The Invitation(41)
The image changes and zooms in to the advancing line of ice for a closer view. An incredible sight is then seen. Blocks and blocks of ice, gigantic in size, a thousand feet high, groaning and cracking as if it were a living thing, form a picture that seems to defy explanation. Our guide continues.
“Encountering warm air at around fifty degrees northern latitude, the ice finally stops its advance. Both northern, and southern poles are capped with massive ice sheets covering hundreds of thousands of square miles. Gargantuan in size, together they will cover over twenty percent of the total surface area of your planet. Extremes of heat and cold reach a point of temporary equilibrium. Though the poles are now ice-capped, in the middle of your planet extreme heat dominates with an average daily temperature of 125 degrees. In mountainous areas, sparse human populations escape the worst effects of the heat by living at higher altitudes, but have difficulty finding enough food. Others form cave colonies trying to adapt to a subterranean existence. The turbulent, perpetually churning atmosphere produces powerful storms of titanic force. Hurricanes rage with unprecedented fury, and rake the land with damaging winds. To the north and south of the equator, deserts now dominate all continental land masses, and where they stop, a white wall of glacial ice a thousand feet high claims everything beyond. There at the geographical interface of ice, and heat, in both the northern, and southern hemispheres, a narrow band of temperate weather no more than sixty miles wide, fluctuates unpredictably. It’s here that the exiguous, remaining populations of humanity cling tenuously to grim survival.
A creature who touched extreme places from the highest mountain peak to the deepest ocean trench, you claimed the Earth as yours. Your ventures were so bold; your footprints are on the moon. Your mastery of the world was in reality never anything more than a seductive, dangerous illusion. The abused Earth, that bred and nourished life now threatens and challenges its abuser, like a captive animal that remembers its tormentor. The world that man now inhabits is bleak, inhospitable, and dangerous. There is no law, and very little food. The water supply is provided by the melting ice, but when ice dams suddenly give way, floods can kill thousands. Migrant populations are constantly on the move, looking for better living conditions. So much ocean water being bound up in glacial ice has dramatically lowered sea levels. If you were inclined, you could walk to China over the Bering land bridge. If you did, you would see the largest desert since the Pangean wastelands of 300 million years ago. The teeming bulk of thronging humanity, once ten billion strong, no longer exists. The largest continental land mass on your planet now has an average population density of twelve human beings for every one hundred square miles. The magnificent array of animal life that a mere five thousand years ago abounded in your world has been lost forever. Tigers, elephants, primates, marine mammals, the great herds of grazing herbivores that roamed the African plains for millions of years, are all extinct. The most comprehensive global extinction since the K2 boundary event 65 million years ago has run its course. Global human population has fallen to no more than forty million, less than one percent of its former peak.”
The mammoth image occupying the night sky then slowly zooms out to show the entire Earth from pole to pole, and a strange picture comes into view. Unbelievably massive ice caps are prominent on the north, and south poles. Where the white glacial ice ends, the tan colored sands of endless desert begins with only occasional splotches of green in mountainous areas.
For those gathered in Olympic Stadium in Miami, the image evokes a varied response in people. Most are silent. Some are sobbing. Still others are talking as if they’re watching another double feature at the drive-in theater. Perhaps years of watching television has changed their perception of what constitutes reality. As the silent image hangs ominously in the night sky the picture fades from view, and the alien face of the creature called a Linesian once again appears, as incredibly bizarre, as before.
“This then is your future, or rather the future that your descendants must endure. We offer an alternative. To the nations, and people of Earth we offer an invitation, an invitation into your own future. For this night, we have shown you enough. We know you are beings with a nocturnal sleep cycle. Tomorrow night when darkness comes, we will appear again.”
As people continue watching, they see the broad image that has been dominating a full quarter of the night sky now shrink to form a narrow beam of light. A beam of energy now descends, and is reabsorbed by the alien craft, still silent, and motionless in Olympic Stadium, making it clear that it was the source of the images just seen projected across the sky for the past five hours. Now those images are gone, and will not appear again until tomorrow night. Most are silent, and crestfallen. Many stand dumbfounded, not knowing what to think or do. Some begin leaving. Others with blankets claim a space on the ground. Still others, for some unexplained reason are in a festive mood.