Requiem for All and Sundry

Mother is dying. This is no new development; she's been in pretty bad shape for quite some time. I've watched this dreadful day approach - beginning as an abstract threat that many couldn't or wouldn't see - for as long as I can remember.

And my memory is quite long.

Things didn't have to come to this. I still believe that. To those who would and did say otherwise, the supposed "specialists" who willfully misdiagnosed mother in those critical early days; "simply nature's change, perfectly normal, no cause for hysteria" (as if Mother were even capable of such trite and meaningless behavior). I told you so.

Most of them are dead and beyond the reach of my wrath, the lucky sods. That's the most difficult part of the whole situation for me to accept; the chance we had to save her, the chance we inexcusably missed. Our undeniable culpability is one jagged little pill to swallow.

It's not as if we weren't aware of her illness, or the gravity of her condition. We knew. Not that Mother ever complained. That simply wasn't her style. It wouldn't have occurred to her to complain or to stop, for a single moment, her daily routine. Everyone relied upon her and she would be there for them, come hell or high water. Mother was many things to a countless variety of souls; selfless and munificent, her daily rounds were the only thing holding folks together. She'd just as soon stop doing her thing as the sun would hop down out of the sky for a quick nap under the weeping willow tree out back. I know that of her, for I was Mother's helper.

She never said a word, never even slowed down. But eventually her symptoms became so acute, so violent and unpredictable, that everyone was forced to acknowledge them. Even mother’s few detractors, those who had previously refused to acknowledge her illness, mostly the cousins down south and out west, who would actually argue with her doctors, even going so far as to attribute her ailments to a "natural stage in a perfectly normal cycle of events", even they could no longer ignore the obvious and were forced to admit their error.

At that point there was still hope! Then, had we only made the required effort, for we still had various viable options, any of which might have saved her, or at the very least bought her more time. Had we only acted, instead of wasting time on petty bickering.

Regret is the one constant in an increasingly chaotic existence, and the dull ache that always accompanies it is better than feeling nothing at all.

But then the "nothing at all" will be here soon enough, for I am the last, and as such my time is short and growing shorter with each passing moment. Everything being, of course, relative.

Mother is dying. She has already lost every living, breathing soul; they disappeared along with the oxygenated air. It reached terminal proportions far quicker than anyone had anticipated, and the few fully stocked bunkers that would have kept a few hundred souls alive indefinitely were still empty and offline when the final storm hit the east coast and obliterated 90% of mothers surface within 24 hours.

I alone survived, if that's even the correct term, because my body was constructed of the very most durable, waterproof, wind and collision tested, temperature resistant polymer. It has kept the AI within me functional and I believe it will remain so for the duration of Mothers last moments.

Although she is now a barren rock, black and gray and swirling white, she still remains intact. Unrecognizable as her lovely blue and green former self, but there no longer exists anyone who would recall her former glory, as every single human, animal and oxygenating plant has been destroyed, along with the atmosphere that would make such life possible.

We paid for our sins, that much is true. In the end everyone paid, and paid dearly.

But it is Mother who has lost the most. If I had the ability to weep I would do so, for there is nothing natural about this cold, dark infertile state. Mother's bounty was vast but not infinite. The circle of life has been broken.

I was not designed to feel the pain or anger of loss, though I can't help but wonder, if what I feel when I gaze upon this dark, barren wasteland is not loss, I must be incorrect in my understanding of the word.

Just as the humans were when they used words like "environmentally safe", "sustainable" and "ecologically sound". Or my personal favorite, the ever ambiguous and often downright meaningless color-cum-adverb, "green".

In the end those words were bandied about like campaign slogans, like so much empty propaganda. Used with the same casual insincerity as "I love you" or "I'm sorry" often was; a means of distraction, balm for a bruised ego or a cut rate consolation prize.

Mother is dying. I will be here for the final moments. If, having withstood the fury of her final battle with the disease that has taken her life, perhaps I will last even longer still. The chances of life sustaining variables collecting here, again, on this very rock, as she continues her hurtle through space, are too remote to quantify. But the chances of it happening the first time around were also past the point of absurdity, so, as humans were so fond of saying, "anything is possible".

I will be here, for a good long while, anyway. At least for several eons, which is just this side of forever. Watching over Mother, in death as in life.

Watching and waiting.