All Clocks Tick To Bedtime | By Andrea Perng
Illustrated by By Rachel, Calista and Xin Tung
It’s been decades since the ‘most advanced species on the planet’ began pitching forward plans to save me, yet their mess and poisons are running through me faster than I can heal. The amount of waste they throw away honestly baffles me. Three-point five million a year! Unable to decompose, they remained slathered all over my face, like decaying zombies.
Have they forgotten who I am? Mother Earth? They used to worship me. I was a freaking goddess! I was Gaea to the Greeks, Terra Mater to the Romans, went by as Hòutǔ, Bhūmi and many others. People used to pray to me and send me offerings. Some even thought I was the only thing that truly existed in this world. And they had good reasons to.
I delicately structured the tundra, desert and forests, with arms outstretched, filled with life. I filled caves with scintillating ores and cute dragon-like olms, providing them with so many resources to feed their curiosity. The vast ocean with alluring, unique creatures spawned fear and cool myths for seafaring veterans to tell their grandchildren at night. But unfortunately, like the flawed, immature and oblivious short-lived beings they are, they eventually stopped caring for me and the delicate world I sculpted with all my energy and effort.
Some of them try to clean me as much as they can or at least give me more time to heal. Unfortunately, many more of them have opted to ignore the dire, dilapidated state I’m in. They know that they won’t be here long enough to watch me crumble. They are like those kids they talk about in their stories—the ungrateful ones who throw their parents out the moment they don’t need them anymore. Now those are the types of tellurians that boil my blood the most. They think that they have so much more time to be ignorant, hoping to always keep the hand of their precious little Doomsday Clock before midnight. The fools they are, you can’t stop time. They were right about one thing though - they wouldn’t be alive to watch me crumble and die.
Today, I have finally had enough.
I kicked the tectonic plates and watched them rumble, my raspy laughter sending avalanches smashing down on them. There was a time when I would have begged those self-proclaimed gods to listen, but enough is enough. Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo. If I can’t move heaven, I will raise hell. Sounds perfect, bitter and determined.
I conjured up fierce gales to accompany the invisible stampede. Together they ravaged their way through city walls, slicing across any soul and turning the veins in the city red. I willed volcanoes all around me to erupt with their blazing flames of death and light, and watched as skyscrapers crumbled like cookies and swallowed anything below them. I saw everyone run, and like the barbarians they always were, the humans started sacrificing their own families to save their skin. Their families! Young children screaming to their last breath for “the greater good”. Some corrupted phrase they have. I ignored them, for their beliefs had far twisted from what they should have been. Their literature, art, history and AI may have once been their lifeboat, but they had all been wiped away in the flood. I saw the rich and the arrogant slaving others and hiding away but any last hope they might’ve had blew up into smithereens as I unleashed chaos onto them.
Eventually, only the sound of the storm was audible. I began meditating and later did some pottery to keep my mind busy, eventually getting lost in my thoughts.I finally found the peace I had been looking for. Out of the blue, I heard faint, desperate mewls of a gentle-sounding creature which shocked me out of my stupor. I rushed to the surface and found a weakened, cat-like creature hiding in a lush cave while a war of earth and water raged outside, the result of my sudden burst of anger. Shocked that I let that happen again, I quickly healed it and called off the storms. “Stupid me, letting my anger consume me and destroying all my children!” I chided myself. Determined not to let it happen again, I used my regained energy to revitalise the world and tailored it to suit the remaining tellurians on earth. My children.
I wonder if I would one day explode again, or be stripped bare of health like the other planets. Maybe I would drop out of orbit, just one day stop spinning. Hmm, frozen in time. What a way to die. I wondered what happened to the rest, it’s been so long since Neptune lost her will to live. Doesn’t matter, my primary goal now is to rebuild the environment brick by brick, or rather, leaf by leaf. Even if they one day evolve to destroy or leave me lonely, I don’t care, for I am their mother after all, and mothers should care for their children. If you read this far, welcome to the end of this chapter. Now excuse me while I take a long, long nap, my children.
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