Friday Fictioneers – Scorched Earth
Here is this week’s tale for Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers. Rochelle also provided this week’s photo. To read the other stories, click on the blue froggy.
Copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
“How could this have happened? How could they not have noticed?”
“Maybe it’s hard to notice tiny amounts of chemicals building up in the atmosphere.”
“Until they catch fire and burn the Earth.”
“Yes. Until then.”
“How long do we have, do you think?”
“See that glow? That’s London burning. An hour, maybe?”
“I bet it’s an amazing sight from the space station.”
“I bet it is. The whole world on fire. It’ll burn until the oxygen runs out.”
“So this is the end.”
“For us. The world will recover. Nature always finds a way.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
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Friday Fictioneers
draliman on life 
There is no way I could be that calm. 🙂
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Me neither 😦
I think they’ve had time to come to terms with it and they probably do yoga or something. Very relaxing or so I hear 🙂
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Yes, I should look into yoga. 🙂
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I’m pretty sure I’d snap in half if I tried it 🙂
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I wouldn’t be able to get back up!
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🙂 Me neither. But hey, it’s quite relaxing down there.
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I really must try yoga…
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Me too. Ambulance on standby 🙂
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Alas, your story rings all too true! And I loved it.
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I do worry sometimes…
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““How could this have happened? How could they not have noticed?”
“Maybe it’s hard to notice tiny amounts of chemicals building up in the atmosphere.”
It’s like a live lobster in hot water – so I’ve heard.
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🙂
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Interesting take on the prompt, turning the sunrise in the photo into London burning. Another very dark one.. And as far as them being calm, we don’t really know how long they’ve known about this. Maybe they panicked earlier. Such an intense and impossible thing to imagine: what *would* you say or do if you only had an hour left?
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I guess it would be a combination of panic, looters (because there always are) and people like this. I expect I’d be in the “panic” category! It brought the end of “Deep Impact” to mind, with the pair of them standing calmly on the beach waiting for the tidal wave.
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Oddly, I find the belief that nature always finds a way encouraging. We may extinguish ourselves, but nature will find a way to continue. Without us, which is probably what we deserve.
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A nice fresh start without all we dirty humans.
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Better get in good with Mother Nature. I hear she has seating room for the first 1050. Then its (re)evolution 101 again.
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I’m off to save some trees in order to guarantee my seat.
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Good idea!
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Great story. I hope the space station is both manned and womaned!
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Me too. We’ve got to start the new human race somehow!
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I heard that a superhuman race sends a gigantum fire truck space ship to earth and douses our planet with extinguisher and renews our oxygen, but 30 years later we all die from the flame retardant. Or maybe we are just retardant.
😉 Randy
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If it’s not one thing it’s another 🙂 Their heart was in the right place.
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This photo seems to inspire the apocalyptic… lol.
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Yeah, it’s all too suspiciously idyllic 🙂
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Good story, Ali. Yoga or no yoga, I think I’d be really upset if the world was going to burn up with me on it. It would be even worse if you were up in a space station and knew there was nowhere else to go. 😦 Well done. 🙂 — Suzanne
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I did wonder about the poor souls up in space, sitting there waiting to die.
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Not the sort of picture prompt you’d think would inspire apocalyptic stories. Full marks for lateral thinking.
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Funnily enough I saw the glow straight away and then that was the only type of story which came to mind!
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Well written! I love the dialogue and the reasoning. As others have said, this catastrophic event is taken very calmly, and it makes you wonder whether that’s how many of us would take the prospect of our inevitable demise. Do you suggest we all start taking yoga classes? 🙂
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It couldn’t hurt! Well, yoga would hurt me…
These two are so chilled I should have written it about Chad and Brad instead 🙂
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Dear Ali,
You never disappoint. There’s so much story in this bit of dialogue. Well done.
shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle,
Thank you very much, I’m glad you liked it!
Ali
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I’m starting to sense a theme with couples in love and the last hours of the planet’s existence… 😀
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Heh, yes. It’s amazing how many people turned a lovely scene out a window into the End of Days 🙂
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Hmm, I meant that i know of at least three stories of yours now where a happy couple is preparing to wait for the world to end…very romantic? 😀
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Hah, yes! It appears to be an unintentional recurring theme with me – it appears you know my story history better than I do :-
I reckon it’s pretty romantic, if somewhat short-lived…
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Man, this was a fun read. I’d love for you to expand this and flesh it out. Apocalyptic tales always intrigue me. To watch the Earth burn would be terrifyingly spectacular. Great job!
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Thanks! I’ve always loved apocalyptic tales too, and films. I did actually write the back story in my head, with science going out of control as oil runs out and people get desperate, inadvertently emitting these new chemicals into the atmosphere and so on. This would be the final scene, I guess. Not the most “Hollywood” of endings…
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LOL… a lot of Hollywood endings are awful. I prefer this one. I like the idea of a man-made apocalypse. Kind of a (too late) “I told you so”.
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At least it’s a more likely ending, rather than a last-minute Hail Mary thing (I’m particularly thinking of films like “The Core” here!).
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Great small talk for the end of the world. I hope I can be like that.
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Me too. I imagine I’d be running around screaming, however.
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I think it’s right.. When only one hour remains it’s down to the bare essentials of really holding hands.
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There’s not really anything else left to be done. These two are luckier than many – they have each other.
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Very effectively told. At the end of time, there is nothing left to do but love.
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Thanks.
Very true, I’m glad this pair realise that.
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For most of my life I lived across the street from a chemical plant that manufactured liquid gases. It was a wonderful sight one morning when I came home from work and found one of their buildings on fire and nobody had responded to the scene yet. I was not quite as calm as these two were….
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Blimey. That could have gone really wrong really quickly and taken half the neighbourhood with it. I’d’ve found somewhere else to be, I think.
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Don’t know about yoga but there’s probably time for one last cup of tea.
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Yes, a nice cup of tea! In the face of imminent death it’s the British way 🙂
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The inevitable, and yet I think we’d all still have hope. We are so foolish sometimes, but calmness, what else is there. No one wants to go out as whimpering mess. Although, I’m sure I would. 🙂
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It’s only human to believe something will save us even in the face of death, I think.
I’d also like to believe I’d go out calmly in such a situation but I’m sure the reality would be very different 🙂
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Supposedly, when/if Earth reaches a mega-catastrophe (such as through climate change), as long as the planet is not literally obliterated, as you’ve said, some will survive. Probably even some humans at that. Don’t know that that’s a comfort per se . . . but, anyway, it’s always a well written story, even if bleak and panic-inducing, when I come over to Dr Ali’s place!
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Yes, it would take one heck of a catastrophe to wipe everything out permanently, like the Earth ending up as a new asteroid belt.
I’ve done a couple of silly comedies recently – I’m afraid you hit on the resurgence of my apocalypse phase 🙂
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No problem. I go through those phases, too. (And I doubt your recent works are silly when unintended!) Happy Friday! 🙂
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And to you 🙂
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i always think nature can only take so much abuse. mankind be damned, it finds a way to heal itself.
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Wipe us off and start again.
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Powerful and I like the apocalyptical tone here… so much said in just a few words…
All my best wishes. Merry christmas to you 🎅🎄. Aquileana 😄
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Thanks, I’m glad you liked it!
Merry Christmas to you too 🙂
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That’s not a sight I want to see out of my kitchen window. Nice ending – simple and yet captures what one would do/say when the world is ending.
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Me neither. I’m glad the ending worked – I had trouble thinking of something and then the scene with Tea Leoni and her on-screen dad on the beach came to mind (from “Deep Impact” – they stand there waiting for the end, quite calmly, as a tidal wave approaches).
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Glad these two are so nice and calm. As for me — AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
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Me too! I’d always have the thought that by screaming and running as fast as possible I might somehow escape 🙂
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I’m glad their final words are “I love you.” Disturbing piece, Ali! I hope we never have to face this. Nicely done.
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Thanks!
They’ve come to terms with their fate and they have each other.
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Very thought provoking.
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Thanks!
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Very cool – nice work telling it in dialogue too. The calm collected conversation about their impending doom is great.
Cheers
KT
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Thanks! I guess they’ve been through all the stages and have arrived at acceptance.
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Very effective dialogue, and I like your explanation of how such a situation came to be – your opening “How could they not have noticed?” is powerful.
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Thanks! I originally had a longer explanation but there weren’t enough words. Sometimes it’s fun to have to work out how to fit things in while keeping the meaning intact.
I’m glad you liked it!
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