Vanessa Senk

The Harvest

By Vanessa Senk

April 10, 2023

Our planet died slowly. It was something we had all seen coming, a sword moving closer and closer each year ready to end us all. There had been attempts by many to wake the rest of us up, to make us realize that we needed to act before it was too late, but the curse of apathy was a deadly one. 

Our grandparents had cut down all the plants to make room for cities and build cheap furniture that breaks within a few years. Our parents had drunk all the clean water and contaminated the rest with plastics and run off chemicals from factories. And we had used up the last of our energy source and made no plans for what to do after.

The thing about our species is that, despite knowing we were wearing blinders, we never tried to look beyond them until we had no choice. WIth no energy, everything fell apart. We had been starving and desperate for water for decades, but without any machinery or technology there was now nothing we could do.

You can’t filter water if the machine is dead, you can’t harvest the food farms, you can’t treat those in hospitals, you can’t even travel to your job. Communication fell apart and it was everyone for themselves.

Wars broke out. The only thing we could ever work together on was killing ourselves. There were bombs, wiping out entire cities, desperate riots from the people which devolved into killing for what you needed. Anarchy, but it didn’t matter. No matter how desperately they fought each other, there were no more things to steal. Country A bombed Country B thinking they had food, Country C assassinated Country D’s leader thinking they had energy. Governments wiped each other out without even trying to first work together.

The sad truth is that we could have prevented it all. Even after the resources ran dry, there were options. One country had just broken past huge scientific barriers and successfully harvested energy from nuclear power. It would have saved us, if used right. But it was too late. 

While the rest of the world collapsed under the results of our own actions, we took off using the energy that could have saved us. What had been a dream for generations became a race for survival rather than a golden hand reaching out. Space travel was a necessity now, not a sign of our supremacy but of our idiocy. The final barrier became our only hope.

We had hoped that our calculations of the probability from life were accurate. We had left with the delusional belief that we would find another world like ours that we could populate, and this time learn from our mistakes. It was a necessary belief, if we had known that there was nothing out there we would never have left.

Because the grand dreams of finding new and exotic worlds, of meeting other life forms and getting a second chance didn’t happen. We traveled, and traveled, and traveled. We passed through solar systems and by suns. We scanned the planets for life, for food, for anything. We found nothing.

We had no choice after a while. If we wanted to survive sacrifices needed to be made. It was always random. The ship's inhabitants may have been rich or powerful people back home, but in space emancipated for months, floating in the lifeless void, there was no hierarchy. 

It was barbaric, an insult to the species we had left behind in hope of carrying on. An insult to the previous versions that only a few months before successfully made it into space, but it was our only option. We needed food, and it couldn’t be made like water could by merging atoms together. And while there were no plants, there was meat.

We didn’t talk about it. It was too horrible to acknowledge. At meal time no one talked, no one looked at each other or the empty chairs that had once been full. We all prayed to nothing that we would find a planet soon and we would be saved from eating through the last of our species.

And, like a drop of water to a man lost in a desert, we found it: A planet supporting life. It wasn’t a perfect match, living there would be difficult and trying on our biology but it was a rope out of the hole we had dug ourselves into. 

We thought about going down, truly we did. It had been our original plan, but we had changed. After our savage survival we were not okay with settling on an unknown planet which would be difficult to live on. Our ship worked fine, all we needed was food.

Our morals had fallen so much in relation to our own species, this foreign life meant nothing. There were so many life forms made of fats and muscles that could support everyone left for years to come. Making the seeds was easy, similar bio attacks had already existed on our planet for years before we left. It was easy to take what we already knew and tweak it. 

We didn’t have time to wait, time was given by a life, and no one wanted to be the food when there was so much right below us. 11 were dropped evenly spread out across the lands. The process was accelerated, the roots burrowed down fast beneath the surface and firmly integrated with the planet's surface. Above ground it sprouted thin and high, surely confusing to the native species. 

However they reacted it wouldn’t matter. The roots were too strong, drawing nutrients from the depths of their planet making the stem above ground strong. It was designed to withstand a battlefield, they would not be able to cut it down. 

Their death certificate had been signed the moment the seeds made it passed the atmosphere, but they didn’t know it until the spores fell. Once breathed in there was no remedy. The fat cells of every air breathing species started to rapidly multiply. Within a few weeks they were rendered immobile, fattened up beyond the point of moving. 

It was a careful balance. We wanted to wait long enough to get the maximum harvest, but not too long for them to die. Rotten meat was no good. The machines were sent down. Made to be efficient and quick, a merciful death. It was easy in the end. After all, our species is good at killing things.

The budding civilization was eerily similar to ours. Perhaps, if given the time we’d had, they would be in our place. If they had been allowed to destroy themselves as we did they might be as desperate as we are. But we were faster and they were young. 

It may have been for the best. We saved them from being in our position. We made the hard choices and spared them from going through what we did. Or maybe we could have saved them. We could have warned them of their actions and helped guide them to the greatness our planet had so terribly wanted. We could have still been a golden hand reaching from the stars offering salvation and knowledge. 

But we can’t seem to be able to care. We will not bear guilt over the lives we took as we eat a meal not made of our own for the first time in months. 

As we flew away from the blue planet, celebrating our newfound survival, we labeled the meat after the funny name they seemed to call their planet:

Earth.