alexmegami (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexmegami) wrote2011-11-03 11:25 pm
alexmegami) wrote2011-11-03 11:25 pm
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LJ Idol Week 3: Coprolite
Whatever else they might have called us, we were the ghost generation. When the aliens came to our planet, there was little left for them to find of us.
Oh, there were endless variations on a tall rectangular building with flat roofs, and some crumbling, rotting evidence of rows of white fences and cheerful bungalows. But who had inhabited these buildings? They guessed we were tall by the soaring ceilings, but were confused by the relatively low doors (where they still existed). They were able to re-create our maps, after a fashion, but I saw the puzzlement of the scholars; were the endless circles religious, they wondered, or merely practical? And what about the grid patterning in the more densely built areas? They eventually decided that it was symbolic; everything was interconnected, everyone touching upon everyone else.
I began following the more imaginative of the scientists as she worked her way through the wreckage sites, trying to reconstruct technology she had never encountered to create a viable model of how we had lived. She complained frequently to her partner.
"It's like they were robots," she said once. "They burned everything they were done with. We haven't found so much as a single physical specimen left."
"That's usual, on these places," he said gently. "John thinks they were wiped out by plague. They probably burned all the bodies to be safe."
We were burning our bodies long before then, I told him. He didn't hear me.
"But not even a speck of any biological material?" she continued. "We have no idea what they ate and drank, except for that menu that Ariel was able to rig back up."
Her partner shrugged again. "We just have to keep looking." He turned the white object in his hands over and over again. "I'm more worried about their culture. Everything we've been able to date has been well over five millenia old, but they were only wiped out four millenia ago. What happened between those times? No photographs, no art, nothing." He shook his head.
We had those things, I told him. But they belonged to everyone and no one. You could see them on that device you're holding, if you could only turn it on. They existed somewhere between the real world and the unreal.
Like me.
I'm here, too.
"Do you feel sad for them?" She asked after a long pause.
"Every day," he said.
She reached over and squeezed his arm, and he patted her leg. "Why do you think they put apples on everything?" he asked her.
"To ward off evil?" she suggested, and looked up. "Did you hear that?"
"No."
"Like someone laughing..."
He cocked his head. "I think that's the dinner bell," he said. "Come on. Let's go eat."
Oh, there were endless variations on a tall rectangular building with flat roofs, and some crumbling, rotting evidence of rows of white fences and cheerful bungalows. But who had inhabited these buildings? They guessed we were tall by the soaring ceilings, but were confused by the relatively low doors (where they still existed). They were able to re-create our maps, after a fashion, but I saw the puzzlement of the scholars; were the endless circles religious, they wondered, or merely practical? And what about the grid patterning in the more densely built areas? They eventually decided that it was symbolic; everything was interconnected, everyone touching upon everyone else.
I began following the more imaginative of the scientists as she worked her way through the wreckage sites, trying to reconstruct technology she had never encountered to create a viable model of how we had lived. She complained frequently to her partner.
"It's like they were robots," she said once. "They burned everything they were done with. We haven't found so much as a single physical specimen left."
"That's usual, on these places," he said gently. "John thinks they were wiped out by plague. They probably burned all the bodies to be safe."
We were burning our bodies long before then, I told him. He didn't hear me.
"But not even a speck of any biological material?" she continued. "We have no idea what they ate and drank, except for that menu that Ariel was able to rig back up."
Her partner shrugged again. "We just have to keep looking." He turned the white object in his hands over and over again. "I'm more worried about their culture. Everything we've been able to date has been well over five millenia old, but they were only wiped out four millenia ago. What happened between those times? No photographs, no art, nothing." He shook his head.
We had those things, I told him. But they belonged to everyone and no one. You could see them on that device you're holding, if you could only turn it on. They existed somewhere between the real world and the unreal.
Like me.
I'm here, too.
"Do you feel sad for them?" She asked after a long pause.
"Every day," he said.
She reached over and squeezed his arm, and he patted her leg. "Why do you think they put apples on everything?" he asked her.
"To ward off evil?" she suggested, and looked up. "Did you hear that?"
"No."
"Like someone laughing..."
He cocked his head. "I think that's the dinner bell," he said. "Come on. Let's go eat."