Humanity is pretty good at imagining how the world would end; "the world" being selfishly defined as the anthropocentric society they enjoy in the present day. We imagined great meteor, climate change, plagues of all kinds, grey goo and all its subcategories, catastrophic global warfare, total breakdown of known scientific principles, something messing up with memories and/or human thoughts, supernovae, hostile extraterrestrial entities, hostile sapient entities from Earth or otherwise...
Nihil sub sole novum
I'm sorry; that's reductionist. I painted broad strokes of categories to the point of near-meaningless—what does "total breakdown of known scientific principles" even mean? And don't let me get you started on "messing with human memories/thought."
And of course you can still make new things. At the very least you can always combine stuff. Take a great meteor sent by an extraterrestrial civilization that kickstarted a hostile xenoforming of Earth, and bam you have Tiberium. Or, it could be the virus from Guilty Crown. Or maybe it's the Borg. Maybe it would say "klaatu barada nikto" or maybe it would uplift a random primate population or maybe it would transform into great robot or maybe maybe maybe...
There are so many ways the world could end. There is only one Earth. She would have to pick one.
Maybe a trickster god would kill a god of light. Maybe a prophet would build an ark and the world would submerge for 40 days. Maybe a mist would descend upon Earth and kill only those with very specific set of faith. Maybe a monkey king would finally be freed of the mountain off his back and sought to fight the gods. Maybe a god would decide that humanity isn't worthy, or maybe an alien god would rise to dominance and decided that the universe should be filled with endless bloodshed.
Maybe a new sapient species would usurp us; or maybe they would transform us. Maybe we would transform to become them. Maybe an ancient mistake of long-dead alien would come to haunt us. Maybe Seerow would share his people's technology out of kindness. Maybe the children that we thought would stand beside us would betray us. Maybe we would detonate a weapon so powerful it scorched our atmosphere, or maybe it would send us to endless frozen hell. Maybe the Earth would become a tropical paradise! But with sentient plants that love human flesh as source of nutrition. Maybe the LHC would create a miniature black hole. Maybe we would forget everything. Maybe the very concept of language would be destroyed.
Or maybe we would be so lazy and lethargic that we willingly gave up breathing with a smile on our face.
:)
Nihil sub sole novum
I'm sorry; that's reductionist. I painted broad strokes of categories to the point of near-meaningless—what does "total breakdown of known scientific principles" even mean? And don't let me get you started on "messing with human memories/thought."
And of course you can still make new things. At the very least you can always combine stuff. Take a great meteor sent by an extraterrestrial civilization that kickstarted a hostile xenoforming of Earth, and bam you have Tiberium. Or, it could be the virus from Guilty Crown. Or maybe it's the Borg. Maybe it would say "klaatu barada nikto" or maybe it would uplift a random primate population or maybe it would transform into great robot or maybe maybe maybe...
There are so many ways the world could end. There is only one Earth. She would have to pick one.
Maybe a trickster god would kill a god of light. Maybe a prophet would build an ark and the world would submerge for 40 days. Maybe a mist would descend upon Earth and kill only those with very specific set of faith. Maybe a monkey king would finally be freed of the mountain off his back and sought to fight the gods. Maybe a god would decide that humanity isn't worthy, or maybe an alien god would rise to dominance and decided that the universe should be filled with endless bloodshed.
Maybe a new sapient species would usurp us; or maybe they would transform us. Maybe we would transform to become them. Maybe an ancient mistake of long-dead alien would come to haunt us. Maybe Seerow would share his people's technology out of kindness. Maybe the children that we thought would stand beside us would betray us. Maybe we would detonate a weapon so powerful it scorched our atmosphere, or maybe it would send us to endless frozen hell. Maybe the Earth would become a tropical paradise! But with sentient plants that love human flesh as source of nutrition. Maybe the LHC would create a miniature black hole. Maybe we would forget everything. Maybe the very concept of language would be destroyed.
Or maybe we would be so lazy and lethargic that we willingly gave up breathing with a smile on our face.
:)
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