Broken Skies

It was a lovely morning. The weather was a pleasant 152 degrees, with the air pressing down on my head at just over 102 times the atmosphere’s. Neat.

I got up and stretched myself, too lazy to start my day. Today was a day off, just like any other day for the past 203,000 years. I had worked really hard to get my life going. And work had not been pretty. Everyday had involved dirt, slush, disembodied body parts, and corpses over a hundred thousand years old. Working at perfecting this technology of mine which had spread so far and wide, it was now almost universal. And I was at the center of this huge revolution, which made our life two miles below the earth so energy rich, that none of us would have to worry about it for at least the next three thousand years. Now we just called it the ocean. It was our mother, our life.

But there had been problems. There still were. We called them intruders. Bandits . Plunderers. Outlaws. Shameless pirates who destroyed our skies and looted our life. We planned and plotted as to how we would destroy them. Take back our rights, and get back what was rightfully ours. Maybe tomorrow…

My thoughts were interrupted by a raging noise from above which was all too familiar to me. It couldn't be. It couldn't! I rushed outside. O God!

The hundreds of us there could only stare in anger and shock as the brown skies rained themselves down. Rock and debris thudded our rooftops, reducing our houses to another chunk in the ocean where we lived. Now they wouldn’t stop till the ocean was dry.

The noise got louder and louder, and in less than ten minutes the skies had shattered. The monster had penetrated it. The monster, with seventy five teeth and three heads, and a neck that was several thousand feet long.

Humans. Goddam you bastards.

***

7,200 feet above the brown skies, the human wiped his forehead. It had been a long month. He walked down wearily to the company man’s office.

“We’re done with the drilling, sir. It’s looking good.”

“Let’s get on with it, Ahmed… start laying down the drill pipe. We need to start producing before the end of the week. This well’s got amazing oil reserves.”