The Watchful

Everything… is merely the envisaged product of infinite chaos.

Chapter One
2071 AD

Nuclear War is imminent.

The final attempts at Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, have failed horribly. The annihilation of the sole sustainable life-system on the planet, is minutes away.
The United States starts off with nukes sent to Russia, Korea, China, and India. Russia retaliates in the nick-of-time with nukes of their own, sent to the United States, and Israel. The rest of the world watch, and wait, in implausible horror, as they observe Dust-storms, Cyclones, and Floods occur as a chain reaction to these events. Plant and Animal life alike wither away, leaving vast amounts of decaying matter all around the globe. Until the planet is left pretty much a smoldering, flooded junk pile of rubble and phosphorous.

Human Populations reduce and reach the same density as in the Ice Age, and these barely-surviving, deprived zombies exist across vast spaces of land, water, smog and grit, at about a few hundred numbers per continent. As if to prove that Man probably was an advanced animal, but an animal nonetheless, the survivors of the Nuclear Holocaust soon set about forming artificial barriers, and soon name their respective continents and countries, and form an immigration policy with passports and visas. Animals do similar things - birds sing to mark their territory, several other animals pee and poo to mark their territory… Since humans were advanced, they came up with the idea of owning landmasses, and making a profit out of natural resources, which probably got the Earth into this mess in the first place.

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How remarkably unique, that a species could be both brilliant and foolhardy, in an almost volatile concoction , teetering so very often towards self-destruction…

Chapter Two
2137 AD

Just as war experts predicted, here we are - World War Four. They call this one the War of Territorial Disputes. For once, they got the truth of warfare right in the attribution of rage and remorse. The territorial armies of the provinces of Cozma and Slaava are awaiting the start of the war at the edges of wilderness. Awaiting certain doom, and probable desolation.

Soldier One: When will it begin?

Soldier Two: What do you care? The more time you get to stay in these trenches, thank your lucky stars that you’ll be alive that much longer…

Soldier One: What do you mean? We have more weapons and manpower, we’ll win this…

Soldier Two: Trust me, no one wins this one. We’re left with almost nothing, and we still have this insatiable urge to own everything, and kill everything else in our path, to ensure our survival. This isn’t a struggle between good and evil, we’re here because we were forced here by our own instinctual stupidity and paranoia. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, will survive this war.

Soldier One: Did you hear that?

Soldier Two: Yes…

Soldier One: It sounds like gigantic metal footsteps, coupled with explosions…

Soldier Two: Yes…

Soldier One: Can’t we look and see what’s happening?

Soldier Two: If you must… At the risk of blowing your head off with laser scopes the enemy have positioned all over the place, go ahead…

Soldier One: It’s getting louder…

Soldier Two: Whatever it is, it’s getting closer.

Soldier One: I don’t want this war to last any longer…

Soldier Two: You’re in luck. It won’t… not for long, I suppose. Ah, the whistle of certain death…

Soldier One: Is that some sort of signal, this whistle?

Soldier Two: Yes… Our Commanders have decided this moment as the opportune moment to mark our foray out of the trenches, to meet whatever you’re hearing at the moment…

Soldier One: What if I don’t want to?

Soldier Two: Then, the commanders will kill you for desertion. The alternative, face whatever’s out there…

Soldier One: So… we stand no chance of survival…

Soldier Two: Glad to see you’re finally catching on, I just mentioned this ages ago…

Battle formations for WW4 include foot soldiers and sleek battle hovercrafts on one side, while the other side consists of foot soldiers and 50-foot tall metallic arthropods. Soldier formations, on both sides, get decimated within seconds. The rest are maimed within seconds, and are handicapped, to move away from the line-of-fire of the hovercrafts or the trample of a 170-ton arthropod leg.

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I blinked into existence and watched a planetary system taking shape. I’ve witnessed it all since then…

I’m still not certain as to why I’m here, and what my purpose of existing at all is, all I know is I’m capable of watching everything. Earth has always been the most entertaining…

Chapter Three
2138 AD
The Gravedigger’s Tale

Where am I? Can’t see very well… If I could just move this corpse a little to the left… AH, there…

… Shit… Now I wish I hadn’t got my vision back. I’m in the middle of what looks like the middle of an open crematorium, a massacred mass of human bodies, broken-down machines, and a few discolored trees line up the landscape, all the way to the horizon. What do I do now?

Maybe a walk will do me some good. And if there’s still a war out there, perhaps I’ll be spotted and hopefully shot dead, rather than witness this.

Week 1: This is turning out to be a rather long walk…

Week 2: Still walking…

Week 3: I’ve walked around for three weeks, and I see no sign of life. The landscape is littered with cadavers, from each stretch of the horizon to the other. There’s nothing and nobody left. There’s no source of food available anywhere, so I might have to undertake drastic measures in the days to come. Cannibalism is disgusting enough, but dining on rotten flesh is an entirely different matter altogether. Still, it helps when there’s no other human around to judge my behavior, other than the dead ones. I did find a lake a long way off, but the water tasted strangely like a mixture of moss, and rotten meat, so I’m out of water supplies too… not sure what I’m supposed to do there. Do I drink that filth, or do I keep replacing body-fluids?

Week 4: No food, no water, and now I’m having conversations with slightly disintegrated bodies in the mud. I describe the sky, the mud, my lack of finding food or water sources… I’m slowly starting to lose my mind…

Week 6: I’ve finally managed to find a source of water, and a few mushrooms… Delicious. How these survived is an absolute mystery to me. As it happens, nourishment provides me with a reinstatement of sanity. I suppose I must be the last surviving human on the planet… Thank goodness, the end to a self-repressed, self-destructive species. I’ve decided to do the last humane thing - give all the men and women who’re lying dead and scattered around me a proper burial. At least, we as a species might just contribute, as the next fossil fuel for the next species to take over the planet. There’ll be paleontology lessons millions of years hence about us, about a species of small, ape-like bipeds who conquered, enlightened and destroyed themselves, simply because they had a semi-evolved brain which they hadn’t thought of exploring a little further. How apt. I have a million, billion graves to dig, and I’m enunciating with myself.
Well, to work…

Week 10: I’m down to my last body for the week, as part of my 120-a-week plan, where it’s twenty per day, and I take a day off at the end of the week. There, that’s good planning.

What’re you doing?

I’m momentarily startled, and spin around and almost faint when I see someone standing upright, in a cloak. I haven’t seen anyone standing upright in 10 weeks.

Me: I’m sorry, were you on the ground this long?

Stranger: What do you mean?

Me: Were you dead till a few minutes ago?

Stranger: Don’t be silly, Chester…

Me: Of course , yes… wait… How did you…

Stranger: I just did… Now listen, you have to stop what you’re doing. You have to leave this place…

Me: What? Who are you? What’s your name?

Stranger: I have no name… the concept of naming things exists on Earth to identify differences. Where I’m from, there’s no need for distinctions. To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only one of my kind.

Me: I see… I think those mushrooms I’ve been eating weren’t entirely normal…

Stranger: No, they’re fine…

Me: Are they? You just mentioned, or seemed to imply, that you were an alien. Then, you mention there’s just one of you… What are you?

Stranger: It makes me sad, that I cannot give you a conclusive answer. The reason is quite simple however, I just don’t know. All I can be certain of, is what I named myself…

Me: Which is?

Stranger: The Watcher

Me: I see…

Stranger: You do?

Me: Not really… I was expecting something a little bit cheeky like Uncle Teddy or something, but this is really fascinating… Tell me, Watchman, or whatever it is you call yourself, why do you name yourself thus?

Watcher: Because that’s what I’ve been doing. I was born, or aware of my existence a few minutes after what your scientists call the collapse of a giant molecular cloud. So, roughly, I’m about 4.6 billion years old. To call that event Awesome, is an understatement. I‘ve witnessed sights and processes that you haven’t even had the chance to witness or contemplate ever before.

Me: Sounds appallingly boring, it really does… Now, would you explain where you’re from, and how you got here?

Watcher: I’ve watched the progress of your planet since it’s inception, and all I’m sure of, is that I had nothing to do with it. But watching humans for millennia, I’ve realized that human beings are unique to anything else in the Universe, much like the Universe has a infinite resource of things that would seem uniquely unfathomable to human beings. I do believe there’s still hope for the human race. This species is riddled with examples of it being both noble and unjust, divine and earthly, intelligent and irrational, methodical and disorderly, caring and cruel - amongst other things. They are capable of greatness in art, expression, tolerance, intolerance, virtue, and plagued mindlessness. Still, it isn’t a lost cause. It could still have a future…

Me: Future? Look around, will you, there’s no one around that’s alive to produce a future… Unless you’re some sort of hermaphroditic interstellar sex-worker…

Watcher: Trust me, there is another who’s survived like you have. You have a long way to go to meet her, and she’s doing the same as you…

Me: … I hope you mean looking for sex…

Watcher: No. She’s burying bodies, just like you are.

Me: I see… Well, I suppose it occurs with reduced occupational-options…

Watcher: It’s no coincidence that both of you took to the same humane action of attempting to bury the dead, instead of ignoring the dead.

Me : What the hell are you talking about? Of course it was a coincidence…

Watcher: Granted, but it shows there might have been the last vestiges of human suffering and kindness in both of you…

Me: Oh, top-notch feedback… What do you expect me to do, walk halfway across the globe for a mating ritual?

Watcher: Yes

Me: Splendid.

Watcher: You’ll have me for company until you find her. You must understand this is of vital importance to the survival of this remarkable species…

Me: Why? What for? This is what we’ve managed to create, or destroy rather… Look… A desolate planet, our work… Do we deserve to be saved, I think not. One of nature’s mistakes probably was ensuring ways for human beings to survive…

Watcher: Human beings are capable of remarkable achievements, yet they never managed to realize the folly of most human endeavors. You have, I’m pretty sure she has too, which puts you both in a better situation to judge any particular decision with logic. Shouldn’t you attempt this?

Week 261: We finally ventured into a clearing and saw her. I turned around, barely able to contain my excitement at seeing another human being; alive for once; to find the Watcher-dude missing. Did I imagine all this?
Was that strangely-named celestial surveillance freak, a product of my imagination? I don’t know. I no longer care.
It almost feels like I’m going to embark on an Adam & Eve mission. Which sounds cheesy as hell, but what a stupendous responsibility. Or so I think. Mission Re-population, here I come…

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Here we go again…


END