A Heart for Humankind

Earth, 2285 AD

We knew the end was coming. For a while, we just weren’t sure by what mechanism. Nuclear war was a pretty good guess; chemical warfare, climate change, a global pandemic, even supervolcanic eruption had decent odds in their own right. For hundreds of years, the human race did its utmost to put off its inevitable demise. We created bionic tissues to replace the functions of certain, less resilient organs: the pancreas, the heart, the eyes. We worked to enhance—and oftentimes replace—our limbs, our cells, our genes.

Our planet was on its last legs; if we as a species were to survive the catastrophe to come, we knew we’d have to do so on another planet. As such, any modifications done to our bodies were performed not just to delay the certainties of ageing and death, but to prepare our species for life on a new world.

What we didn’t account for was our planet’s resilience. The Earth took a hit, but she survived and would thrive once more in the centuries to come. It hadn’t been her we’d needed to worry about—it was us. We’d prepared, but not well enough. The Earth’s survival was guaranteed, but ours was still very much up for debate.

When the asteroid hit, it entered our atmosphere flying at roughly 40,000 miles per hour. It burnt up as it entered, a fifteen-kilometre-wide fireball headed straight for us. By then, it was too late to leave the planet. The fireball was brighter than the sun itself—or so I’ve been told. Any living soul who’d been around to see it would have been vaporized upon impact. No bodily modifications, no underground doomsday bunker could have saved them.

Wildfires raced across the continent. This astronomical catastrophe blanketed the earth with toxic gases and dust clouds, allowing the earth’s surface to cool and culminate in widespread famine. Worse even than the flames were the tsunamis, enveloping the earth in an immense ocean of water and putting an end to what remained of civilization.

Three years of winter commenced, followed by a rapid heatwave. That’s where we are now: it’s forty degrees on average; red dust covers much of the land; the ash has not entirely left us, creating an omnipresent state of dimness, haziness, and obscurity.

Anything at sea level has been entirely submerged. The fires have gifted us an atmosphere made up of increased levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane; depleted oxygen levels make breathing difficult for anyone who still possesses an unmodified respiratory system.

The end has come and most of us—the human race—are gone.

But I remain.

I am still not sure of my next course of action, but I’m going to have to make an impossible choice.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Now that you have a better understanding of my world, I’ll drop you in right where the action begins. Are you ready? Hold on tight—

“I’m just a scavenger,” I repeat to the bizarre stranger who has approached me with a request to transport an item across the tumultuous landscape that is the wasteland.

He regards me through bulbous, synthetic eyes. “I know what you are. What I’m asking is: can you do it?”

I cross my arms, unamused. “Can I drag a hunk of junk halfway across the wasteland? Of course, I can.”

I pick up the ‘hunk of junk’ in question. Only, up close, it doesn’t seem like junk. It is a heart-shaped locket. Slightly larger than the size of my fist and lighter than it first appeared, the locket is made of a gold that is far shinier than anything I’d seen since before the asteroid strike.

As I hold the locket, I raise my goggles to my forehead to give me a better look at the treasure in my hands. The locket is heart-shaped, but not in the way you might expect. Instead of the traditional heart formerly common to greeting cards and children’s drawings, this locket was crafted instead in the shape of an anatomical heart.

“It’s beautiful,” I say before I can stop myself. Emotions, no matter how minute, are a weakness. I lower my goggles. “Where do you expect me to take it?”

“To Inanis,” he answers.

I laugh. “If a suicide mission is what you’re after, I’m afraid I’m not the person for you.”

After the asteroid strike, what remained of the world’s population was in chaos. But one individual rose above the rest. Moulded by the pandemonium that accompanied civilization's end, he is destruction incarnate. Thinking him a primordial being, his accolades continue to flock to his side.

They think he is their salvation. What he wants instead is to finish what the asteroid started: to bring an end to humanity once and for all. He plans to accomplish this by controlling human social structure with various psychological deceptions and behaviour-altering strategies— when the time comes, they can be easily targeted for extermination.

“The stories say he summoned the asteroid,” I say, though I’ve never put much stock in fairy tales. I pause, regarding the locket again. “What’s so important about this necklace?"

“It’s not a necklace,” he says. “It’s a locket.”

It takes me a minute to catch his meaning. When I do, I turn the locket over in my hands, inspecting the seam separating the two halves. “What’s in here?”

He stops me before I can open it. “His heart.”

I stare, unblinking.

He continues: “Inanis’s hate continues to spread. When he chose to replace his heart with a synthetic organ, he did not anticipate how great the loss would be. If you return this to him, then hope can once again wash over these lands.”

I don’t buy it. This world has more problems than one little heart can fix. Even as I think this, however, I know I’m going to accept this intriguing task. “Why me?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I saw you outside. I knew you were a scavenger, that you know how to get across the wasteland. You’re not special; anyone can perform this task. Unfortunately, I could understand why most would choose not to.”

His words confuse me, but I let them pass unacknowledged. “I’ll do it,” I say, but when I look up, the stranger is already gone.

I step out of his hovel to begin my journey, longing for the days when I could go outside unencumbered by my current attire: tinted goggles to block both the sun and the red dust; a large cloak made to serve the same purpose. Though the planet remains in a constant state of twilight, little remains of our ozone layer. It is better to bake under the weight of fabric than to sizzle in the evening sun.

I place the locket around my neck, tucking the precious metal beneath the folds of my cloak and away from prying eyes. That done, I begin to trek across the wasteland, heading north toward Inanis’s fiefdom.

It’s funny how quickly we lose sight of the vacuous morals we once held dear. Our cities are gone, our governments gone, our laws gone: all remnants of The Old Ways obliterated in an instant. We used to be guided by the continuum of reward and repercussion. Follow the rules and be rewarded; break them and be reprimanded. Despite its faults, there was a simplicity in that—a simplicity that has long since abandoned us.

We live by our own code now and it is a harsh one.

“Hey, you there,” someone calls from behind me.

I turn. Speak of the devil. I look down only to realize that the high winds have blown my cloak open, revealing a tinge of gold beneath.

“What have you got there?”

Subtly, I move to hide the locket. “Nothing of your concern,” I answer. I stand taller, toughen my resolve, harshen my voice. No weakness in the wasteland.

“Looks like gold.”

For a moment, I consider giving the locket to the stranger. My mission is a fool’s errand. What can returning the heart—one mere act of kindness—ever hope to achieve?

“Give it here and you can be on your way.”

In the end, I’m not sure why I don’t relent. Instead, I rummage hastily through my pockets, tendering every trinket, every scrap of food, every scavenged morsel in the hopes that it will be enough.

By pure luck alone, the offering is accepted and I can once again be on my way.

Nothing is given freely in the wasteland.

I travel without food and with little water for three days before I arrive at the centre of Inanis’s power. It is not much to look at—a large, hastily constructed bivouac. I push through the tent flap leading to the inside of the shelter. Inside, people sit on the ground, facing the walls of the tent, their backs turned on me and on each other. On the far side, Inanis sits on a chair made of scavenged items—a throne of garbage.

No one stops me as I approach him. In truth, no one seems to care. They don’t care about me, about Inanis or about one another. They have each become their own planet; each engulfed in their own worldly sphere, drifting alone in a cold, unfeeling universe.

Is this worth saving?

If I don’t return his heart, the human race is doomed. But what if that is the right choice? What if our time is over?

Past mass extinction events on earth have been catastrophic to biodiversity, but have led to some of the greatest leaps forward in evolutionary efficiency and prowess. Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit and took the dinosaurs with it. For millions of years, this had been their kingdom. For one thousand years after the hit, things looked bleak for the few small lifeforms that survived. But, as time went on, life diversified: into larger mammals, into apes—into us.

What if our reign is over?

If I do nothing— or, if I destroy the heart—according to the legends that seem to be based in some truth, Inanis will, in turn, destroy what remains of us.

I look around at his accolades. Some turn now to regard me. Some stare at me with contempt, others with open curiosity, and others still with fear. I notice the children sitting in the corner, already being moulded by this world of dust and darkness. What will the future hold for them?

That is when I realize...our fate cannot be determined by me alone. Our collective fate is determined not by the one, but by the many.

I pull open the locket, revealing its contents to Inanis. In order for this to work, he first has to take what I have offered.

I half expect him to toss the locket aside; to my great surprise, he reaches for the heart instead. Inanis takes the heart. I’d never noticed before, but the construction of his synthetic chest is somewhat breached, leaving a cavity on the centre-left side: where his heart should have been all along. Could it be that this was a purposely placed cavity of hope? With an unburdened sigh, he puts the organ where it belongs.

I wish I could tell you what happens next. I don’t know if this is really the end or not. But, for once, I’m choosing to hope.

The fate of our world isn’t in my hands, but in all our hands. Returning Inanis’s heart—one act of kindness—alone will not change the world. But, if this kindness inspires Inanis to show kindness to another. And if that person, in turn, performs their own act of kindness…

For the first time since the catastrophical strike, I remember my father. He was a great lover of ancient history and of Julius Caesar in particular.

Whatever happens, our future is of our own design.

Alea iacta est.

“The die is cast.”