Author
Peter Sartucci
Author Comments
This piece came to me while I was thinking about endurance. Gold is an element, very stable and long-lasting. Biological organisms are very unstable, but also capable of reproducing themselves successfully through drastic tribulations and immense spans of time. We find fossil redwoods that are close kin to the ones living today. But the memory of what we humans once were is more ephemeral; when Mohenjo Daro was dug up we could barely understand it, yet it lived as a city only a few millennia ago. What if it was a much longer span of time, and a much sharper collapse, between now, and the lifetime of my future protagonist? What will be remembered by post-crash humans in fifty thousand years? Or a hundred thousand?
This piece came to me while I was thinking about endurance. Gold is an element, very stable and long-lasting. Biological organisms are very unstable, but also capable of reproducing themselves successfully through drastic tribulations and immense spans of time. We find fossil redwoods that are close kin to the ones living today. But the memory of what we humans once were is more ephemeral; when Mohenjo Daro was dug up we could barely understand it, yet it lived as a city only a few millennia ago. What if it was a much longer span of time, and a much sharper collapse, between now, and the lifetime of my future protagonist? What will be remembered by post-crash humans in fifty thousand years? Or a hundred thousand?
- Peter Sartucci