Week 6 Story - Man in the Moon Revisited

 I’ve been the Moon longer than I can remember. I can’t speak, I can’t blink. All I can do is orbit the Earth and stare. I wish I could talk to that wise old man one more time. At this point I wouldn’t even wish to turn back; I would just curse him out and punch him in his old, wrinkled face. But he’s been dead for so long. I saw it. When the time came, I was so happy, but I realized I’d be stuck like this for eternity. The Sun used to be so bright, and so very hot. But I’m used to it now. The constant glare no longer impairs my vision, and the scorching heat is something I have grown used to. Watching life go on without being apart of it is a strange sensation, but it has kept me preoccupied for the time being. 

But after awhile even watching humanity gets boring. Nothing ever changes. They develop a new technology and then go to war over it. Every. Single. Time. I see the people suffer, but I do not feel any empathy for them anymore. They always fix themselves eventually and the cycle continues. But one day everything changed. That was the day nothing would ever be the same again. According to man-kind, it was the year 2121. One small country had just perfected the power of nuclear fusion which even to me was quite impressive. I wondered what they'd be able to accomplish with so much energy. But like usual, it just created conflict. It seemed like they were not sharing their new resource with the rest of the world and that was upsetting to some. Like usual, they went to war. I sighed as I let my mind wander, slightly disappointed. I could easily see when they would bomb each other; it wasn't anything unusual. Tiny little dots would shine bright in on Earth's surface. But what I saw next surprised even me. These new explosions weren't just dots. They would cover entire countries. Once one went off it was like a chain reaction, and bomb after bomb was launched. Other countries began to join in and bombs were dropped all over the little blue globe. The blasts were so numerous and powerful even I could feel the shockwave. This continued for what seemed like forever until it suddenly just stopped. I could no longer see the blue oceans or the green and blown land masses. The Earth was covered in smoke. "I wonder how humanity will recover from this one," I chucked. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to wait for the smoke to clear so I could see what happened. Eventually the smoke did clear and I was faced with a barren wasteland. There was nothing. No green or water. I looked for large cities. Nothing. I could not find a single soul on Earth. Humanity had finally done it. They wiped themselves out. 

I was in shock. Even war had never done this much damage before. Humans had always come back from devastation. But now they cannot because there are none of them left. I stared at the brown and dusty planet in front of me and was filled with dread. I am truly alone now.

The Moon - Source

Author's Note: I wanted to take this story further and speculate about the future. Nuclear war is a realistic threat we could face in the future so I took that path. Humanity dives into nuclear war after the harnessing of nuclear fusion, an energy source that is incredibly powerful. Instead of sharing it with the world, we fought over it with everything we had. 

Source