Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Ancient Earth - A Short Story

A futuristic short, short story of 836 words for your entertainment.
If you'd like to leave a comment I'd be most grateful, thankyou.

Ancient Earth

“You see my little mermesomes, this chart here shows the planet sun as a ball of
yellow flame. It’s a copy from the planet charts taken from the archives in deep caves
where humans hid from the elements in and effort to survive. It’s dated 2055 AD.
Strange how those humans had a need to put an age on everything by using numbers to
date things. They actually numbered each year; a totally unnecessary exercise. As you
should have learned by now, our layers of growth retain all memories in a precise
chronological manner and are available for recall at any given moment.
“Now as you can see from our light spectrumator, this is how that same
planet looks now. You can see the colour has dulled to a subtle orange glow. Has
everyone learned what colour is? It’s quite different to modern day world where
everything is white. Yes? Okay. If we were able to crack through the thick crust of ice
above us, which covers the entire earth, we’d be able to see that planet first hand.”
“Professor Grownover?”
“Yes Growth1074. What is it?”
“Why must we learn about planets and animals? It wont make any difference to
our growth pattern.”
“Indeed it will 1074. You see, what happened to this planet 500,000 years ago
when the sun abruptly slowed it’s burning, has a direct affect on how we live and how we
must prepare for the future. Why my dear young shoot, through studying ancient
scriptures we have discovered that life on earth half a million years ago was very complex
and the tribes tried to kill each other. Matured mermesomes like myself can see that
through the very nature of evolvement itself, that life forms will rise and become more
and more intelligent than we are and than it was before.
“Therefore we have taken it upon ourselves to teach those seedlings all we can in
the hope that all species will interbreed and while evolving not regain the desire to kill.”
“But professor, how can learning about the sun stop us from having a desire to
kill, which I might add being mermesomes we don’t have that desire in the first place?”
“My dear 1074. As a youngster of less than 1100 years you are not able to
comprehend the magnitude of the characteristic structure of evolvement. I am ten times
your senior and already I have seen our species develop from a solely food oriented
seeker to a mostly food oriented seeker with time for play. And what I’ve seen terrifies
me. I’ll tell you all. I have seen fresh young shoots purposely gently slapping each other
in the currents.”
“I’ve seen it too professor. It was harmless play.”
“That’s how it begins. The method of eliminating such behaviour in our growing
world is to ply all of you with the knowledge you need to continue growth without such
battering play. It must be stopped so it will not evolve into another world of tribal
animals by-passing basic needs and killing each other.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Yes Growth 1062, go ahead.”
“How can you be sure that all the knowledge you give us will eliminate this
behaviour?”
“Simple 1062. We will not tell you about the wars that prevailed on the earth
when animals lived on it’s surface. If nobody knows about it then it will not be copied.”
“You have just told us Professor.”
“Oh dear, yes I have. Um, er. Please all swim this way to the opening of the
chimney. Oh, dear me, yes, in you go!”
* * * * *
“Professor Grownover, there you are. I‘ve been looking for you.”
“Yes Professor Growgrey, why have you been looking for me?”
“How are your students going? Have you managed to erase all primal warring
thoughts from them.”
“Ah, no. Somehow I slipped up again and told them about the ancient earth
dwellers. Had to send them all down the chimney of hot lava. Pity, in spite of their
immaturity, their intelligence was promising.”
“Well keep trying Grownover. We all have our slips.”
“Okay then. It’s very hard to stick to the curriculum when they start asking
questions. Are you sure we must start with the history of the sun? Seems to be the long
way of explaining where we started and are heading.”
“Yes Grownover, it’s all relevant and it does work. I’ve been using this method
for a thousand years now and have a nine per cent success rate. That’s an improvement
on my first thousand years of tutoring.”
“I guess eventually I’ll succeed. Very well then where’s my next group of
students?”
“Take the first current north and swim off at the coral outcrop. There’s fifty young
mermesomes waiting for you.”
“Okay. I’ll continue to try.”

* * * * *

“Hello my little mermesomes. I’m going to teach you about the sun. The planet
was known as the hottest by the most intelligent and extinct animal on ancient earth, the human.”

Ends

My Bio: http://write-intention.com/Diane_L_Wood.html
A Short Short Story: http://easywaytowrite.19.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=9
http://writingfelicity.blogspot.com/

2 comments:

  1. That was very cute, Diane. I REALLY enjoyed it. I loved the way you used the Professor to basically tell the story through his teaching, and the students to bring more facts out with their little questions. I liked the Professor's bumbling personality; he was very likable.
    You are such a delightful writer. I enjoy reading your stories. Keep them coming, ok? (I'll make a comment on the "writingfelicity" site, too, just in case someone else reads your post over there.)

    ~Cynde
    http://cyndes-got-the-write-stuff.blogspot.com/

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  2. Thanks Cynde for your wondefully encouraging words. This story was an exercise in writing a story using dialogue only. The subject was 'the sun.' With the goal set I digested the criteria for a few days letting my imagination form the idea.
    It's a lot of fun creating characters and plots.

    Cheers
    Diane

    ReplyDelete