The Great Human Empire

The year is 7056 AD. Planet Earth is not what it was five thousand years ago. The Great Flood of 2010 ended the once prosperous terrestrial life in the planet. Great continents immersed into the sea, the human civilisation was destroyed. Only very high lands in the Himalayas and the Alps survived the Flood. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans merged; Africa and Australia went under seabed. All the creatures living in land died. Only few aquatic species made it to the dawn of a new civilisation. The world became an ocean hence giving rise to entirely new inhabitants of the planet called the Logabians.

Logabians are species that evolved six hundred years after The Great Flood. They are averagely sized and closely resemble to the primates, only the difference being they live underwater. The most remarkable feature about these creatures is that they are one of the only mammals to have lived aquatic. They are adapted to live in warm water towards shallower parts of oceans. They are intelligent and they possess the power to think just like the 20th century humans. Their power of thought has helped them build an empire of their own. They populate the oceans compared to any other aquatic species. They can perceive, interpret and express. Such of these abilities make them the ultimate dominants of the New Aquatic Age. Life in earth has changed, whatever it was five thousand years ago is in the books of history. The Logabians have their museum where they collect samples of human life before the Great Flood. Uzak Mablost is a historian, archaeologist and researcher and he is currently exploring the relics of human life now reduced under the ocean.

"It's wonderful." Uzak exclaimed. "Isn't it gorgeous?" He could not believe his eyes to what he saw. "It's like a reef - reef of diamonds!" He said looking at the marvellous patterns of reflections the "reef" caused against the pathfinder light of his vessel. "Can you give me the locations please." Uzak asked his new assistant intern, Ima Varmehan.

"Yes sir, we're going -73.94 degrees west to 40.78 north over the Paci-Atlantic Rim, current depth is 19,405 feet. We're at the west ridge of the harbour. Sir, we are approaching the ruins of the New York City." Ima replied.

"Magnificent. These were the buildings made by human beings. It's amazing, how could they do anything this big?" Uzak exclaimed gazing at the tall buildings in the lower Manhattan. The shiny "reef" he saw was the reflection from the glasses in these building windows. They slowly entered the underwater city, now soaked with 5000 years of algae, barnacles and moss. Uzak stared in bewilderment. A large stingray drifted out from one of the broken windows and sailed off from over Uzak's head. Uzak had never seen the human civilisation this closely. It was his fantasy to witness the evidences that connected two worlds set apart by the difference of five thousand years.

"Sir, I have found something. It's like a pre historic gadget." Ima called out from behind.

Uzak quickly went to see what the thing was. Ima presented a little black device to Uzak. He held it closely and examined it against the flashlight. It was an electronic device with a screen and lot of buttons into it.

"Something is written here in the 20th century Roman script. I can't read Roman." Ima said. As Uzak had taken a special course and he could read Roman script. "N-O-K-I-A. Nokia X4934 cellphone! It is one of the telecommunication devices used by humans. It works on lithium cell energy! And this device could actually help humans communicate, read, write and memorise things. Can you think of a non-living object that can read and memorise? Isn't it fascinating?"

"It is. But what is that large yellow thing over there. I never saw anything like that before." Ima said, frustrated, pointing out to an overturned yellow cab in the corner of the street.

"It's a vessel that can move. It's called a 'taxi,' I believe. It needed to be energised from liquid hydrocarbons. Humans actually dug the hydrocarbons out from inside of the earth then and filtered it to purer forms like we do today. They did things five thousand years ago we cannot even think of doing today. Did you know they produced energy from things like water, air, fire and even nucleus of an atom? They created birds out of steel that could fly high up in the air. They boarded inside what they called an "aeroplane" and it could go up to a speed of 200 miles an hour.

Human beings could do anything. They found remedies to their sickness from nature. They could transplant their body organs among each other. Humans could talk to each other without physical presence through a medium they called the 'Internet.' They had lived a very prosperous life towards the beginning of the 21st century. Humans had already then travelled to outer space. They had solutions of every query; they could mend ways for anything. Almost anything." Uzak sighed.

"If they could mend ways for anything, why couldn't they make ways to save themselves and other species from being extinct?" Ima asked in a very deep voice.

"Yes. They thought they could never extinct. They never looked at things that way. If nature gave them an incredibly analytical brain, at the same time filled it with malice and strife. They had ways to sustain life and continue their species forever, but they always wanted more. They never wondered what would happen if they kept utilising the resources without replacement. At the beginning of the 21st century, already six billion humans had populated the planet. They needed food, energy, place to live in and commodities for everyday use." Uzak said exploring through the floors of the buildings.

"Humans didn't think about the resources. They believed their deeds wouldn't affect the nature. They kept using up. Fuel was scarce, so the more they needed, the more had to be extracted. These fuels made fouls moke that collected up in the air. Slowly, it began to affect the ice reserves high in the mountains and the poles. Ice was melting and fast. But humans did not bother. This kept the earth's temperature increasing until a time when the ice began to melt at an enormous speed."

"Then came the catastrophe, isn't it? The Great Flood." Ima asked.

"Yes. But humans invited it and then they had to pay the price for using rampant resources, destroying the natural reserves, urbanisation and population growth. It was one fateful day when the melted ice from mountains came running down to the inhabitants. It destroyed every living creature in the planet. Creatures died having no grounds for rehabilitation. The only ones left were in the oceans, and that's how we, the Logabians evolved. Nature had us as the next link in the evolution chain. Maybe that's the nature's way of sustaining life in the planet in one form or the other. Maybe humans were meant to extinct - for their deeds, for their destiny." Uzak had a tired look on his face.

Ima was sad but at the same time he had many more questions in his mind. It was a pre historic fantasy Ima wanted to explore. They were so many things he had not yet understood about the creatures called human beings that once ruled the planet. Ima looked blankly at the deserted roads, the weed and sea plants growing out from the remains of the Great Human Empire.

Uzak got into his vessel and started the propellers. "Hey Ima, come on in, we must leave now."

Ima looked at the Nokia X4934 in his gripper. Marvel! He wondered how the humans would have operated it. He stared at it sometime, grasped it and rushed towards the vessel.