Sins of our fathers

Lucien had no sense of temporality. It was beyond him. He was 5’5 and overweight, and that was what mattered.

“Do you remember when we met?” he asked of the sun, and no one answered. “Fair enough,” was his response.

Human extinction is the hypothetical complete end of the human species. This may result either from natural causes or due to anthropogenic (human) causes, but the risks of extinction through natural disaster, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, are generally considered to be comparatively low. Anthropogenic human extinction is sometimes called omnicide.

It was an apocalypse of dirt and no technology. “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have gone,” Lucien told someone at one point or another.

There was little to be done. Lucien knew he was very overweight and knew he was 5’5 and knew he was mostly by himself, except for a few cockroaches and the sun and the gaping loss. There was nothing he could do about it really, except survive day by day.

When his ancestors were younger, they knew what to do or not to do. They were brilliant and cruel and soft and as varied as the stars in the sky or something. They were mostly good people, if it mattered. They did the wrong thing anyway. Down through the generations, or so Lucien supposed. It didn’t really matter. Time wasn’t real on this side of the earth.

Lucien would have been short if there were other human men around to compare himself to. But there weren’t. Which was fine by Lucien. He had the sun to talk to. “I never knew that,” he said at one point.

He didn’t know any better. He was very overweight and 5’5. His brain was too heavy to walk long distances, so he sat in the dirt most of the day. No technology around, so he made do with picking out the dirt from under his fingernails.

One day Lucien had an idea. He would wait where he was, and then something would happen. “I have an idea,” he told no one.

The earth was broken. Half of it was missing.

It didn’t matter to Lucien. Or rather, it did matter perhaps. But he didn’t know any different. I know there was nothing really to be done about it, and that it had been his ancestors’ responsibility anyway. He sat there, waiting as best he could. The sun shined down on him and a cockroach scuttled by. If Lucien had lived long ago, he would have known that there used to be a lot more insects around.

“I think I remember what happened,” Lucien said to the sun as he waited.

The sun didn’t respond.

Days passed, or perhaps longer. Lucien ate a cockroach. He remembered a play that he read once.

When the time came to keep sitting there, he kept sitting there.

Normally in stories, things happen. There’s a plot. A to B. Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. Well, we’ll get there, or maybe we won’t. It’s hard to tell from this vantage point.

Lucien drew a picture in the dirt. He felt like something was missing. Perhaps from his life, perhaps the other half of the planet. “I miss you,” he told the sun or someone else.

The sun is a ball of flame in the sky. The sun did not respond to Lucien.

The sun is the star at the center of the solar system. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy mainly as visible light and infrared radiation. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth.

Lucien aged as he waited. It was only natural. That was his prerogative. Be born, be overweight, wait, walk a little, age, eventually die.

He aged at a normal pace by human male standards. This story stretches beyond days.

His ancestors had also aged. They had a prerogative too. They did the wrong thing.

Lucien ate and shat and masturbated. He thought and talked and dreamed. “I had a thought,” he shared with the open air. “I know in the end it will all be worth it.” His body, heavy and impossible in his youth, broke him as he aged.

So he sat there, unable to move because of the gravity bearing down on his body. He was still 5’5 if it mattered.

Then one day, he died. If you wait long enough, it happens in every story. It’s all just a matter of scale.

Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience.

The scale of this story is off slightly. This story ends with Lucien still alive. “I’m glad to hear you’re doing okay,” said Lucien to a cockroach.

The cockroach did whatever cockroaches do. The cockroaches are an ancient group, with ancestors originating during the Carboniferous period, some 400-450 million years ago.

Lucien talked and waited and had no technology. The sun shined.

Once upon a time, there were people who didn’t know better. They fucked and wept and created art. Then came other people. They were the same humans, but with more knowledge. They were good people, but complacent, perhaps. Or perhaps they didn’t have the right sense of scale. Or perhaps they didn’t care. It doesn’t really matter. They made the wrong choices. Lucien came after. Lucien didn’t know any better.

The earth was broken. Half of it was missing. Lucien was very overweight.