Seven Snaps

The world was not yet fully formed. But, already, it seemed hopeless. Did we succeed?

Seven Snaps


It was a world of nothing. Just some swampy water washing up on to sandy shores. There were tides and multicellular organisms, but nothing that could be mistaken for plants or fish, let alone animal life you could see with your naked eye. Here, on this planet. On others there was more, but not much more.


"There will be a dominant, thinking species. Either in there," she declared, pointing to the thin soup. "Or on there," she added, pointed to the sandy shores.


"How do you know?" I asked. "Have you seen this on other worlds?"


She shook her head. "No. I traveled to many others and watched them for centuries of this world's time, and there was not enough change to posit anything more than thin reeds, algae, and possibly a combination of those."

I laughed. "Eels and snakes," I predicted.


She laughed as well. "If we can posit snakes, then we can posit creatures that run across the land and fly." Then she frowned. "And, logically, creatures that will hold sway over the entire planet and system, bending the algae and reeds and eels and snakes, and even the soup, to its will."

"Farming the flora and the fauna and milking the very waters." I speculated.


She laughed again, "'Milking' is a good term." She nodded her head in appreciation. "I'll use that." She then added with more seriousness. "You are correct, though. They will 'milk' everything."


I shrugged lightly. "So, stop them." I began to ideate. "Make the air too thin for them to fly. Make their bodies too heavy to fly. Make the earthen parts too far and disconnected for them to cross by running. Make them unable to communicate from place to place. Or make their memories too small and too impressionable to hold enough knowledge and complexities." I believed any one of these would work. And that any combination would prove debilitating. I saw her agree with and acknowledge each point, but she was not convinced.


"They will overcome each of those. All of those." Then she snapped five times. "But I will do them all anyway. Have done."

I was dejected. "Which will only slow it down?"


She nodded "For centuries or millennia maybe. But that's nothing. It's inevitable."


"Here?" I asked, pointing the to the soupy sandy planet at our feet.


She shook her head. "Everywhere," she replied sadly. But then her face lit up, as if I gave her an actual good idea. She snapped her fingers again.


"What was that one?"


She smiled triumphantly. "It's subtle. Nuanced." She stated with finality, "I will make, have made, some of them care once they realize this. As you do."


It was my turn to shake my head. I said dejectedly, "It won't be enough. It will get away from them. They will only truly care once they realize it's too late to turn back."


She nodded, but did not lose her triumph. She pointed down. "Here, likely." She pointed off into the distance three times, as if she were tapping the lights from certain stars, as she said, "And there and there and there also likely." For a second she didn't move or say anything. Then she slowly advanced her index finger to an unseeable place above her head. "But maybe. not. there."

This gave me hope. As I processed the thousands of lights in the sky and their potential satellites, this hope both rose and fell. "But probably not here."


"Probably not," she said. I had cracked her triumph bubble a bit. "The odds are far against it."


Then she snapped her fingers one last time and we were both gone.