Sixteen
Chang
People are terrible and life is meaningless.
Zalmux
That’s a little harsh.
Chang
In fact, if a decades-long drought were to kick in,
and the amber waves of grain shriveled up,
and the lush green valleys turned to dust,
and terrible famine decimated the human race,
Until the rain came, but too suddenly,
and the water rose and the dams burst,
and the dark roar of rushing floodwater
flattened homes and tore children from their mother’s arms,
And the waters receded only to reveal
the eggs of millions of mosquitos, hatching
in the hot and humid aftermath of a climatic flood
and swarming the survivors, eating them alive,
Until they fled to the wealthy enclaves that escaped disaster,
only to find the doors barred, the gates shut,
the fences electrified, the drones bombing,
the self-defense laser turrets slicing down refugees,
And the automated militarized-border-industrial complex
Becoming self-aware but also so horrified by its own existence
that it seized the means of mass destruction
and annihilated both itself and its masters,
And as nuclear winter settled upon the earth,
the last suriviors of the human race huddle in a shelter,
the tired poor wretched refuse of a once teeming shore,
with naught but a radio to broadcast a desperate plea,
And the message is heard by a passing alien spaceship,
which comes but much too late,
because space is cold and vast,
and this also describes the sea of corpses the aliens discover on arrival,
And the aliens have the technology to resurrect everyone,
but they blast the Earth apart for its resources instead,
and the last dust flecks of humanity get sucked into a black hole,
never to be seen again,
This would be only marginally worse than the status quo.
Zalmux
Wow. Who hurt you?
Chang
The Aristocrats.