by Jann Burner
CHAPTER ONE
“And So It Is!”
Long after dark, long after we had pulled our kayaks high up on the beach South of San Francisco, in the shadow of the old World War II gun emplacements, the "Catcher of Words" appeared.
He seemed to materialize from out of the smoke from our driftwood fire. No one saw his boat, no one heard his approach. To those of us seated around the fire's warmth this was to be a very special evening. This night would become a treasured memory. This was the night that the "Teller of Tales" would speak of things yet to come. Of probable realities; of things that never were but might have been, and yet still could be.
He slowly drew our attention around the fire's glow with the motion of an Eagle's feather and as he began to speak in an alien dialect our mind's rose as one with the heat and the smoke of the idea…
“There was a young woman sitting on the edge of a cliff looking out to sea. There was light fog all around her. The sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon. She could feel the warmth on her back. In the distance there were nuclear explosions. It was a black and white image. It had become a black and white world. There were many explosions. In her mind's eye they resembled one vast slow motion montage of flowers blooming and this demonic floral display covered the entire earth.
“Her name was Asher. She described herself as an Angel with a broken wing. She saw her role as that of a witness. Who dropped the first bomb or to which side should go the final credit for ending the world was never determined. With the collapse of government and the total break-down of communication, all stops were pulled and everything that would explode, burn or even smolder was quickly thrown onto the great human conflagration. This last great charade was referred to by some, as the Rad-Wars, and by others…as the end of the world. In her wide blue eyes there were the reflections of many nuclear explosions, like tiny multiple irises.
“After the initial obligatory missile exchange, wolf packs of nuclear subs and doomsday satellites began to rain their destruction on anything that hummed, glowed or seemed to show any technological sign more advanced than the Stone Age. Within twelve months, the entire surface of the globe was plunged back into the Middle Ages, with a loose feudal structure holding the few cancer infected survivors together. Suddenly there was no more television, no radio, no money. In all the world there was not even one electric light.
“Her voice was a compassionate whisper and her tone was of one speaking to a lover in the dark. "And then the trees began to die." She said to no one in particular. "At first, no one noticed, and then it was too late. No more trees. Some speculated it was the radiation that killed the trees, others thought perhaps it was the shock of the successive nuclear blasts that killed them. One very wise old man was of a different mind. He said they died of a broken heart. It was a terrible sadness, he said, that made all the trees on earth whither and die". A single tear hung at the corner of her left eye, and then dropped silently into the gray ash that covered the ground.
“Wood became extremely rare. In the end, man's final quest was not for food nor even security or love; in the end, man's final quest was for wealth, and in the final days wealth translated as wood. Within a few years the last surviving wooden houses were disassembled board by board. The wealthy were seen to move about, from shadow to shadow, covertly displaying small chips of the extremely rare wood, crudely impressed in hastily melted plastic. Often these token bits of wood would be worn as a ring, bracelet, or pendant. In the end, it became a sign of status, rank and office. More importantly, though, the display of wood was a sign of greed and in the end, greed was the way of life, for a greedy man was a successful man; a greedy man was a survivor. In the very last days, a small chip of once-abundant pine wood was to be more valued than a truckload of the purest gold!
“The scene as viewed through Asher's eyes seemed almost like newsreel footage from another time. A time of utter destruction. There were few survivors and those few seem to flit about like mad insects, tearing houses apart for their wood and killing each other with casual abandon. But the final days were mercifully short. By the end of the 21st Century the last human survivors were finally destroyed by radiation-caused cancers and oxygen starvation. As the years passed, one after the other, silently, without the sound of human laughter, or the cry of human desperation, it was almost as if the mere idea of a human being was a dream, or worse…a rumor.
“The fog was beginning to lift as the sun moved higher in the early morning sky. Looking back over Asher's shoulder there was nothing but utter waste for as far as the eye could see. The nuclear blooms had long ceased and all looked…dead. "For humans", continued Asher, "these were no longer the dark hours; for humans, the light, like a candle flame, finally flickered and went out. In the end, at the very last, the few remaining humans went out like a string of defective lights…on Christ's own tree."
“Down below, in the distance, there was something moving in the water. As the fog finally cleared, a group of dolphins could be seen closing with the shore. The celebration was finally over, the experiment was complete, and it was time for the evolutionary train to move on to the next station.
“For many, many years, there was silence, except for the terrible winds and the incessant flitting of insects. Then, finally, through an evolutionary surge brought about by the Rad-Wars, another group of intelligent creatures, this time from the sea, assumed their position as the dominant species. These new creatures were in fact much older than humans but were heretofore content to occupy a peripheral role in the cosmological drama until the sudden increase in radiation forced them to center stage.
The group of dolphins continued towards the shore and as they closed with the land a large white dolphin could be seen in the lead.
“And though the footprint of man was no longer to be found anywhere upon the earth, the dominant species, in their wisdom, chose to preserve certain artifacts and curiosities. One of these human creations, thus preserved, was an ancient wooden house. This building was called a Victorian and this particular city-site was once known in ancient times as San Francisco.
“The ancient wooden house stood perched on a high hill above the sea like an ancient bird of prey. It stood utterly by itself--isolated, but in good repair, in spite of the fact that neither road nor path nor trampled grass gave evidence of habitation. It stood poised, almost alert. At one time, it was but one of thousands of such structures that dotted the avenues of the ancient city, the result of a truly explosive outburst of creative energy. This energy was able to translate the optimism of the day into standing constructions of wood and glass.
“These human constructions depended upon the principal of opposition and contrast. These human structures were very much the same as the structure of humans. They were one and all extremely eclectic, emotional, and unpredictable. They were all flow and movement, light and shadow: an architectural dance designed to entice the eye and captivate the mind.