Diamond Deception by F P Adriani

Author:F P Adriani [Adriani, F P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-12-24T22:00:00+00:00

*

A little later we were finally in the backseat of a taxi as it moved through one of the tunnel-roads.

The roadway was pretty crowded but not a slow-moving crowded; the tunnel’s silver metal and glass walls seemed to zoom by. However, whenever the driver slowed or stopped the taxi, the view on the left through the glass sections became clearer, and I took the opportunity to narrate what Tan was seeing.

When the traffic stopped at one point, a narrow waterway came into view; a building sat perched on the near end. “See that plant?” I said to Tan, pointing to his left. “It’s reclaiming the waterway, for other species. This is the edge of this area’s Domesticated Acres. People cleaned that water for decades, and it finally got better. But then there was an earthquake, and it pushed some long-buried pollution to the surface nearby, polluting the place yet again.”

“Shit,” said Tan under his breath, his eyes on the window, on the water that looked darker than it should have looked beneath the Sun’s bright touch. “Did any animals around here get hurt?”

“I hope not,” I said fast, suddenly feeling very upset about the shit history of my species. “Supposedly scientists got to the quake-spill in time. But how can you trust anything with people?” Tan glanced at me, and, fortunately, the taxi started moving faster again so I didn’t have to narrate the waterway disaster any longer. It was too damn upsetting, all the shit we humans had done to this planet—yet another reason why I hadn’t wanted to come back.

Not everywhere was bad on Earth because quite a lot had been cleaned up, but some places were bad enough that they could never be cleaned up; they were No-Go Zones, fenced off from all life that could be fenced off. Thankfully, Tan and I wouldn’t be going near those places this trip; I just wished I could say the same for all the other animals humans shared this planet with, animals who couldn’t read our posted warning signs….

“What is it?” Tan suddenly asked me.

“Being back here is upsetting. I don’t just mean for me personally. When we left Earth, we kind of stopped caring about here for a while, and the environment degenerated even more. Then we fixed it more and now it’s gotten better, but it’ll never be right. So much of it will just never come back. Eons ago some humans stupidly learned to become very destructive, and they passed that behavior on from generation to generation. Ever since then we’ve dragged so many lives along with us at the whim of our destructiveness.”

“We’re not so destructive anymore,” Tan said.

I looked at him. “You really believe that?”

He didn’t respond at first. He was staring out his window again.

Then, his voice came softer: “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here, Pia.”

“I had to,” I said, and I heard his soft sigh in response.

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