To Have a Heart of Gold

No one exactly knew where it had come from, or when, just that it was older than anyone could imagine. Often its owners would hold it close to their chest, tucked underneath their ragged or silky garments adorned with either jewels or fleas, and would wonder where it had come from long into the night until the sun’s rays glazed the distant horizon. Sometimes, it would occasionally burn so hot their skin would boil and turn black, but none had the willpower to take it off, until their heart had burned to charred soot and they would wonder why they hadn’t taken it off right away in the first place. For some, that tunnel deep in their chest was not visible to the human eye, and only the owner would know that it was nestled right in their fragile ribcage, between their lungs, beating and pulsing like a real heart until the bloody, wet organ itself stopped working in the belief that it was no longer needed.

Of course though, a heart of gold will not work on its own for long, because it is fake, and it does not care for the body it beats for, but for wealth and whatever suits its needs at the particular time. So as soon as the golden heart starts to beat instead of the real one, the owner quickly realizes that an artificial heart is not as beautiful as it seems, for it starts to beat with a menacing rhythm and begins to show itself for the first time on the surface of a cracked mirror.

After a while, the owner doesn’t really exist anymore, or at least is no longer recognizable as the person they were before: that proud, arrogant soul who dared believe they could open that locket and control the things inside it is very much gone, because by then that piece of gold has spread like a parasite all the way up the rock hard and yellow white spine and has crawled its way into the brain as undetectable as the whisper of a butterfly in a thunderstorm.

Essentially, though, all of this horror and deceit can be traced back to one simple object, which may come as a surprise, for often one would be misled to believe that something so major could be so small: a golden, heart- shaped locket. It's quite a glorious thing: it’s sides are glossy and varnished from hands caressing it with an obsessive love, glowing a dull gold colour, except in the pure darkness, when the night casts an eerie glow on it and it shines like its own sun. It is fairly simple, with some bright red and blue studded arcs that, if one were to really think about it, looks like the twisting arteries and veins found in a human heart. It has a silver chain, delicate and awfully fragile looking that attaches to the base of the locket, but despite its tender appearance, it has never broken or rusted. It has seen more than people know, and maybe that’s the allure it brings to people, the promise and excitement of true wealth and knowledge. Unfortunately though, it doesn't actually possess the power it promises, but again, no one actually knows that because the human brain is fooled to such a degree that it truly believes it has what it wants. This locket has been in the hands of many people throughout the history of humans, some of which have changed the world, and for others they have sat there and wondered and dreamed but have done nothing with it until they rot away into nothing but a corpse.

Where this locket now sits is a place full of humiliation and despair and emptiness. It is in the year 3956, though there is not really anyone alive and well to keep track of such things. It sits between two yellowed and dry human skulls, one from a sixteen year old male and one from a three year old female who had died side by side when the air had turned to this awful, suffocating but invisible gas that had killed billions of their kind. It is located on the Southeastern Division, as more modern human beings had called it, the landmass that had formed when Ancient Africa had cracked form the arid climate, and a notably large piece of it had slid away along the dried up ocean floor to settle there like a massive stadium. The ground is all black dust, skeletons of buildings, cars, and humans lying littered across the landscape, lying in pools of orange red oil mixed with human blood. The air is heated, heavy and thick with invisible smoke that suffocates anything that breathes, and when the sparing cold air settles, it leaves behind an oily black dusting on whatever it touches.

What had happened to this insignificant, miserable and dead little planet out in the middle of a trifling galaxy you may wonder? Only that locket knows, for it has seen everything.

It saw the fall of the ancient dinosaurs, observing with eerie stillness as chaos claimed the earth, and it got lost amongst the bodies and ruins of the titanic creatures. It became frozen in a block of ice, and when it melted again, it found its first victim in the form of an apelike creature with a dangerous sense of curiosity, and it simply watched as the species began to evolve with greed poisoning their veins, and started to become mad from its false promises.

It found its way to Rome, first founded by two brothers who fought over two hills until one slaughtered the other, wearing that golden locket, and he proclaimed his hill built of human blood as a mighty city. The locket may have been surprised to see Rome evolve, for it knew its power was fake, but that false belief of power soon brought a mighty empire that had hatched from a man’s spilled blood. It had become a powerful force no one could defy, for overwhelming greed and hate were the foundations of this empire, though it was greasy and thick with layers of opulence and grandeur that covered the monstrosity of its past and present. It saw the empire fall, saw the world collapse into hate and anger as lines were drawn between races and genders and everything that made each human different from the other, while those who did not possess this locket lived in relative peace.

Really though, this locket didn’t care much for human history after that: it had already seen it. Again; they evolved, or so they believed, again; they became powerful and mighty, again; they started to hate, again; they broke into chaos and nearly wiped themselves out. It was quite boring for a locket made of gold.

That was, until the pattern was broken: about two and a half thousand years after the birth of their God’s son, they forgot to pull themselves back from the brink of extinction, mainly because of screens they had made that flashed and varied in size, from something they could fit in their pockets to something as large as a building. They laughed and joked and believed they were having a great time, watching fictional apocalypses happening on their little screens, until one curious child took off her blindfold and saw the apocalypse happening right in front of her.

At first no one believed her, and told her she was imagining things because humans had become so closed minded that they believed nothing was real except for the things that were actually not real, like their screens, but then, the human race began to see what was happening. Everything shut down immediately, all vehicles, all emmissions, all activities that harmed their planet, but they were centuries too late: hardly ten years later, the atmosphere stopped allowing anything to escape so that the polluted planet would not harm the rest of the universe, shutting down like many other planets had. Things became so unbalanced that the set in stone rules humans called physics stopped being so logical; air did not move anymore, except in small drafts every few months, water dried up and the vapor leftover simply vanished. Many humans spent their last moments hugging a screen to their chest or praying to the locket to save them. Barely any were left when the continents started splitting apart and the oceans completely dried up, but those who survived managed to create artificial air, food, and water, which killed them after roughly 17 years. It was quite clever, really. There was some hope for a good five years, until the 17 year old humans were unable to reproduce due to their poor health, and the last of the human race died out. It was a humiliating, ungraceful fall, coming from all the potential that the human race had for success.

The heart-shaped locket now sits, alone but not unhappy, in a world reduced to ash and smoke as it wonders if a new creature will rise from these ruins, or if this planet has done its job and has officially died. This locket was the single object responsible for the end of the human race. Most people blame it on God, or on greed, or on war, or on golden lockets, but truly, this golden heart does not come in the form of a shining locker on a silver chain, but it is already there, lying fast asleep in every human rib cage, waiting and hoping to awaken.

The human heart, lying amidst the smoke and ashes, beats one more time, sending a cloud of dust into the dense air, before going still.

The silence is finally complete.

-Olivia Gyuran