Earth Day (April 22): a story

From Ragnarok to Armageddon, I am fascinated by stories of the end of the world. I am terrified by the idea of everything I know and love ending once and for all, and yet in so many of these stories, there are elements of rebirth and hope.

I am a fan of good science-fiction. I am not a fan of literalistic interpretations of Biblical text. Maybe I could stomach those kinds of novels if the writing were any good. Usually, it’s not. A friend of mine is writing a novel of the Apocalypse that shows a lot of promise, but I believe her manuscript is in the minority of good eschatological fiction. When stories of the end-times come across as full of dogmatic propaganda without any sense of character growth and interesting plot development, I’d just as soon read a teen romance series novel where the identical twins discover the high school class president they fancy is actually an alien from Alpha Orionis (i.e. Betelgeuse) who can take only one person to the Galactic Prom. Who will it be: the vivacious, outgoing twin who is skilled at mastering languages or the contemplative twin who has a knack for quantum physics?

I digress.

I’ve had the first line of a story kicking around in my brain for awhile: When the apocalypse arrived, it was nothing like we expected. That’s all I had. When I received a traveling notebook in the mail from ABCGirl, I decided to take the story further. No matter how silly, how outlandish, I would move beyond that first line. So, here goes. (ABCGirl, if you want to be surprised when you receive your notebook, you might want to avert your eyes now.)

Earth Day

When the apocalypse arrived, it was nothing like we expected. The lack of levitating bodies made some people quite angry. “We were supposed to be saved!” they howled. “Where are the Trump and the Call? Where are the rivers of blood? We’ve been had!”

Most of us, however, were relieved that the end of the world as we knew it would commence in a calm, relatively non-dramatic way. The angel in charge of our clean-up unit explained it this way: “There was a choice we had to make. Plan A involved waging terrible wars in which seas boiled and countries burned. Plan B involved a thousand years of peace. Everyone On High talked it over and we all finally agreed on Plan B. The Great Almighty actually likes Earth, you know. It’s such a pretty combination of blue, brown and green. However…” and the angel lifted three of its eyebrows in warning, “That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Things have gotten quite messy around here.”

We all got scared. Was the Judgment going to happen, then? Were some of us going to heaven and most of us going to hell, as the televangelists and pulp novelists had predicted?

“No, no,” the angel said. “That would be silly and wasteful. This matter is a big deal. Remember when you were little and your parents said you couldn’t go out to the movies and have ice-cream with your friends until you had cleaned up your rooms?”

Of course we did.

“That’s the basic idea,” the angel said. “Only, you’re going to clean up the planet. Don’t worry! You’re getting lots of help from On High.” The angel started handing out garbage-bags and recycling buckets.

“We’re all going to do our bit to clean up Earth,” the angel said. “We’ll start out by picking up trash from the streets and work our way up to reversing global warming. Before you know it, this planet will be glistening and fresh. You’ll be so proud of yourselves, too.”

“This is going to take forever!” someone wailed.

The angel smiled. “No, no, not forever. It just seems that way now. Just think: when we’re all done, we all get to go to heaven.”

“What’s so great about heaven?” someone grumbled as he started picking up aluminum cans and cigarette butts off the ground.

“Our film collection is quite good,” the angel said. “Also, the ice-cream is better than anything you have ever tasted.”