Retribution

It was as if the planet made the conscious decision to take its own life rather than waiting to be slowly poisoned to death. After millennia of dormancy, the deep, mid-oceanic ridges of volcanoes awoke with a vengeance. The shocked abyssal surroundings quickly warmed, dissolving the crystalline cages that had imprisoned billions of tons of noxious methane. The event came to be known as “Earth’s dying breath,” but it simply marked the beginning of mankind’s own death throes.

When it emerged from the seas, the methane was laden with moisture, making it a dense concoction that hugged the world’ coastal plains. Many were immediately overcome by the deadly vapor, but the true catastrophe arose when the mixture’s water content was displaced by oxygen. The air itself became explosive, and millions were consumed as a hellish firestorm swept much of the planet.

As the cities burned, smoke and filth were carried high into the atmosphere. Unconsumed methane and carbon dioxide came to dominate, robbing the survivors of their precious oxygen. Those that had not escaped into sealed bunkers or hastily constructed domed villages felt the agony of slow suffocation before slipping into terminal darkness. But even those spared simply forestalled their demise; humanity was simply unprepared for nature’s Armageddon  As their supplies dwindled, and their hope for survival faded, they saw at last how impotent they really were. Defeated, humanity died on its knees.

The rest of the terrestrial life fared no better. Deprived of light, all plant-life withered, and thunderous sounds echoed across the land as the mighty forests fell to Earth. Adapted for an environment that no longer existed, the fate of the animals was sealed in the relentless inferno the world had become. Though the planet had not known the cold in years, as the last remnants of life burned, the ashes looked like snow.

The oceans that birthed this chaos were themselves destroyed. Acidified and anoxic, the Earth’s seas became like cesspools, sparing few marine creatures from death and decay. The skeletal remains of bleached coral haunted the shallows for a time, before crumbling into silt from which they first arose.

Yet the simplest forms of life possessed a tenacity that saw them through this hell. As centuries past, and the air slowly cleared, single celled organisms once again proliferated and diversified. The barren earth was theirs to reclaim, and they did so at a prodigious rate. Over the course of eons, new species originated to construct incredible ecosystems far more robust than those they replaced.

There was no memory of the world of man. When intelligence again emerged, it claimed ownership of the planet, just as humans had so arrogantly done. These proud creatures released their poisons with a familiar abandon, never once considering the consequences. But the Earth kept its guard and watched these beings with suspicion. Their time of reckoning would come. It always did.