When the methane began to rise through the structures and into the atmosphere, and in quantities hitherto unknown in our planet’s history, we began to understand. The mundanity of their plan surprised us. This wasn’t Skynet, sending agents back through time. This was basic chemistry. They were creating a hothouse effect—a runaway feedback loop of greenhouse gasses, just like on Venus. Who would have thought the apocalypse would be so… boring?
Decades passed, and humanity withered. Our fields lay desiccated. Our roads buckled in the heat. No matter—by this point our cars had all but rusted away. Over time, the windows of our skyscrapers shattered, and the weather got in, corroding the steel bones. We can’t fill those buildings, anyway. Our numbers keep falling, and those of us that still survive do not go to work. We hunt, we gather, we survive. Deer are gone, hunted to extinction, as far as we can tell. Same for cows. In a great irony, we have unwittingly helped those who are destroying our world.
It was near the end of the century that they began to build their great spire. Two miles high, now, and still rising, right out of the pacific, off California. We have no idea what it will be used for. Like so much the bots do, we don’t understand it.
“We didn’t understand it”—a perfect line for our epitaph.
J.D. Strunk's fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, The Coachella Review, Summerset Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Denver, Colorado. IG: @jdstrunkwriter
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