vampireapologist:

kassandrosfr:

vampireapologist:

concept: I am granted one wish by the universe, which is to live long enough to see the continents form back into one large supercontinent. For hundreds of years, I bide my times meeting new people, learning new hobbies, taking part in life and culture. For thousands of years, I explore new planets now that space travel is easily accessible. Eventually, I am grounded on earth for good, for millions of years. Mostly alone.

With no humans left to make conversation, I wander at my leisure, sometimes sitting for a very long time, sometimes walking for months on end, swimming across seas, cataloguing the rise and fall of plants and animals, doing cartwheels up mountains, and napping for millennia at a time near fault lines so I can be rocked to sleep by the rumble of the Earth.

Every few million years, I make my way back to the very edge of one continent and watch the progress of the convergence. I swim across the gap and take a look at it from the other side. I try to remember my geology 101 class from 50 million years ago. I can’t remember why continents move in the first place. I decide it doesn’t matter why. They just are.

Eventually, it’s been 125 million years. I don’t know that exactly, of course. I haven’t been keeping track. But there is only about 10 meters left between the final land masses that need to meet to satisfy me. Of course, by now, the land is one large mass, but I’ve been waiting for it to meet in this particular spot. For more than 100 million years. So I sit and wait.

Some sort of insect hops onto my knee. This is amazing, I think. I haven’t seen an insect around here in 10,000 years. Where did it come from? I’m staring at it until it eventually dies, and then I stare at its body until it becomes dust. Finally, I look back up.

The continents have come together. I wasn’t paying attention. I fuckin’ missed it.

“oh my god” the universe says. “to fulfill your wish you have to SEE it happen, you were VERY specific. now you have to wait for them to separate and come together AGAIN.”

I go look for more bugs.

In a few hundred million years, the sun will become so hot that life cannot exist on earth anymore, though. We’re actually near the end of the habitability of earth in geological terms. There’s less than a billion years left in which life can exist on earth. (This is completely separate from global warming caused by co2 emissions and takes place on vast geological time spans – just the life cycle of the sun.)

I know that’s why it’s so amazing I found a bug.