Armageddon
I may have been the only survivor of Armageddon.
I don’t know for sure. All communications have been down for two years. They were never great where I hid in the mountains, two hundred miles from the closest town. But as far as I know, there are no more towns.
From day to day, days that go unnumbered, all I have are my memories and dreams of the past.
Most of the animals are gone, vaporized, or frozen. So, my skinny body has learned to eke out a small amount of sustenance from the lichen I scrape off rocks, plus the occasional worm or grub. The cold has kept insects mostly dormant, so they can’t skitter away from my fingers as fast as they used to.
Armageddon Gamble
I remember a story from the early atomic age in which a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory attempted to “tickle the demon core.” That spherical core was a sphere of high-grade plutonium surrounded by one of two half-shells of beryllium. When the top and bottom of those beryllium half shells were separated, fission reactions within the core could not lead to a nuclear chain reaction. When they were too close, runaway fission would occur.
One day, Louis Slotin used the hand-driven rotation of a screwdriver blade to slowly lower the gap between the two beryllium halves and then widen it again. He played with the atomic demon while nearby technicians watched.
But when the screwdriver accidentally slipped, the half-shells fell together. A blue flash lit the room, and at the speed of light, a fatal dose of radiation shot through Slotin’s body.
Nine days later, he died.
Two years ago, U.S. politicians were making the same gamble. Play with nuclear fire, and maybe you won’t get killed. But then again, you might.
Back then, I listened to the news that the U.S. was testing Russia. In return, Russia and everyone else it seemed, was threatening nuclear war. Didn’t anyone know what nuclear war would mean?
Well, of course, they did. No one could be that stupid. But they did it anyway.
Aliens
Ironically, simultaneous with war fever, there seemed to be anxiety in Washington about alien disclosure. There were two factions, the pro-disclosure and the anti-disclosure groups. The anti-disclosure groups all believed the truth about extraterrestrial aliens was too much for the human population to fathom. Initially, I took some offense at that, but I guess it was true after all.
In the end, political disagreements didn’t matter; the War made such arguments moot. D.C. no longer exists. And neither does Moscow, or Paris, Berlin, or London. Swiss neutrality meant nothing. All their cities were destroyed, and the unlucky survivors in the Swiss, French, and Italian Alps all froze to death or starved to death, slowly and painfully.
Nuclear winter is much more than a theory.
All it took was one slip of the proverbial screwdriver to change everything. The world we once knew is gone, but the insanity of it all is a matter of opinion.
Arvidx
Remember those ET aliens we were talking about in 2024? Why weren’t they here?
Well, you see, the Earth was too hot for the Arvidx, too bright for their skin and eyes, and there was way too much oxygen. Political radicals are dangerous, but free radicals are worse.
The Arvidx pioneers who came to Earth had to remain hidden in the deep oceans. By the time human technology advanced enough for the Arvidx craft to be detected, the wheels of Change were already in motion.
True, the Arvidx had always intended to steal Earth from the humans. But until the middle of the 20th century, terraforming Earth to make it suitable as an Arvidx home required far more effort than it was worth.
But when humans became nuclear capable, the Arvidx leaders saw an opportunity. Why should they invest effort in terraforming Earth when humans can do it for them? After all, what better way to reduce toxic oxygen than by nuclear firestorms and the death of oxygen-producing vegetation?
And what better way to reduce the atmosphere’s temperature by 20° Centigrade than by a prolonged nuclear winter? And what better way to increase the background level of gamma rays than by tearing gigantic holes in the ozone layer?
It was a perfect plan.
Replacement
Most importantly, what better way to eliminate the scourge of the human population than to encourage them to off themselves?
All they needed were the Arvidx-human hybrids, like myself, to sneak into critical roles of world governance surreptitiously. From their positions of power, they could be champions for war.
In truth, I had no interest in politics. I was an Arvidx hybrid, but not a very good one. However, growing up feral in the mountains had its perks. No one was my boss.
As for food? Before the war, my rifle skills ensured a steady supply of protein.
I do miss that protein. Lichen tastes like crap, but it has lots of fiber. It keeps me alive and regular. The ability to be nourished by it must be due to the few Arvidx genes functioning correctly in me. But still, I do miss an occasional venison steak.
I do see dimmer days ahead. Which is good, because I lost my sunglasses years ago.
Also, now that humans have prepared the world for us, I have lots of company from full-blooded Arvidx. Consequently, my diet has improved, and things are finally looking up.