She checked her watch.

It was an older piece, something not made anymore, but still functional.
It remained correct twice a day.

The streets were empty.   The air was bare.
She felt slightly disrespectful by moving as it caused little unseen winds around her.
She had caused an expenditure of energy that was not needed.  Wasted.

Cold.  Still.  Gray.  Yet, pristine and perfect.
Not an ounce of effort or energy wasted.   Not a bit was used.   Perfect life is no life at all.

Glancing at her watch again, the time had not changed.  It was still half-passed armageddon.

Armageddon hadn’t come about as they said it would.   It wasn’t fire, lotus, or plague.   It wasn’t earthquakes, global warming, or aliens.

Rather, it was more personal and profound.

Starting in the United States, groupthink declared that existence was a living sin.  What they ate harmed Mother Earth.  Their ambitions and goals damaged potential unborn futures to the very extent that having a child jeopardized any chance of global success.  Their breath exhaled toxins.   Even their bodies had ceased to be biodegradable as traces of teflon, metal, and plastic settled into veins and coated bones.

Earth rejected God’s creations just as she does the rest of the trash.

Through logical and emotional soul searching, many felt that there wasn’t a need to exist.  Lives full of unreproachable regret and climate distress should be ended.  Better to harm mature dead instead of alive, it would be best.

For the greater good.

Slowly, at first, then with greater numbers, suicides and murders became the prominent ways to become landfill fodder.  Children were slain by loving parents for hamburgers they had yet to eat.    Then came the elderly as they were the ones who owned the blame of the situation.    Finally, they themselves through careful non-environment harming or disease spreading ways.

The bodies were not burned as that would pollute the air.  They did not drownd as that would harm the sea.  Being buried was out of the question as that would spoil the earth. Rather, the children and elderly were carefully mashed into small highly compact boxes and sealed away in the bowels of the Earth.

Suicides generally wrapped themselves in peat moss and drank organic insecticide.   A slow way of going, yes, but effective over a period of days.  Their dying hope was for the parts that could be recycled would and leftover toxins be forever trapped in the moss without spreading out into the wild.

Here, all was gone.
Save her and a watch that was right only twice a day.

The future was here.
It was sterile and lonely.

The animals didn’t care the humans died for their benefit.
They were still alive.
The Earth revolved, unknowing of what sacrifices took place to keep her intact.
She persisted, as she always had.   Life always finds a way.

Until life, human life, decides it is a sin.