A World Without a Heartbeat

Somewhere out there...

Somewhere out there, there is a version of Earth that lacks a heartbeat. A planet which is peaceful but barren, quiet but empty, circling the sun as a forgotten piece of rock with no one to admire it, care for it, or even do the opposite. It is devoid of the one thing that makes it ours.

It is devoid of humanity.

A world such as this one spins all on its lonesome. Its land masses face the moon with no myths to offer it, no legends of the man within it, nobody to lasso it, nobody to show their appreciation for its silver rays that light up the lone traveler’s path, nothing at all. The only words exchanged, the only sounds, are the hushed call of the night animals and the whispers of trees in the unappreciated breeze. There is no one to sigh in relief as it passes through, to say, “oh, what a lovely breeze”, the coyotes and wolves simply stop and let it rustle their fur, then pad onwards to sink their teeth into the night’s unsuspecting prey.

Perhaps it is considered a peaceful world. Perhaps it is one that does not know humanity, but that does not mean it does not know bloodshed or brutality. Mother Nature provides her fair share of that just fine.

Yet the world is still a lonely place.

Nobody dares to scale the mountains, the animals stay where they are put, nobody dreams of conquest and things greater than themselves, nobody follows the stars in the night sky, nobody wonders about the sun, no ships cross the sea to discover foreign lands and foreign people. The ocean’s waves roll on in solitude, their only company being that of the clouds, the sun, and quiet, undiscovered strings of islands. Even those sit silently on forgotten seas, accompanied by lapping waves and the unheard calls of seabirds.

When it arrives, the year 1492 passes without a cent spent or a wave crossed. There is nobody on either side of the Atlantic to stand on their continent’s shore and wave at the other. There are no American Indians and there are no Spaniards, there is no Great Britain and there is no dream of thirteen colonies; there is just the ancient, never ending Appalachian forestry and the howling of winds that never seize the chance to become the haunting legends of Windigo or Bigfoot. The winds are just winds, the trees are just trees, and the call of the mountain cat is simply the call of the mountain cat.

July fourth, 1776 drifts between the maws of wild animals who have never looked towards the horizons of freedom. There are no guillotines in France, nothing glimmers with the sheen of blood but the claws of the lynx and the carcass of its prey, and the only frenzy in Haiti in 1791 is the frenzy of crocodiles going after water-borne meals.

The nineteenth century slips past without a trace of smoke or the mighty sound of a train thundering down its tracks. There is no debate on who can own what, what is righteous and what is not, there is no such thing as righteousness, only survival. No gun equalizes the American west, and Africa rests away from the hands of hungry European powers, stirring only with the sound of wild dogs and the chortling of zebras.

The twentieth century pushes the prior one aside with no New Years celebration, no fireworks or songs, Auld Lang Syne is only conceived in the minds of a nonexistent people, and the animals do not hold the same appreciation for the passage of time. No champagne is popped, no kisses exchanged, no smiles, no confetti.

A quiet hurricane rages in the Gulf of Mexico.

July of 1914 arrives without the sound of gunfire. Five months pass and no fighting is stopped for Christmas, there is no Christmas; God has chosen another Earth to house the Virgin Mary and her son. No gifts passed between loved ones, no offerings of coffee to soldiers in trenches, no soccer games and no silver tunes of Christmas carols.

Just foxes in their real fox holes, licking their cold fox kits, wondering when the snow will pass.

In the late thirties, there is nobody to dream of taking Poland, there is no Poland to take.

August of 1945 passes with a deafening silence.

In what is supposed to be the fifties, humans on opposite sides of the world do not look to the sky and talk of walking across the moon. It is an impossible thought, to walk on something so far away, something that is not much more than a silver dot that comes and goes.

The animals turn their heads.

There are no rockets sent up. The moon remains alone. He will never know the comfort of footprints on his surface or the planting of a nation’s flag in his dust. There is no humanity to extend its fingers to what lies beyond, reaching, as one, to the distant worlds and distant societies, hoping that someone will come across what they have made and discover the beauty in it.

Those thoughts are far away; a flicker of a dream in the minds of sleeping deer and polar bears.

Where theaters are meant to be, the land lays quiet, a silent grave for things that will never happen. There is no art. No literature to study and admire, no poems to recite, no naive love letters to exchange and hold close, no paintings to hang up and no sketches to tuck away into secret sketchbooks.

Dawns and dusks pass, unadmired, there is nothing to compare them to but the fleeting lives of wild beasts who are only remembered in fossilized mud and bone. They have no legends and no written language. There are no cave paintings to sit and wonder about, there is nobody to bask in the fact that those paintings were the signs of a blossoming humanity, there is no appreciation for things that were never there.

Earth sleeps.

It spins, alone, without its active heart, just the gentle breathing of wind and brief flutters between night and day with nothing to mark the passage of time; nobody to reach to worlds beyond, nobody to remember the one they aren’t on, not even the moon.