The Undead

The Undead

By Michael Cannata  

Our planet is dying a slow, deliberate death. The human race is slowly choking the life from it with an ignorance that keeps us in denial. We continue to consume its natural resources at a rate that guarantees our grandchildren will inherit a wasteland.

The vast farms that we toiled for centuries to bring to life, fields that were lush with the fruits and vegetables of our labor, are rapidly dying. They've become dry and brown. The produce rots before it can be harvested. Water is in scarce supply. The toxins our machinery produce have destroyed the thin, fragile atmosphere that we worked so hard to protect.

The centuries of glory we experienced as our world grew unchecked, led us to forget just how tenuous the promise of a future with unlimited potential truly was. We established colonies in a new world. Regrettably, we brought with us the arrogance that had put us all in this situation to begin with. It's clear that human nature is one of boundless dreams and industry. Yet, while we rightly believed that we controlled our destiny, we forgot that the one thing we couldn't control was human nature itself.

We borrowed against conservative resources in place to ensure our tomorrows, to pay for extravagant excesses that the citizens demanded today. We falsely believed we could make up a deficit that wasn't one of money, but materials. The planet was so vast, with thousands of year's worth of untapped mineral wealth, one that held so much promise; it was unthinkable that we would ever run short.

Turning back was never an option when the first ships landed in the new world. But the faith and hope of the first settlers helped change the new world from a dream into a reality in 500 years. In less than 50 years the dream was dead.

Abruptly, without warning, the support system collapsed. Once the government support and assistance stopped flowing into the banks, warehouses and factories, the picture changed entirely. We went from dreaming of an endless future, to dreading an imminent fate. We have lived to see the end of not just one, but two planets.

There is no way to go back home and no way for those left on Earth to leave it. Alive with no future, we, the undead, sit helplessly in our biospheres, mournfully watching the vast colonies that once held the promise of a new future for Earth here on Mars decay steadily, along with the dream it offered. We sit in sorrow-filled silence, witnessing the inevitable collapse of a planet humans had brought back from the dead in just a few centuries.

       What we thought was a new home is Earth all over again.