by Horia Hulea
Chapter 15
The rat is munching amazed at the floating graphics (amazed by what she is munching and not by the graphics). The data is not lying—and that is what makes it funny.
"Wow! Let's drill for natural gas if the oil runs out! Very smart! That will definitely solve the climate change problem."
Munch, munch, munch.
"Yes, people, let's all invest billions in fantasy ways to store carbon, when spending one-tenth of that on planting trees does the same thing. Hellooo?? Trees are carbon-storing machines already? Damn, this cheese is good."
Munch, munch, munch.
"And what is this? News coverage about how the stupid hominids just announced they passed the point of no return? Hey, look, guys—point of no return! Let's not worry about it. What's a 'point of no return', anyway? Just semantics, right? Ooh, this one has walnuts in it! Love it, love it, mmmhmmm!"
The pockets of her mouth are now so full that the points and columns of data are scrolling before the wiggly nose with only munching as comments.
And those numbers showed that you didn't need sarcasm to see what ratkind already knows: humanity blissfully passed the point of no return … humanity did too little and too late to save themselves … humanity sleepwalked into extinction baited by the sweet smell of greed, stupidity, and self-delusion.
And at the end of the info slide, when the rat has finished all the cheese and is delightfully licking her paws, the conclusion is simple: "Yep! It wasn't the cows!"
But maybe the smart rat is wrong. Maybe those projections showing her these conclusions are low on battery or broken. We all know how technology gets unreliable if rats get their hands on it.
But in this case, it wasn't.
We, humans, have this false sense of security, this reassuring feeling of being in a safe spot just because we can dig up fossils and watch from a high point the entire history of the past millions of years.
We have this high and mighty impression of ourselves when we draw conclusions and point to errors of how this and that species died, of how this and that extinction happened, or how this and that adaptation solved some problem.
Just like the war reporter that thinks, if he's filming a live assault with shootings and bombings, then no bullets will touch him because … he has the camera.
But we never asked ourselves: what would happen with us a million years from now?
We know that 99.9% of the total species that ever inhabited the Earth are now extinct. And the 0.01% that survived are mostly unicellular organisms and extremophiles that simply do not care if an asteroid hits the Earth or a climate change settles comfortably on this planet.
But we?
We SHOULD care!
Because at some point, whether we like it or not, our species will go extinct. All that we were and are will simply be sand in the wind and water through the bladder of other animals.
Like death on an individual level, we think death on the species level is something so remote that it will never happen to us. But in the end, death on any level is the most certain thing that will happen.
It HAS to happen.
Some say that one-million years in the future is too far to have a picture, that we should think in five- or ten-year steps, so we can get more accurate predictions.
But willy-nilly that million of years will pass. Willy-nilly the Earth will go around the sun a million times, and voila! The alarm clock of the universe will start beeping, and the million-year Santa will come knocking on the door with a surprise present in his bag.
The seconds will pass, the days will pass, the years will pass, and when the million years dings, there won't be any English language to be spoken, no self-evident notions to be upheld, no great minds to be remembered, no current human stories to be told, no nothing but the roaches and beetles and ants and other things that will surely survive.
The continents will move, the seas will change, and the only evidence of our being the crown jewel of species will be a tooth crown made of ceramic alloy.
But this conclusion is what the rat already knows, since ratkind—like humankind—currently feels secure in the safe spot of the mighty observer.
"Oh, well, answer found," says the smart rat, sighing. "Now to find the moron, so we can go home."
