SciFi Flash Fiction: A Step Ahead
“It’s okay,” they kept saying when oil stores got low. “Science stays a step ahead.” They said it when the gush slowed to a slow-bleeding trickle, out of the scars of the ground.
They said it again in the wake of the twenty-teens extinctions. “Biological diversity? Eh, it’s fine. We’ve got DNA samples in the lab. We’re all good.” Even the species that hadn’t been sampled. “We can extrapolate. Science stays a step ahead.”
When the water dried up and there was nothing to drink, there were tiny nuclear-powered pumps sucking liquid from the air Science stayed a step ahead.
When the environment was pushed to its limits and the human die-offs occurred, late in the mid-2020s, a void was presented. Plagues had decimated populations before; as before, food supplies and resources were at a premium. Automated service units were built for those who remained.
Finally, even those humans who remained could not extract enough from around them to continue, and they imprinted themselves into the those automated units, and the planet whirred and clicked along like a gear through the heavens.
Science stayed a step ahead.
***
Years ago, my dad and I talked about how the human population planet was using up fossil fuels. I was worried about a school lecture or something I’d seen on the news, and in addition to a joke about how an uncle of his used to say “if the combustion engine hadn’t been invented, we’d all be knee-deep in horse shit!”, he told me about a new technology that was being explored, which allowed gas companies to take advantage of new processes and extract new reserves of fossil fuels through the use of pressure and chemicals. Over the years, it’s become clear that he was talking about hydraulic fracturing – fracking.
That conversation is what I think about when I think about using advancing sciences as an excuse not to worry about how we use the resources we have today.
It’s not that I don’t believe in science – I do. Very strongly. But I sometimes don’t think much of where we’re taking ourselves when we put it to use.
Anyway, taking a cue from the quote, “All a first draft must do to be successful is exist,” I’m posting this as is. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
