The Inevitable Heat Death of the World
A cautionary tale of opportunity and greed
John sat upon the edge of a precipice, overlooking the wind-swept valley full of giant spinning blades. Through his perpetually fogged up goggles, clouded by the breath expelled from his tired lungs, he could barely make out the ground below. What once was a valley teeming with luscious grass and dotted with wildflowers, is now a barren land strewn with dried up weeds. The blades above had sewn a promise with the earth to forge a better future, but it was a promise that had long been broken. Broken by the hands who built them. Hands that thought they had found an answer to a relentless problem, but unbeknownst to them, they were only smithing irons to stoke the fires of greed.
The spires upon which the blades spun were connected to one another by a spiderweb of cabling and wire. John gazed in bewilderment, not understanding how with each day’s passing, the entanglement of wires seemed to get larger. He wondered how humans, so aware of the situation around them, could continue to sustain the very thing driving them further to extinction.
Time seemed to freeze around John, even though it sped by to its eventual demise. Finally, some peace in this broken world. A hypnotic peace induced by the spinning blades that sliced through the air that they were intended to save.
The clang of distant thunder emanating from a summer lightning storm miles away broke the hypnosis, and he was startled awake. Though barely noticeable, day was turning night. Daylight seemed to bleed into the night. The clouds, ashen with soot, obscured the sun during the day, and at night reflected the light projected from the cities below, covering the land in a daytime glow. Time, seconds, hours, minutes, and days were merely constructs in a never-changing and slowly dying world. There was no hope of what the light of a new day could bring.
With haste, John departed his peaceful perch and made way to his beaten up pickup truck. Popping open the handle, dust and grime sprang to life and shook to the ground. The inside smelled of cigarettes and dirt, and as he entered, the old leather seats crinkled under his weight. He removed the sweat-soaked rag covering his face and reached for the half-empty oxygen canister riding shotgun. The mask pressed up against is face, he inhaled deep and for a moment remembered back to the days when a breath of fresh air didn’t come from a can. The air outside wasn’t deemed unsafe for humans, but it definitely wasn’t pleasant.
The truck stuttered to a start under the weight of its worn parts, but somehow as if powered by prayer and hope, it always seemed to get going. Choking on the dust clogging its intake, John kicked the truck into drive and took to the road, following a set of cables that lead from the valley back to the city.
Alongside the road, a field of broken glass lay upon panels that were once held high to the sky. As if reaching out in one last desperate attempt to climb out of the abyss, they held onto their supports with rusted hope. Once glimmering with the ideals of a greener world, they lay shattered, like the dreams of the people that tirelessly engineered them. No sun. No hope. Gone and forgotten.
Traveling along the road, John reached the outside of the city. Hundreds of small buildings, crafted out of shoddy metal panels, rose from the ground. Surrounded by scorched earth, absent of all life, these buildings stood like monoliths rising out of the earth looking down upon nature. Cables from miles away met their end here, culminating in a clandestine meeting of electricity and energy. These cables came from blade-filled valleys like the one from before, coal-fired power plants that bellowed sadness into the sky above, and gas-hungry giants that consumed the earth. At one point, even fields of glass like the one that lay forgotten provided power to these buildings. Wherever the cables started from, they always ended in the same place.
Workers, perspiring through their tattered clothing, meandered between the buildings. They tended the machines inside, allowing them to continue to hum a deathly tune. As John passed by, the dim headlights on his truck caught the eyes of the dreary workforce. Their faces clad in depressed stares, they ensured the machines carried out their instructions, ticking like a metronome, setting the beat for Earth’s final song.
As John drove past these buildings, he could feel the heat they radiated. The land around seemed to cower in fear of being burned. This heat brought pain to the air above, the ground below, and to the world around.
Beyond the buildings, the city came to “life.” The poor and the destitute roamed the streets, and the rich remained content in their ivory towers. This contrast was never anything new. Hearkening back to ancient cities, the gap between rich and poor was always wide. However, in a world powered by greed and on the brink of extinction, the gap only got wider.
The “hustle and bustle” was made present by people glued to their devices. Faces lit in an eerie blue glow, their eyes glassed over and filled with blood vessels rushing to heal tired vision, walking aimlessly down city sidewalks. Their devices provided everything they needed. Social connection, news, relationships, sex, love, happiness, entertainment, euphoria, and…. Money.
Lines on their devices traced across the screens. Up and down, resembling an electrocardiogram of society itself. The lines would thrust up like horns of a bull, and then swipe down like the claws of a bear. Fear and greed became the new backbone of society. As fear and greed increased, so did the scorching heat, whose kindling was sourced from society, and fueled by the machines in the sweltering sheds that surrounded cities around the world.
Nobody batted an eye as John drove by. They were entranced by the jagged charts filling their devices. Their footsteps were pointless and meaningless to them. The only thing they cared about was the price on the screen.
John was one of the few that looked back on time and wished he could undo all that was done. Many saw the current world as advancement, and few saw the problem. They were blinded by the opportunity of an extra buck. He parked the truck in an empty spot near his apartment and opened the door. That musty smell hit his nose, and then came the acidic burn of Earth’s new atmosphere. The smell of Earth crying.
As he walked down the sidewalk, a piece of paper flew under his shoe. He picked it up and chuckled. An advertisement for the very thing that was creating so much pain for the Earth, so much greed, and so much scorching heat. It read:
“Bitcoin hits new all-time high as demand surges. Get in today with low commission trades!”
