinning, after all the dancing with Austin. She needed to wind down, without the others noticing. Tarina, of course used her ability to stop time in one plane, and travel wherever her heart desired. I must make all of them aware of the coming catastrophe......Tarina pondered the situation. I must make an announcement when I return. Quickly, Tarina mentally got her Bleep together and flew off back into the chateau....
GrandMaster Ninja RascalPuff looked out from his perch in Niihau, Hawaii, noting the blue and rolling oceans all around and that there had been a fair amount of peace in the world lately. The Israeli-Gazan conflict had died down, although there had been the odd maneuver of the Israelis going back to a devastated area where only a mosque was left standing and destroying it. Well, he would have a report on that shortly.
Apprehensive at first, he had more than settled into his new role as guardian of the Western Hemisphere, if indeed there was such a thing.
He picked up the green phone to analog at Western Field Command and sent forth a second Ninja Stealth Aircraft to protect the Gathering.
As the music came to a stop, Austin looked into Tarina's eyes, and said... Tarina -Quickly Tarina put her hand over his mouth and said, Austin listen to me, there is a coming major catastrophe that I must warn the others, and the world about. Austins' eyebrows shot up, and said follow me, my dear. Austin led Tarina to the podium. The Band seeing them coming, came down to see what they wanted. Tarina quickly conveyed her message to him. He quickly ushered her up, and they strode to the podium. Ladies, un-gendered species, interplanetary species,gentlemen! Please stop and listen to what I have to say.
The room grew quiet. I must warn you of the impending disaster. As you all well know, as the prophets have foretold, there is a polar-shift that is going to occur in the year 2012. Check your sources if you like, but it is true. We must band together to try and save our mother earth. Please forward all ideas to the head of your states, or other such persons..............
Austin and his lovely Fennoscandian paramour had brought the latest news of the polar shift to the attention of Earth’s representative, Mr. Francis Crick the 3rd, he joining them at the podium. There was so much noise that not all had heard what had been said so far, but now there was silence as some word had spread, but many were still delirious and wondered if it was just a silly joke or an ancient myth making the rounds once again. The crowd yet bubbled over with exuberance on the inside as they respectfully awaited the speech by Mr. Crick.
Crick, the little cricket, sat on the podium next to the microphone to present the full news of the impending 2102 catastrophic pole reversal. As he was also the representative of 50,000 insect species at this conference, Crick carried a lot of weight, although he was but a few ounces himself. He looked out upon the smiling faces, wondering how to gently break the news as being the truth.
The audience was happy and quite mellow from the evening’s presentations and festivities and were up for more of the same interesting news and exciting happenings.
“Welcome, all Galactic members of Milky Way life forms of this spiral arm. I bring you to the central purpose of this Gathering, the very highlight of it all: the doom of the Earth for sure in 2012.”
The crowd gasped! Spirits plunged, for the Earth had the highest centers of learning and technology among the federation of planets whose leaders had assembled here.
Crick continued, “The Mayans were right about ending their calendar with the year 2012, for it is then that the Earth goes into its bipolar disorder of the mania stage.”
Cries of astonishment swept over the attendees as they cried out in the vein of, “No, it can’t be! What will become of us all on Earth and those of us who depend on its grace, wealth and style?”
A tear came to the little cricket’s eye. “’Tis true, that in 2012 on December 20, Austin’s birthday, that the north and south poles will be no more and the east and west poles will be born. It will be a time of unprecedented upheaval that perhaps no one can survive but some bacteria.”
“Holy Tim’s Donuts!” exclaimed Graham, “A north-south reversal would have been bad enough.”
“Is there something holy about a donut?” Profpat asked Graham.
Before Graham could answer, “Jenny wondered aloud, “Is the donut hole really a ‘nothing’ and so then does a ‘nothing’ exist?”
“If I just eat the hole, will I gain weight?” Austin asked.
Graham, shocked, said, “Austin, I can’t believe you ate the whole thing!”
Crick intervened, “We don’t have to worry about TOE stuff now—and by the way, nothing exists but it isn’t there to exist. Now, we have over three glorious years left to live and in which to figure out a solution.”
Pandemonium swept the onlookers. Some bedlam, chaos, mayhem, uproar, turmoil, tumult, commotion, confusion, furor, hubbub, rumpus, hullabaloo and hoopla followed.
Crick waited calmly for all these moniums to subside, then continued, “Perhaps some people and animals could make it through by living on mountain-tops, but that would be a really harsh life in the thin air. As for us insects, we could all fit into a spacecraft, but it’s the humans that I’m worried about. We can only transport a few thousand of them, but they’d probably want to bring all their stuff along and so then there would hardly be any room left, plus we need to find a whole new world containing the right mixture of oxygen and nitrogen.”
“That’s it,” said TimeParticle, “we’ll go to that fantasy world that I’ve often showed on ToeQuest with pictures.”
Crick answered, “TP, that world only exists in art.”
“Oh,” sighed TP. “Well, I’ll only bring half of my comic book collection and just half of my wives.”
“The top half or the bottom half?” asked Graham of TP.
“OK guys,” said Crick. “Let’s get serious, guys. Comic books are a necessity. What are we going to do about 2012 on the last day of autumn before the mother of all winters crashes down upon us?”
“The hail with that ice,” Graham replied. “I’ll build a magnetosphere to float in the atmosphere to house all of us.”
Crick sighed, “That won’t work. The magnetic fields will be fluxing all over the place! Not to mention some unmentionables.”
“Underwear?” Graham asked.
“No,” said Crick, “Category-8 hurricanes, magnitude 12 earthquakes, and 100-foot waves of water all over the place.”
Mikal suggested, “We could hire that psychic who just won all the lotteries and was banned from entering them. She could tell us if this 2012 thing is really going to happen, but… not what to do about it.”
“Well, get her on a plane to join us here. Any other ideas?”
MJA had a plan. “We could increase the rate of global warming by driving our cars around all day and night, spraying aerosol cans out the window.”
“That might even make things worse, having a gigantically larger hole in the ozone layer, plus, MJA, you don’t use a car.”
Greybeard stood up. “This is just the natural course of things. There have been 99% extinctions before. The fittest will survive, such as some eskimos and LabelWench in the Yukon. No sweat; this is nothing but a pruning of the species. The world is a big bunch of crap now, anyway.”
“OK, everyone, relax,” said Crick. “for ‘Natural’ means good.”
“We need preservatives!” MJA cried out. “Any ideas?”
“You could pickle yourself,” noted Somebody.
Melanie reassured everyone, “It’s just a dream, but an ice-cold freezing one.”
“What happens after we die?” David Maes wondered.
“There’s a billion word thread on that question.”
“What’s the point of existence,” Profpat queried, “if it al just goes away.”
“That point is thought to be a singularity.”
“Singularities make equations give infinite answers.”
Jenny perked up, “That IS the correct answer!”
Crick really wished to calm everyone’s nerves. There is an Eternal Return, for, behind the Veil, being that which ev’r thrives, the Eternal Cycle has ever been alive. and well knows how these bubbles to pour, of existence in this some universe that rewrites your poem and mine there, every verse.”
“You mean, Crick, that our atoms will be reconstituted as other beings? That won’t exactly be us as we are now.”
“True, but we all live on yester’s credit line, in nowhere’s midst—now in this life of thine, as of its bowl our cup of brew was mixed into this state of being that’s called “mine”.
“So what!”
“Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last, that the likes of us will become the past, space wondering whither whence we went after the last of us her life has spent?”
“I sure do.”
“The Eternal Cycle has thus formed trillions of baubles like ours, and will form, forevermore—the comings and passings of which it ever emits to immerse these universal bubbles blown and burst.”
“I like being alive.”
“So fear not lest a debit close your account and mine, knowing the like no more; The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour'd zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.”
“But they won’t be us!”
“When You and I behind the cloak are past, but the long while the next universe shall last, which of our approach and departure knows as might the sea's self heed a pebble-cast.”
“That’s poetic, Crick, but we need some ideas for the here and now.”
(Can anyone get us out of this mess?)
Crick the cricket brought the psychic lottery lady to the podium, she relating this chilling vision of the very near future which had come to her in a dream somehow through the eddies and currents of time:
DECEMBER 20
2012
THE END OF THE EARTH
Charon was withered, wan, and skeletal, although eternally grateful for his immortal life and steady job of ferrying the dead across the river Styx in their transition from life to death to forgetfulness. As Earth was the only planet he’d come across with such promising higher life forms, Charon had become rather fond of its inhabitants, even though he only saw but the worst of them, but even from this he could extrapolate to the qualities of the best.
Charon did his job well, very professionally, although it was ever so dreary with the endless darkness of wasted lives and the grim and gloomy skies all around, for his surroundings always had that same gray and leaden look and feel. He ferried on, though, for his own life was precious to him.
The soon-to-be really really dead never said much at all, for what was there to tell after a empty life that had now sometimes turned to deep regret; so, Charon did not prompt them for information, for this was not the thing to do at this time of their passing, so he was always most courteous and kind to them all, even to the most evil of the darkest, doing his job as well as he could. It was not that Charon was afraid that his undersized master of the underworld, Pluto, might be watching, but that he had the extreme clarity to serve the task at hand, a testament to his character.
Charon had been much alarmed lately—what with the increased numbers of hellish-souls-to-be climbing into the millions in such a short time, but he had been through this kind of rush before with the doomed and damned of many other planets that had been consumed by their suns or had undergone other such catastrophes. He just used larger boats and patiently took his time, for he had all of Eternity. Of course, Charon could and did feel deep sadness, but he didn’t show it outwardly, even when the numbers from Earth increased a thousand-fold again.
A few of the now billions of depressed Earthling souls had enough energy left to mumble a few words to Charon and so he was able to glean from them the latest happenings on Earth.
In 2011, the predicted exponential surge of melting ice from global warming quickly inundated all of the coastal cities, many of them large centers of population and commerce. Everyone who could possibly make it had to retreat inland, creating the largest mass exodus in history.
As the heat rose to unbearable levels over the year, many began living in their basements as the Earth’s infrastructure began its eventual collapse. Millions eventually headed north towards Canada and Siberia, but had to retreat when the ice caps totally melted and formed the great Ocean of the North; many did not make it. No one but the ignored physicist mathematicians had predicted that the end could come into sight so quickly. Then came the dreaded polar shift that made global warming seem like a small note compared to this new Dark Symphony.
The Earth was thrashed with storms the likes of which it had never seen. Electricity was completely gone all over the world except for a few nuclear powered areas that didn’t last much longer. No one could drive very far, even on their last tank of gas, for the roads had melted, along with the tires of the vehicles trying to travel them, and if the vehicles stopped, they’d find themselves mired in the meltdown of the asphalt.
Food would no longer grow well, even in once lush gardens, in the amounts that were needed, and as the heat rose further, into the 150s, plant growth ceased altogether, although a new but rare and expensive form of food pill extended life for some of the rich for a short while.
Charon, had, of course, seen much of this kind of thing before from the many other solar systems and galaxies on which life had formed; but Earthlings seemed to have a special charm and hope above and beyond the other alien races. So he rowed and ferried and deposited them on the far shore, his job and life forever continuing in a place with no color, no joy, no future—on the shore of the land on the edge of oblivion. Charon had depths of compassion, but many of his passengers might have thought him stoic, although they were mostly beyond the capability of that and anything else. A sign on the opposite shore said:
“Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”
Billions more arrived in the gray land all too soon and Charon learned that either madness or desperation on Earth had now caused a nuclear winter all over the planet, bringing on a deep freeze that few could escape. Perhaps they were trying to combat the ultimate heat which would have been but a cool breeze in Hell. The then polar shift greatly added to the deep freeze. A few of Charon’s still speaking but chilled customers even expressed a longing for the legendary warmth of Hades. Charon, stalwart and reliable, rowed on steadily, ever steeling himself to the misery.
Finally the masses slowed and dwindled to a few dribs and drabs over a few years and then there was no one for several years. A lone man then appeared on the shore near the ferry dock and Charon readily approached the man, something he had never done before.
They had a long and hearty talk, for the man was animated and not at all like any of the other wretched souls.
“How is it,” inquired Charon, “that you are full of life and seem to be a good man but have been sent here?”
“I am not a bad person in any way,” the man replied. Actually, I just spent some time in Heaven. I found out that my sweetheart was sent here to you, for she was a suicide and was destined here; however, I had promised to be with her forever, so I chose this place over Heaven out of my love for her in the assurance that I gave.”
“Extraordinary,” exclaimed Charon. “I knew the Earth had a few good men and women; I’ve not seen very many clues of that elsewhere in the universe. Did you colonize space—will your species continue and flourish after your Earth bids farewell?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied the man, for too many needless wars intervened and this greatly delayed our space program.”
“A shame,” said Charon, but is there any hope left on Earth, I mean, are there any others still about?”
“I am the last,” the man answered slowly.
The first tear of Charon’s long life rolled down his cheek. Nothing had ever made him cry before: nothing had ever made him weep.
(A few of my 14 cats are in this Ark.)
The Beginning of the End
— This Rare Earth —
Oh never has there been a time more rare,
But that I could truly say “I was there
On that Heavenly sphere of blue and green;
Yes, I was there in life extraordinaire!”
Life is a fatal disease caught at birth,
A plague upon those who reside on Earth,
A terminal illness for which death’s the cure,
Life being something that is not for sure.
'Twas a time before birth when you were not;
'Twill be a time again when you are not.
From Death your life was a borrowed debit;
Spend it, love it, and live it to your credit.
Since death is a certain fate on the Earth,
One must ask: How shall I live my worth?
Stay busy living—or you’ll be dying.
The answer please: ‘There’s life after birth!’
I fear not death, Heaven, or even Hell;
For death is only life’s natural knell,
And Heaven and Hell are within myself;
The one thing I fear is not living well!
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