Page 70 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

Minutes of the Posterity Planning Commission

divorced from basic subsistence, will tear themselves apart. Wars
over diminishing resources are certain to occur. Weapons may be
unleashed which render large portions of the planet uninhabitable—
even were they otherwise capable of sustaining life. The immediate
causes of this disaster—overpopulation, pollution of the air, water
and soil, unregulated release of carbon dioxide—will cease as Homo
sapiens, nature’s self-limiting experiment with an intelligent but
irrational species, becomes a minor inhabitant of a biosphere favoring
insects and mold.”
“Try, if you will, to extrapolate the results of global cataclysm on
this island. Law and order will dissolve. Recorded sources of
information, here as elsewhere, are vulnerable to destruction by
superstitious mobs or disintegration through time and neglect.
Needless to say, Kalamoku will have no more tourist trade, no
pineapple or banana exports—in fact, it is not possible to predict
which plants will get through the worst of it—but we must assume
humanity will continue, in small pockets, around the globe, each with
its own orally-transmitted memories of what happened and what life
on earth might have been like in a near-mythical past, when people
had self-propelled vehicles and automated tools, could communicate
over vast distances and even challenge the gods for supremacy of the
sky. Kalamoku is no exception. Nothing, by the time some early
version of modern civilization and its technology again appear, and a
sailing vessel again comes upon this island in the course of
rediscovering a spherical world, would be the same. No Manapua, no
Chamber of Commerce, no airport for jumbo jets. We are looking at
a period of isolation equivalent to an ice age, perhaps five hundred
generations. Kalamoku might well then recapitulate the entire
colonial experience—but what the conquerors of your distant
descendants would look like is anybody’s guess. They might not be
Caucasian.”

The chairman again had to restore order, rapping on the table with a
gavel improvised from a souvenir kukui carving. After the outbreak
subsided, Dr. Hagalian hastily continued her remarks.

“I know what I have presented is depressing to the point of
eliciting denial and apathy. If what I have described is inevitable,
what meaningful action can we take? My answer is none—for

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