POSSIBILITIES..........a future history

a short story

by

John Q. McMillian

(c) 1987

Jake stopped and wiped the sweat that flowed freely from his dusty face. It was hot and he was tired. He thought about how old he felt (not how old he really was). He thought about his life; deep inside he knew he was better off than most people, but somehow that didn't console his troubled soul. To know you are better off than your neighbors, and to know there is little you or anyone else can do about it is not a comforting thought.

The one thing he could never understand was if people were so smart, how could society be so stupid? As far back as the 1960's we knew what we were doing to our environment. The results of air pollution were obvious, just look at any big city. Air pollution caused by our home away from home, the automobile, began choking the life right out of people just fifty years ago. And; of course, lets not forget industrial pollution. Everyone complained about trash along the highway. That was ugly and easy to see; and just as easy to fix. The real problem was much harder to spot. Litter along the road was just a symptom. The real cancer lie at the very heart of our industrial society.

The industrial societies of the world (especially ours) consumed natural resources as if there were no tomorrow. With no thought of the future, we created miracles in our laboratories and built factories to satisfy the insatiable appetite of a hungry world. The true costs of our marvels of technology were never reflected by the sale price. For decades industry got rid of its toxic by-products of production in one of two ways: bury it or dump it. By the late 1980's we found ourselves drowning in our own technological wastes, with ours eyes still tightly closed. Ground-water that had been safe to drink just ten years earlier was now unfit for anything.

Not everyone had their eyes shut. There were those who looked for signs that might indicate that the ecological systems that had been in balance for untold millions of years were now unable to cope with the wounds that mankind was inflicting upon the earth. And the signs were there. Little things, occurrences that untrained eyes would never notice. For example, back in 1987 a study showed that fifty cities in the United States had more cloudy days then than they had in the late 1930's. No big deal, right? Most people didn't even notice the report, much less care anything about it.

Lets not forget our satellites, surely they would warn us if something was wrong. They were the best the world had to offer, a true monument to our society. However, computer eyes can only see what they are told to look for. The Antarctica weather satellites disregarded vital information concerning the Earth's ozone layer for many years. The data was so far out of design parameters the computers that monitored the information being sent back disregarded it. When the omission was discovered (by accident) several years later, studies were begun; but they failed to yield any firm results for years. The first studies did prove one thing; at the South Pole, a hole in the ozone layer the size of the United States was formed each year and remained for six months, a smaller hole was also discovered at the North Pole. Industrial fluorocarbons were eventually shown to be the major cause of "The Hole", yet is was not until 1995 that the world wide ban on industrial fluorocarbons was enforced to any real degree. By then "The Hole" had more than tripled in size and lasted all year. Meanwhile, over the rest of the world, the depth of the ozone layer decreased at the rate of 1% every four years.

Delicate, light sensitive plants were the first to be destroyed. The ripple effect through the food chain is still being felt. The best guess now, is the fluorocarbons presently in our atmosphere will slowly break down over the next two hundred years.

The end of society as we knew it, did not come suddenly with the thermonuclear flash of a Third World War; although, the Middle East Nuclear War of 1996 did accelerate the problem. The oil rich lands of that area were turned into a fiery, wasteland in the blink of an eye. The oil fields took years to burn themselves out. The ever increasing level of air pollution did us in. Pollution and dust in the atmosphere began to block out the sun's rays. At first, this was hardly noticed, just a few more clouds, rain, and mild winters. But then, it started to get hot...

Jake looked at the muddy creek. As usual it had been a warm, wet spring and the long range forecast called for an even hotter summer. That's the way it was now, mild, wet winters with lows of only about 40 degrees followed by hot, humid summers and monsoon rains. By August it would be bone dry and stay that way for about two months and then the crazy weather cycle would start again!

Oh, at first, everyone thought the trend toward mild winters and more rain would be great, help out the farmers a lot. It looked as if the only real impact of the Middle East War was going to be higher gas prices, but then everyone was already used to that. Each year the Company found some reason to raise the price. But when the world lost forever those oil fields, the governments of the world hoarded the oil and the people started walking.

Jake knew that he should not be wasting time daydreaming of the past, he still had several acres to plow before sundown and besides it would likely rain tomorrow and then the field really would be too wet to plow. The past of cheap gasoline and electricity didn't matter, after all he had only been seven years old when Libya nuked Israel and changed the world. Still he couldn't help thinking about it.

As he turned the team of Belgiums back toward the field, his mind wondered back to his childhood; he could remember riding on his Dad's tractor. It was fun! It wasn't a big tractor, it didn't have air-conditioning or power steering like most of them, but it was just right for a "gentlemen farmer" and that was what Dad was. It wasn't that Dad and Mom had to raise their own food, they did it because they wanted to. Jake could remember going to the store with his Mother, at least he had fond memories of the cookies and candy she would buy.

Dad had planned well when he bought the little piece of property out in the country. The thirty acres was just right size for a small boy to explore, and Jake did love to explore. He also liked to play in the large creek that flowed through the property.

It wasn't that Dad didn't like people; he did, what Dad didn't like was society. They had talked about it often as he was growing up. So Jake grew up with a deep respect for the rights of people and an equally deep distrust for society as a whole. Take the house that Dad built. It was not like most people's home. For one thing, it was underground. That is except for one wall that faced south. That wall had a lot of glass on it to catch the winter sun's rays. Dad also did something that few others did back then; he built a small hydroelectric plant to provide power for the "homestead", as he called it. It was expensive, but it turned out to be worth it. After all, it has been working faithfully for over 25 years now. When the government shut the flow of oil off back in '97, the oil-fired electric generating station stopped and most of the world entered a new Dark Age.

It was late in the afternoon when Jake again stopped to rest. The big Belgiums could have gone on for hours, but he was tired. So much had happened in his 31 years. Deep inside he knew he had seen the fall of a civilization, things would never again be as good, or as easy (or as safe for that matter) as when he was a child. He cursed those who had squandered the wealth of resources that should have been his to enjoy. So many changes and most of them for the worst. How could people be so blind to what would happen to the environment as the amount of air pollution grew larger? Why did they intentionally turn a deaf ear to those who tried to warn them of the massive climatic changes that were about to take place?

Jake knew that reports had been published in the popular magazines of the day. As a young man, trying to understand the world he was growing up in, he had walked twelve miles to the county seat to visit the library. He had spent two days there going over everything he could find about the late 70's and 80's. Of course, the librarian was nice to him and was as helpful to him as she could be, but she was getting to old to really care about anything and besides she thought he was just a little bit crazy. No one cared about the future, and for sure no one cared about the past! She was well into her seventies and only opened the library because she had nowhere else to go. The county had stopped paying her years ago, along with all the other county employees. The local government switched to a barter system back in '98 just after the oil ran out. When the oil ran out the jobs ran out and then the money became worthless. So, if you wanted something done at the Courthouse, like a deed recorded, you brought something to trade.

Yes, Jake knew all the facts and all the reasons but he still couldn't figure out how the people and their governments could let things fall apart like they did. How could people sit by and watch the average temperature of the earth increase almost a half of a degree every year and not think about the future? They had been warned. If the temperature increases were not reversed, the oceans of the world would rise several feet in the next century and flood all coastal areas.

Just when it looked as if people were going to do something about the environment, the war in the Middle East got hot again. That was nothing new. Every few years someone got mad and invaded someone else. The most notable footnote to that war was that it was the only time since World War II that nuclear weapons were used. It was a small war, it didn't kick up enough dust to trigger the Nuclear Winter that most thought would follow. But it did set most of the oil fields on fire. The sky was filled the choking, black, smoke of a fire from Hell that would burn unabated for over three years, until its fuel supply was exhausted.

It was well past dark by the time Jake had finished putting the Belgiums up for the night. He was almost to the house when the first, large drop of rain hit right in front of him. He looked up into the deep blackness, and could see no stars. He missed seeing the stars, he missed a lot of things.

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