How the World
Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth (An Extract)
by Rachel
Swirsky
Part
One—The Apocalypse of Trees
During the first million
years of its existence, mankind survived five apocalypses without succumbing to
extinction. It endured the Apocalypse of Steel, the Apocalypse of Hydrogen, the
Apocalypse of Serotonin, and both Apocalypses of Water, the second of which
occurred despite certain contracts to the contrary. Mankind also survived the
Apocalypse of Grease, which wasn’t a true apocalypse, although it wiped out
nearly half of humanity by clogging the gears that ran the densely-packed
underwater cities of Lor, but that’s a tale for another time.
Humans laid the foundation
for the sixth apocalypse in much the same way they’d triggered the previous
ones. Having recovered their ambition after the Apocalypse of Serotonin and
rebuilt their populations after the Apocalypse of Grease, they once again
embarked on their species’ long term goal to wreak as much havoc as possible on
the environment through carelessness and boredom. This time, the trees
protested. They devoured buildings, whipped wind into hurricanes between their
branches, tangled men into their roots and devoured them as mulch. In
retaliation, men chopped down trees, fire-bombed jungles, and released
genetically engineered insects to devour tender shoots.
The pitched battle
decimated civilians on both sides, but eventually—though infested and
rootless—the trees overwhelmed their opposition. Mankind was forced to send its
battered representatives to a sacred grove in the middle of the world’s oldest
forest and beg for a treaty.
Negotiations went slowly
since the trees insisted on communicating through the pitches of the wind in
their leaves, which astute linguists played back at 1,000 times normal speed in
order to render them comprehensible to human ears. It took a day for a
sentence, a week for a paragraph, a month for an entire stipulation.
After ten years, a truce
was completed. To demonstrate its significance, it was inked in blood drawn
from human victims and printed on the pulped and flattened corpses of trees.
The trees agreed to cease their increasing assaults and return forevermore to
their previous quiescent vegetable state, in exchange for a single concession:
mankind would henceforth sacrifice its genetic heritage and merge with animals
to create a new, benevolent sentience with which to populate the globe.
After the final signatures
and root-imprints were applied to the treaty, the last thing the trees were
heard to say before their leaves returned to being mere producers of
chlorophyll was this: At least it should keep them busy for a millennium or
two, fighting among themselves.
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