The tick of the clock was the students’ hub as their professor droned on in the background. More than half of Mr. Ralph’s students had started off as vigorous young pupils, and nearly that same amount currently sat in his class ogling idly at the ceiling. Their eyes followed the second hand on the big, brass clock around and around, the second hand becoming a small carousel horse that goes up and down in a never-ending loop, and they counted down to the second the time they had remaining in this mundane class. There were periodic huffs of ennui from all throughout the large room and in the back, where the class clowns sat, there were loud, obnoxious jokes made at the professor’s expense. The students no longer even carried the pretense that the professor’s teachings sparked interest.
However, there was one student, a young lady by the name of Arin Kaliska, who sat in her chair with upright posture and an intent, but reserved, look on her face, as if she was trying not to show how interested she was in the professor’s story. She strained her ears, but she could hardly hear the professor’s quiet voice over the ruckus of the scholars. As yet another pencil flew into the back of her head, she felt tears well up in her eyes. The chance to fulfill her surreptitious desire of knowledge was signaled to disband at the ringing of a bell, and the pulsing of the clock on the wall was rapidly becoming her enemy.
The bell did ring, though, and left a hollow aching still rumbling throughout Arin as the other students cheered and ran outside. Nearing the door with unwilling steps, she turned to glance back at her beloved classroom and was suddenly pushed aside by Buck Hearne. Buck was a big kid who had accidentally knocked down so many kids on the playground when he was younger that he had found truth in the saying, “the best defense is a good offense”.
“Watch where you’re going,” Buck sneered and walked out the door.
Two pasty hands reached out to help her up, and Arin found Mr. Ralph’s elderly face comforting when she looked up. His eyes, a brilliant sapphire, seemed ubiquitous and sharp when he was teaching, but she realized now that they were delicate with the wisdom of years.
“You were listening to my story, were you not?” he asked, a slow smile inching across his ancient face.
Arin nodded animatedly. She could faintly hear his words swimming in her ears, but they ran away, and she became a lone coyote trying to chase down a deer. If she was joined by a few others to help with the hunt, the words would be hers to devour, but she was alone in her venery.
“Do you understand much of what I said?”
Arin’s eyes brightened. Here was a wolf, with the deer strewn out at its feet, and it was offering to feed her! She shook her head and prepared to delve into a delicious feast.
“Let me explain,” Mr. Ralph began. “We always thought that the end of our world would come in fires and floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, or alien invasions and zombies. That was not what happened.”
“The apocalypse of our human race came straight from the fiery pits of the political court. It came from the greed that burned our hearts and stamped them with the mark of death. It came from the selfish center of our pitiful lives. And, most of all, it came from the promises we so faithfully believed in until the day of our destruction.”
“Now,” Mr. Ralph said. “Sit down and get comfortable, because, if you will let me, I would like to tell you the story again. This time, listen carefully, for each event leads to the next one, and so on, until the end of the story arrives- so precipitously you would never suspect anything at all. And maybe that is why no one did anything to stop it.”

My seventh grade teacher was an intriguing character that decorated her room with flowers and elaborate designs. The pink walls made a boy shudder in fear of entering the room. So, in order to maintain, or gain, my reputation, I learned to roll my eyes and sneer every time I entered. I believed that it helped my manly physique. However, neither my teacher nor my classmates believed so, and the myriad of insults and teasing with which I was accustomed continued to rain down on me throughout the year.
The year of 2032 was a frenzied and confusing time for a fourth grader, and it was then that I learned how politicians lied. I was rooting for a specific candidate that I believed would cure this world of every evil upon it. Every day, I scurried home in hopes to watch some of his speeches before dinner. I would be nestled on the floor, in a trance, until my mother reminded me that there was a sofa, and that it was meant to be sat on. Then I would watch, and watch, and watch until mother called me for dinner.
With each day patterned in such a similar routine, I rarely ever got too excited over anything. However, there was one thing I was positively euphoric about. The presidential election. It was a chance for the human race to start over again. For us to stop driving around in our air-conditioned gas monsters while the rest of the world breathed in toxic air. Although it was true that everyone who could afford to do so had those palatial electric cars and that they were supposed to be “healthier” for the environment, those people only did so because it was the “right” thing to do. Not to mention, they would have otherwise been attacked by the rare environmentalist shouting: “You egotistical, narcissistic, conceited, (insert long-winded insult here), fool!”
Our country was well aware of our desperate need to stop this heinous treatment of our home, our once lush and green Mother Earth. In fact, the whole world was aware. Still, they did nothing to stop it. As far as I could see, the only hope of fixing our mistakes was in this election.
By now, I had watched the campaign (and its many re-runs) so often that I could repeat nearly half of my candidate’s speeches word for word. Naively, I assumed that I knew everything about him. I assumed that he would follow up on his promises to make the world a better place. I assumed that he would tell the world what a horrible job they were doing at taking care of our home. I assumed that people would realize their mistakes and he would help them to fix them.
I soon realized that people do not like to be told they are wrong.
On November 2, 2032, I watched the TV screen in horror as the polls were taken and accounted for. My politician’s opposition climbed higher in votes, and then… won. I believed that we were doomed.
You see, I did not trust this guy. It was more than just the regular icky “he’s a politician” feeling of distrust- it was a full-on feeling of helplessness that sent eerie shivers down my spine each time he spoke. Little did I know that my politician was in on this, and that the election went exactly how they had planned. Though I found out soon enough. The whole world found out.
When the news reporters delivered the appalling news that the president and runner-up were two scheming tricksters who had deceived their way up into positions of power, I was sitting on the floor of my living room complaining to my mother about the dramas of fourth grade while she bustled around the kitchen. I stopped talking, and a china plate fell from my mother’s hands. She proceeded to race around the house locking all windows and doors. My father drove home from work promptly and the whole town was on lockdown in a matter of minutes, because, according to the news, the two men were both terrorists and would attack the nation before nightfall.
And attack they did. Just not in the blunt manner that the police had warned us they would. No, they did not go straight to the armory and blow up the world with leviathan bombs and missiles. Nor did they prance across the U.S. armed with guns and other machinery to destroy towns and cities. They did not even attack that day. They just… waited. They waited inside the White House, which they had, ironically, locked up. They allowed no one in or out for ten days, then the army managed to invade their fortress. Shots were fired, and a few days later, the two men were six feet underground.
A few decades later, I would find out that these two men were geniuses. They had the power to save the world, which is exactly why they did not. After much effort and collaboration, these men had found that they could create a spaceship (and after all these years I still do not know how) that could store enough fuel to allow us time to wander around space in search of a new planet to call home. They had then proceeded to run for president so that they could share their invention with the world and help it reach the level of greatness it deserved. However, halfway through the election, these two men changed their minds about saving the world.
Their reasoning was something along the lines of this philosophy: the human race is universally wicked. Their thinking broaches the idea that “saving the world” would in fact mean the preservation of a few wicked humans who would just find a way to pollute the next place they call home.
That logic is why these men didn’t save us. That is why they bunkered in the White House for as long as they could until we broke in and tumultuously shot and buried what could have saved us. Or maybe it could not have. Perhaps we would have found a way to ruin that chance of survival, too.

“How did we survive, then?” Arin asked, the scene of the schoolroom returning to her vision in place of the hectic world that had been described.
The old professor smiled wryly. The question had bothered him for years. How could the wicked humans survive when the innocent polar bears and penguins did not? Of course, he knew that technically it was because they could adapt to the immense amount of heat and greenhouse gasses that filled Earth’s atmosphere, but at a point when not even dogs survived (again: they could not adapt) the human race’s survival seemed ironic. The destroyers of the world would be the last to be destroyed.
“I do not know,” he said. “But when the time comes, we will not survive. We will die; it is a fact of life. We will not die in the gallant and romanticized way that superheroes do. No, we will die cursing and screaming, too stubborn to repent the past, to change. Then this mournful world will finally be free of the wretched beings that plagued its lands for too many years.”