Author's Note: I've been working on this for a long time. Life's been rough, but I'm still here. I hope someone enjoys this story.

tw: death, existential horror, cosmic horror, extinction

If you are reading this, then I have succeeded, and my life finally has meaning. My species is gone, and so am I. Destroyed by our own hubris. Life formed on our planet five billion years ago, and by the time you read this not a single cell will remain. Our leaders have failed us, and our planet is dead. This will be my last work. A record of my species, my planet, and if my translator works I hope it may make this information useful to you. May this serve as a warning to all sentient beings. Do not make the mistakes we have made. Do not destroy yourselves for greed.

The word for my species translates to “The Transcendent”, a name we gave ourselves out of vanity. More accurate names would be “The Consumption”, “The Arrogant”, “The Greedy”, “The Fools”. We saw this apocalypse coming, and our leaders did nothing, the wealthy and powerful did nothing. Their vanity made them believe they were invincible. They thought they would be able to escape. Because of greed and vanity all twelve billion of us have died, and the plants and animals of our planet with us. We consumed our planet. We saw its resources as ours to exploit, and so we exploited. Every mineral, every plant, every animal was simply there to further progress our technology, and our amusement. Our planet was beautiful before. So I'd been told. I am not old enough to have seen its natural beauty in person. Only ancient photographs and diagrams remain of nature. Our planet has become a wasteland, with only a single city covering nearly one third of the planet remaining, and it is about to be destroyed.

Our deaths are not because of our destruction of the natural environment, our burning of the forests, nor our poisoning of the oceans. Those disasters have long been dealt with. Our scientists theorized that climate disaster has been the end of many sentient species, and perhaps that may be why we never found any others in our pursuit through the stars. Our climate disasters were handled, although not everything made it out alive. The natural environment is already gone. The only plants and animals that remain are those being farmed, and those too will perish with us. By the time you're reading this, they will already be destroyed. I wish you could have seen them, reader. The blue grasses of my world were beautiful. Their waxy leaves made them resilient, and it always seemed like nothing could rid the world of some of the most basic plants. Purple and green flowers grow as weeds in our artificial lawns. The last vestiges of what used to grow freely outside of our cities. Had we not poisoned the land, those resilient flowers may have survived the coming apocalypse. The flying reptiles that once were a nuisance have died out. The few that lived in cities have been hunted to extinction by the desperate and hungry. The small animals that once invaded our homes have fled to the wastes, where they will surely starve. The molds that once grew in dark, moist corners are the only things resembling life that seem like they may survive, but nothing can truly make it out of this disaster.

We are doomed because of greed, and vanity. Our scientists warned them that their greed would destroy our planet, but they never listened. The powerful thought themselves above consequences, even as our planet screamed out in pain. Even as the planet fought back. Even as chemicals poisoned our land and oceans. The beaches are impossible to traverse now. The stench of decay is unbearable, and the ground is no longer solid. Deep sea animals that had never seen the blue light of our twin suns washed up en masse. Entire species were declared extinct before they were first identified by scientists. The only records we have of some animals are photos of half-rotted corpses or skeletal remains.

The worst thing about the coming apocalypse is that the poisoning of our planet was intentional. Our governments assured us that the military knew what they were doing in their fight against the “other”. The wars seemed to never end. The enemy seemed unstoppable, because it was all fake. We could see through it, but we felt helpless to stop them. Fake wars against fake enemies in the name of control. They released chemical weapons that destroyed all possibility of life in the areas they were deployed. They were even more effective than anyone could have predicted. Weapons designed to poison entire countries, but certainly the effects can be contained. Foolishly, they were used on the guilty and the innocent. Our planet will be habitable to life once more in no less than twelve million years. Even now, days before the end, those responsible think they can escape responsibility. They are wrong.

My species deserves to be forgotten, but my planet does not. The purple sands of the Deadlands were home to such beautiful plants. The tall pink cactuses towering over the vast landscape like a forest, and our forests were beautiful too. Leaves in every color imaginable dotted many hills and valleys. The planet is too hot now for water to freeze, but our planet used to be entirely frozen at the bottom half. Even then, it sustained such a beautiful variety of life. Plants that could handle the frozen tundra, animals that found creative, amazing ways to stay warm, even some species of fungi thrived in places colder than most life could handle.