The Virus

    In times before the billions had perished, exponential functions filled a graph that all rose simultaneously: surface temperature, motor vehicles, CO2 concentration, deforestation, extinctions, ozone depletion, GDP, water use, foreign investments; all growing rapidly beyond our control.  Little did we know that an unknown variable resulted from the benevolence of technology, curing us of disease and lessening our ailments, helping us live longer and making our ability to spread stronger.  However much we denied it, four billion was the critical mass, and once we stepped beyond there was no looking back.  Now, standing in boxcars that take us to the sea, we see piles of bodies rotting in the haze of a junkyard that extends for a thousand miles across the plains.  At first, we thought they were mountains of garbage; just plastic shrapnel from all the gyres that spun out in oceanic currents the size of Texas that had been gathered up by pincers for the postindustrial economy.  Most of the functions that destroyed us flattened out after the purge, returning them to rates more familiar to the authority of nature.  Like a plague we consumed the hosts of every territory we occupied and moved to another place after we’d finished, to do the same thing all over again.  It was no surprise then, that the only way for the Earth to stop us was to give us a taste of our own medicine; to unleash a virus that modified the imbalance created by our vanity to control it.