“Don’t Touch the Water When the World Ends,” a short story by BW Derge, is a glimpse at an apocalypse where the Earth is drowned by toxic oceans. The last living human lies in a canoe, hope no longer exists, the last inhabited house floods, and there are discussions of the immense time and uncertainty involved with direct panspermia.
Don’t Touch the Water When the World Ends
Scene I: Fade to Black
If humanity had continued to keep track of time in the fashionable way that became custom, they would’ve called this year 2589 AD. What “AD” meant had been long forgotten. Even the fact that “AD” was once replaced with “CE” was now lost with so many other sentiments, feelings, and the resonance of meaning…
The sky was dark but this was mostly due to the fact that there were no longer any eyes or minds to discern a sky at all. And without definition, all is left to suffocate silently in the dark…
Whether or not “land” is still considered “land” when it is submerged underwater is a debate for another time. For the sake of this moment, there was no more land. All that was once considered dry land had been smothered and flooded. The ocean that swallowed the world had now become a toxic swamp of death sludge. And by “death sludge,” this is meant literally. The goopy poison that had engulfed the world was composed mostly of the decayed microbiocidal carcasses that it had consumed.
Several floating platforms and boats were still stuck atop the surface and somewhat able to float. And in one wooden canoe, the last living human being lay. She was a pale woman on her back, the age was hard to determine. While other humans had succumbed to the environment, a handful of improbable lucky circumstances granted her the privilege of outliving all other souls on the planet. The ancient continents were all beneath the liquidous wasteland.
Mysterious tides pulled the canoe slowly, barely, similar to the pace of tectonic plates. The last person faintly repeated a whispered chant towards the last of her days and these became the final words to be uttered off the tongue of the human species. “Don’t touch the water.”
Scene II: The Three Horsemen
Five years before the last human heartbeat, a father and son occupied a tiny fishing vessel that drifted along the waterlogged world over what had once been called the blue ridge mountains…
Those who had survived by taking refuge on boats and other floating platforms managed to keep some semblance to civilization thumping, but it was a pitiful death rattle. The unpredictability of storms, the inability to harness electricity, and the hubris of mankind were three of the horseman to bring about the true apocalypse. The fourth had yet to gallop on stage.
The boy and his father barely spoke anymore. They hadn’t seen another soul in almost two long years. What were they to talk about, the futility of their existence should they be the last two people alive? The toxic rivers of endless debris that smothered the planet’s surface hadn’t produced a single fish or piece of edible flesh in years. The two were surviving by scavenging what drifting islands of junk still contained the remaining scraps of food still providing sustenance. They learned quickly when the water became too dirty to touch. This is what kept them alive when the other surviving boats that they knew about perished. “Don’t touch the water anymore.”
A few days ago, the final conversation they would have took place. The dad wondered, “What are we even looking for at this point?”
“That word you said once,” his boy replied. “Hope? And I don’t think there’s none left.”
Scene III: Always So Soggy
Three older women were bundled up on their individual cushions, all of them wrapped in dirty blankets. Had there still been calendars around in their lifetimes, they might’ve known this time they occupied would’ve been the year 2377. They lived in a crumbling house on top of a tiny island that was once the peak of a fantastic mountain. There was little to do in the decrepit dwelling but it was the last such structure to exist on the Earth with breathing inhabitants still inside.
The rain outside was getting rather intense and the waves were rapidly growing higher. “My feet hurt,” one of them complained.
“Dry them off.”
“Why? Just so they can get wet again?” the third woman laughed.
“Always soggy,” was the response.
“Everything about this dump is always so soggy.”
As these words were spoken, a puddle of water started to trickle in from the outside storm. As the cold dark liquid tapped on the woman’s toe, she groaned and lifted her ankles up. “Time to go to the roof, you think?”
“Yeah,” another old woman answered. “Best not to touch this water…”
Scene IV: The Donation Center
Four grown men were waiting in a line outside a clinic operated by NASA in the year 2144. Their ankles and feet were hidden by the murky water that filled the streets after a few hours of rain. “They said there’s some bacteria in the water that we’re supposed to look out for.”
“How are we supposed to watch out for micro stuff?”
A third individual chimed in. “Really. It’s like when the federation warns about plastic in the food. How are we supposed to know the difference at this point?”
There was a nurse tending to the line. They wore long white plastic rainboots and opened a door at the top of the steps that led to the facility's entrance several flights of stairs higher. The Nurse called one the four men’s names and then his soaked bare feet jostled up metal steps. At the top he received the following instructions: “Follow me to the donation chamber.”
At the bottom steps, one of them wondered aloud, “When they say our seed is supposed to arrive in the other star system? Like 6000 years? How’s that going to work?”
Of the three men who remained in the queue, only one had barely spoken. He was a shadowy tall figure who seemed to wear the Earth’s hopelessness on his countenance. At this fellow’s utterance, however, he said, “It will take roughly 6309 years for our sperm capsules to arrive at Proxima Centauri. The idea is that one of the zillions of seeds will somehow survive the long journey across the cosmos and somehow react with an exoplanet. It’s an idea from hundreds of years ago, in those old science fiction stories that have survived. Even if it can stay viable for over six millennia, and then somehow arrive in a habitable ocean or planetary surface… what then? It’s just supposed to make life happen?”
There was a long pause. One of the other men said, “Yeah.” A dead catfish floated by his wading ankles.
“Watch out,” said the third man.
“You don’t want to touch that.”
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2024
© USA
This was a short story composed in 2024 called "Don't Touch the Water When the World Ends"
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