Sunlight struggles to piece the veil of a cloud-smothered sky. Particles of irradiated dust filter down from the upper atmosphere, energized by the sun's rays above, they release their charge as a sickly green glow, falling to the Earth like so many fireflies, lighting one last signal before their end. The temperature on the surface is a balmy 250°F, humidity locked at 100% ever since the oceans boiled off.
"There might be some folks still out there! In a bunker underground?"
"No I checked. Last one burned out a few years ago. Water dispute got out of hand, shots fired, temperature control systems damaged, dead."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Shit."
Not that it would have mattered. Tectonic rifts, newly formed due to the increasing heat and pressure on the surface, will eventually subsume and crush any subterranean holdouts. Already in places the ground is turning to sludge, bio-organic compounds breaking down in the hot, acidic air and melting into the earth like a perverse reenactment of the process that turned the dinosaurs into petroleum.
"Have you tried fish people?"
"Fish people?"
"Yeah, like Riley did."
"Fuck Riley. Riley's an asshole. I'm not doing fish people."
"I'm just saying, it worked."
"If you like sycophantic idiots, building temples out of whale bones and going, 'mawk mawk mawk!' all the time. Sure. I'm not doing fish people."
"Then what do you want?"
"I dunno, I just want normal people, you know? Just some normal, fucking boring-ass people, who don't keep trying to conquer the stars, or blow themselves up, or starve themselves thinking it'll turn them into pure energy or something. I just want like, somebody I could have a beer with."
"You wanna create an entire universe, and all the life inside of it, just so you can hang out and have a beer in it?"
"Yeah, is that so wrong?"
Somewhere, a deafening crack rings out as a sludge pool bleeds into a deep-crust caldera, triggering an explosion that rocks the planet like a sledgehammer hitting a basketball. The shockwave rips a hole in the atmosphere, exposing the planet's seeping wound for all the universe to see. In the sky above, a moonbase transmits its last automated distress signals. Its inhabitants already left long ago. Their bodies can be found seated in a small circle, about a hundred meters away, holding hands as they let the oxygen slowly bleed out of their tanks.
"What if you just tried doing nothing?"
"Just do nothing?"
"Yeah. Light the spark and then just sit back and watch."
"How's that supposed to help?"
"I dunno. Can't be worse than what you've tried so far."
narok_kurai t1_j56yhn0 wrote
Reply to [WP] Being God was supposed to be easy. Your family did it, and all of their creations ascended aeons ago. But no matter what you do, all of your creations keep killing each other. Even some of the plants! And what's worse, a tribe of hairless monkeys seemed to have taken notice of you lately... by Sonkoso1
"Do you think I'm a bad dad?"
"What? No! No I don't think that."
"But."
"... Well."
Sunlight struggles to piece the veil of a cloud-smothered sky. Particles of irradiated dust filter down from the upper atmosphere, energized by the sun's rays above, they release their charge as a sickly green glow, falling to the Earth like so many fireflies, lighting one last signal before their end. The temperature on the surface is a balmy 250°F, humidity locked at 100% ever since the oceans boiled off.
"There might be some folks still out there! In a bunker underground?"
"No I checked. Last one burned out a few years ago. Water dispute got out of hand, shots fired, temperature control systems damaged, dead."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Shit."
Not that it would have mattered. Tectonic rifts, newly formed due to the increasing heat and pressure on the surface, will eventually subsume and crush any subterranean holdouts. Already in places the ground is turning to sludge, bio-organic compounds breaking down in the hot, acidic air and melting into the earth like a perverse reenactment of the process that turned the dinosaurs into petroleum.
"Have you tried fish people?"
"Fish people?"
"Yeah, like Riley did."
"Fuck Riley. Riley's an asshole. I'm not doing fish people."
"I'm just saying, it worked."
"If you like sycophantic idiots, building temples out of whale bones and going, 'mawk mawk mawk!' all the time. Sure. I'm not doing fish people."
"Then what do you want?"
"I dunno, I just want normal people, you know? Just some normal, fucking boring-ass people, who don't keep trying to conquer the stars, or blow themselves up, or starve themselves thinking it'll turn them into pure energy or something. I just want like, somebody I could have a beer with."
"You wanna create an entire universe, and all the life inside of it, just so you can hang out and have a beer in it?"
"Yeah, is that so wrong?"
Somewhere, a deafening crack rings out as a sludge pool bleeds into a deep-crust caldera, triggering an explosion that rocks the planet like a sledgehammer hitting a basketball. The shockwave rips a hole in the atmosphere, exposing the planet's seeping wound for all the universe to see. In the sky above, a moonbase transmits its last automated distress signals. Its inhabitants already left long ago. Their bodies can be found seated in a small circle, about a hundred meters away, holding hands as they let the oxygen slowly bleed out of their tanks.
"What if you just tried doing nothing?"
"Just do nothing?"
"Yeah. Light the spark and then just sit back and watch."
"How's that supposed to help?"
"I dunno. Can't be worse than what you've tried so far."
"Shit."
"Mm-hm."
"Shit!"
And so--