A hundred years from now, a major museum is running an exhibition on life and culture as it was during our current historical period. You’re asked to write an introduction for the show’s brochure. What will it say?
Welcome to our 100 year reflection on life as it was before it disappeared. It did not actually disappear, we just ignored it, regarded it as part of a throw away society, but we now have something to remember through the photos. Reflections of a golden age when air could be inhaled from the atmosphere without wearing protective masks and it would have been a colourful world.
To begin a typical Spring meadow showing a variety of colourful flowers. The flowers even had a name because there were so many, they had to be distinguished from another. These were called primula and believe or not, they arrived every year in the same place at the same time. I know you are saying that this is nothing new. Living in your domes you also have these flowers and they are always there, but there is a difference. These are real, yours are artificial, it would no be possible for nature to support their life outside.
One hundred years ago there was something called seasons. Some of the golden oldie visitors to our museum may remember this strange occurrence. Of course countries varied with their seasons according to which part of the world they were situated: north, south, east or west. Today we no longer know these strange laws of nature. Ok, I can hear you asking “what is nature?”. I will come to that in due course. There was a time for every season and Spring was a time of awakening: a time for the flowers to spring out of the ground, bear leaves and stay with us for a short time until they died and were replaced with another sort of flower, the Summer flowers. Following Summer there was Autumn, the weather changing becoming colder but still supporting life with its particular developments. Eventually Winter would arrive and there would be cold over the land. The earth would be resting and awaiting its rebirth in Spring. And so the years passed with their same patterns. This would be so-called nature if it still existed.
Not only were there flowers but animals. You may see a few stuffed examples of cats and dogs in our hall of extinct species. Cats and Dogs were domestic, living together with humans and sharing their way of life. There were many kinds of animals, but unfortunately only a few examples remain, which would being you to the hall of living animals. We have rats that are now and again captured for our exhibition, being the only living survivors of planet “Earth”. Unfortunately we have to refresh the living exhibits as they tend to eat each other, due to to insufficient food supplies.
The climax of our exhibition is the mammal hall. We managed to rescue one special example of this element known as “human” this being the male of the species. I am sure you will recognise this example from photos found of the previous inhabitants of “Earth”. He is very friendly and you can feed him if you want to, although our museum looks after his organic needs. He is dressed in so-called winter clothing, protective against the elements. Our mammal hall has been constructed to change the seasons. He speaks and if you switch on your translation machine you can talk to him. It seems that another example of the species has been found, known as woman, and she will be joining him next month. We thought it would be a pleasure for this member of the human species to have a mate, but it seems they are sometimes happy to be without. We showed this human a photo of his future partner, known as Mrs. Angloswiss on her photo, and he replied “is that all you can offer?” I am sure that “human” will soon accept his partner, we are working on it.
And so enjoy your tour of the planet earth and have a safe return journey to planet Wordy.
No comments:
Post a Comment