Parable Y

Andrew Jeromski
The Fifth Dentist

We have seen the darkest of days.

We have seen our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers poisoned by the very air they breathe. We have watched the rivers and lakes turn stagnant. We have seen the earth rise up beneath us and swallow our cities whole. We have run from the churning seas when they would wash us away like grains of sand. We have stood both as victims and as accomplices; we have shared the same fate as those who bear the greatest blame for the state of our world. We have all finally become equal.

If there ever was such a being as “God,” he has long since abandoned us to our fate.

My father used to say: “There is no glory in banging your head against the wall. You’ll find that your skull will always yield first.”

He was right.

At first, as people started to grasp what was happening, there was a great uproar.

“They are destroying the environment for the sake of greed,” was a commonly heard term on network news shows. “They,” of course, being big business.

There were oil spills, nuclear meltdowns and documented cases of companies brazenly dumping volatile chemicals into water supplies. There were cancer clusters, workers with more toxic chemicals in their bloodstream than would be found in a year’s supply of 10W-30 motor oil and the ever-present slick black marine life, covered in petroleum, desperately trying to survive in a world that humans were killing at an increasingly rapid pace.

It was the topic of the times. The environment. Everyone knew who to point the finger at, and everyone did. It was in this moment that most Americans first fully grasped the shocking limitations that capitalism had silently and clandestinely placed upon liberty. For every credible report of illness caused by environmental toxicity, there appeared three that claimed either: 1.) the victim was a certifiable lunatic with a lengthy history of delusions of persecution; 2.) that there was no credible scientific link between whatever chemical was being blamed and whatever malady the victim reported; or 3.) there was evidence the victim frequented kiddie porn websites and regularly consumed dangerous narcotics in the company of prostitutes.

By the time it became impossible to deny the startling effects of all this on our planet, it was way, way too late. By then, the children of billionaire’s and CEO’s were no longer safe in their ivory towers. Once the wealthy and powerful began getting sick, and there was no longer anyone left to spin the comforting tales of wolf-crying and overreaction, a full scale panic broke out. First, just in the states, but before the end of that month, Paris, Bangkok, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and almost every other city on earth was in flaming tumult, as people demanded answers–and, of course, blood.

In the first year after the failure of the corporate propaganda machine, it is thought that there were some 17.5 million murders, lynchings and executions world wide.

Things only got worse from there.

Every city, every town, hamlet and rural outpost was soon in a state of anarchy. Terror ruled the streets as the earth revolted against the staggering hubris of our species. Entire populations tore themselves to shreds arguing about who or what was to blame; there were reports of mass suicides on a regular basis, fires day and night to dispose of the bodies. Otherwise they were left to rot on the streets.

The ultimate irony was the mass failure of world currency. When the clock struck midnight on the global economy, turning the dollars, euros and yen back into plain old paper, the ones who had inherited the machinery of mankind’s downfall were cast from their temples and palaces and forced to atone for their crimes by ravenous mobs.

Some turned to gold and other “solid” commodities. They soon found that there was no price to be paid for salvation and no one left to throw money at anyway.

Some tried to escape the planet through technology. The earth would not be denied its retribution. Those who tried to escape the mounting wrath quickly found that the contamination we had wrought altered the composition of the upper atmosphere enough that calculations made to the extremities of precision were thrown off just enough to cause catastrophic failures. They found this out and they died.

Eventually, it was clear that there was no hope left to us here. Many years passed as those remaining scattered and tried to survive as best they could. The earth grew ever more violent in its rebellion, throwing down what remained of our towers, twisting our highways and ripping our shopping malls asunder with a fury never seen by any previous generation of man. The sun burns us, so we cower amidst the rubble of our broken world, seeking shelter from that which we used to embrace.

We know we are going to die.

We know we must die. We have seen our cousins and neighbors die. We have watched the streets and lanes fill with the corpses. We have learned to accept that this too will be our fate. We have become as ghosts in our skin; we have watched with sunken eyes as all we held dear fell into darkness. We have lost much of what made us feel. We have lost all hope for ourselves, and yet, that is all we have with which to meet our end. Hope that the same strange miracle that brought us into existence could someday happen again. We die with absolute certainty.

We have seen the darkest of days.
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Photo: nimboo (HDR photography)(flickr)
URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/05/03/parable-y