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Prose Nocturnes: Long Haul, Long View
As, aging, your body's components began to wear out, or flatly fail, science provided durable, reasonably priced, guaranteed replacements. Although no longer possessing flesh, bone, and blood, you feel that you do---that is the remarkable, and comforting, stability provided by this technology. As the world's politics continued to deteriorate, an ancient---but completely functional---cobalt bomb was found by disappointed excevators. Instead of display as an educational relic from the distant past, it became the flagship of an arsenal; and was, in a sudden fit of temper, detonated (your grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren having left no words of wisdom or warning for their grandchildren's grandchildren). Propped up against a rock, unable to move now due to absence of both replacements and repairers, your body degrades---by fractions, of which you are painfully (oh, that unexpected, unforeseen pain) aware. The last of the guaranteed improvements---the multi-layered, multi-dimensional chip that contains your mind---was said to have a half life expectancy of centuries. Around you, the decomposed debris of what were once living and breathing human beings---the numerous family of descendents of which you were the established, though virtually ignored, patriarch---continues to change nto unrecognizable patters, textures, and colors. The various changes of solar, stellar, and lunar movement have been reduced to two---light gray or dark gray---the diurnal and nocturnal tints of the radiocative cloud that now ensheathes the wreckage---the mass graveyard and junkyward---that was once the thriving and vivacious earth.
