I have a vision of the future…

I HAVE a vision of the future, a dark vision of tall, needle-like skyscrapers; slicing the stratosphere with their thin black tips. These black termite towers in clusters of ten to a hundred lie scattered amidst the landscape of white marble, covered in cold, glass trees, scintillating in the faint white light of our dying sun …

Tall, thin and featureless, these pinnacles of metal rise menacingly through the perpetual storms of our atmosphere, breaking the dark clouds to reach out for an ever darker infinity … Featureless, that is, save for the huge set of airlocks that are the only point of contact with the outside world … They have not been opened in years …Outside, in the eerie coolness of our misty landscape, imaginary crowds laugh and play on the still grass. None of the winds whistling forlornly through the impersonality of our glass-like wilderness can do anything to shift the misty blanket that now covers our heritage …Every hour, a sleek, black shape detaches from the ground to rise inevitably through the turbulent darkness, eventually breaking free of the storm into the coldness of space. There, floating in the void, sprawling cities of the same black metal orbit our dying world like disgusted vultures circling a worthless prey …Huge clusters of black metallic ovoids, clustered in a hemisphere, each linked together by mile-long, glass-like tunnels and each as windowless and bland as the first …In the background our sun is dying, its bright light beating relentlessly upon the props of our pretty landscape … We do not know how long it will be. Most of us have forgotten it. Its end will be in loneliness …Within our flawless structures, long corridors lead us from room to room. There is no light; the generators failed long ago, and not a soul can be seen walking the barren corridors. If you walk the halls, you will find long tables and thousands of chairs; food remains, perfectly preserved by the sterile air, are scattered amongst the furniture, remains of a hasty departure. You will find huge museums of all that we have lost, animals, plants, art and culture. In a small box, hidden in a comer, a piece of art entitled ‘humanity’; it is empty …Then, after you have seen what we have lost, you will go outside again to see what we have left. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. All have felt the touch of man; many have witnessed our creative minds and been changed forever. Mercury’s intense heat is no more, replaced by the fresh coolness of air-conditioned cities of metal. Venus is no more than a barren world, its valuable gas siphoned off by humanity, desperate for resources. Mars has been terraformed, its native bacteria now resides in a gas jar in Federate Laboratory 102 … Jupiter, too, they have taken, gone the Roman god, now, a sprawling industrial complex. Saturn’s rings can still be seen in the Federate Space Museum. Uranus is still there, too, a wasteland covered in the ruins of the last wars. Of Pluto there remains a cluster of asteroids, residue of the explosion that destroyed it and Neptune. Nowhere will you see life … We do not have anything left.Then, as depressed and mournful as I, you will go back inside to witness our end. Finally, you will enter a room. There are small cells with white walls. As you look around, you will see the familiarity of posters and paintings pinned to the wall, an unmade bed and a room left in the careless mess of a hasty departure; it is empty. Like me, you will run through the corridors, shouting for the life that you simply assumed was there … empty.Eventually, you will enter the last room at the top of the tower …The first thing that will strike you, is the chaotic disorder. Almost inhuman.Like all the other rooms, this one is empty. The room’s luxurious furniture is -scattered around as if a man had left without even considering his return … empty …A ringing irritates your ears. After a frantic search through the room’s apocalyptic disorder, throwing priceless devices savagely behind you in hope of a clue to the answer, you will find a small device ringing forlornly in the darkness …Then, in despair, you will unhook the phone and let it fall from your trembling fingers in the certain knowledge that there is nobody on the line. You will sink to your knees knowing that THIS is our future … our legacy.I have a vision of the future, a dark vision of these tall, needle-like skyscrapers, and somewhere, in a dark room, a phone swings slowing from its socket accompanied by the Cries of Humanity …