Elements of Time: The Fate of Man?

By Craig: It was a dream unlike any other. It happened sometime after the witching hour, but the exact time now eludes me. Perhaps it was early on in the night, or maybe I dreamed it right before dawn. It was a dream, yet it might have been a vision. It spoke to me through a voice that only I could recognize. It is hard to explain...for it was my dream, and even the dreamer cannot remember every sharp detail. It took shape out of a hazy fog which slowly dissipated until I could make out clear images. I became aware of my surroundings rather suddenly. I was floating in the sky...above the trees, but not so high that I could not clearly see the ground and its features. I was on Earth...I knew that it was in the future, but I had no way of ascertaining how far in the future until I rose much higher...but this would come later. I was traveling at a slow speed over a lush green forest. It was a hardwood forest, primeval in its look dominated by massive red and white oaks...their trunks so thick that a small car could pass through them. I was looking at a virgin forest. It was the kind of forest that the pilgrims encountered when they landed off Plymouth in 1620...unblemished...untouched, not yet raped by man. It was the forest of the Brothers Grimm...Young Goodman Brown, and Goldilox...I descended into the trees and observed the sounds of the forest primeval. A woodpecker performed his business sounding much like a jackhammer on a crowded city street.  A faint chirping sound brought me to a thick branch of a chestnut tree which reached out of its trunk like a giant's arm ready to do battle. There, I saw three yellow heads bobbing up in down in their nest looking for their mother. First one, then another, and finally a third which flapped its little wings as if it might be saluting my ghostly presence. But of course, it could not possibly see me. I was but a soul flying invisible, unburdened by the corporeal body to which I am normally attached.

    Wait. What's this? I heard a noise, like a rumble from afar. What it was I could not tell, but it was getting closer...and now it was right under me! Wild horses! The Kentucky Derby of the future! Minus, of course, the throng of people, and the track and stands. Like Eohippus of old, here they were, darting here, darting there, around trees they went, hundreds of them. Some of them were black, some white, some different shades of brown and grey. Soon, however, they had all passed leaving nothing but the trampled earth behind them. My friend the woodpecker, had barely flinched in his business as if nothing else mattered in the world, and indeed, at this time in the distant future...nothing did!

     I decided to fly higher...way above the trees. Soon the tree tops amalgamated with the rest of the landscape until I was so high that I could no longer discern shapes...only colors. Green, black, grey, brown, yellow, what's this! blue?.. It was the ocean! I rose so high that the continents began to take shape. Yes...There was North America...South America...Africa, and Western Europe. But something was wrong. Something was not quite right...The continents seemed further apart...and Lo! some of the real estate was missing. Where was Florida? It wasn't there...And the west coast of North America was fragmented. Indeed, it appeared as if a big gaping sea had carved itself between the Rocky Mountains and California. I was somewhat disturbed...This was not my time...not my world. It was foreign to me. I lowered myself back above the tree tops and soared through the sky like a freebird. As I sailed effortlessly through the sky I now became aware of something that had been grasping at the handle of my mind.
"Where was man?"
"Where were the great cities and towns created by man?"
"Where were the great monuments erected by man throughout the eons?"
There was no trace of my species. They had vanished...seemingly swallowed by time...perhaps devoured, bones and all, the dusty remnants disseminated across the globe by the elements from which they arose.  BUT WAIT! WHAT'S THIS! A lone figure...an animal of some kind...lurking behind a large boulder. It was almost human in form, but grotesque in it's hairy bloated appearance. And the stench...it was overpowering...and although I was but a spirit it somehow managed to permeate my wispy soul in a manner that I could not readily explain. The lone figure squatted on it's haunches with its overgrown head and large gaping mouth open as if ready to consume whatever came its way. It stole a suspicious glance at a cave entrance from which two more of these hideous beasts emerged, their posture and movements were curious to say the least, sometimes walking upright, sometimes on all fours. They made horrible guttural sounds, and were soon joined by the suspicious looking brute that had been hiding behind the boulder. It now dawned on me with horror and disgust that what I was looking at were the descendants of man. Carnivores...savages...self consuming brutes that had regressed back to what they really were. Appalled at this future apparition I quickly rose into the sky until I was traveling through interstellar space. Earth, nothing but a tiny dot, a microcosm that stood as a blemish among all of the stars, planets, and cosmic dust that make up our universe.