The Curse

The planet was an absolute wreck. The whole landscape, as far as the eye can see, was shrouded in a black, acidic fog – the relic of some ancient disaster hundreds of years ago. Bare, jagged hills jutted out of the parched brown soil. The elegant terraces that used to cover the hills had fallen into complete disrepair. Only crumbling ruins remained of the mighty structures of steel and glass that had once formed sprawling cities. Everything looked dead, destroyed, and barren – the relic of a war long ago, perhaps, or of some mighty ecological disaster.

It was hard to say what had caused the devastation. I had discovered this planet a few years ago while looking for new source of iteria – a rare earth element that is highly useful in the production of antimatter. The probes I had sent out had flagged this star system as being of interest, so I came out to take a look at it. It turned out that the planet did not have what I was looking for, but it did capture my interest. At the time I was in too much of a hurry to follow up on my discovery, but when my life calmed down I came back to have another look.

The destruction that I found was simply immense – I had never seen an entire ecosystem destroyed before. The cities were in ruins, the fields were abandoned, and the atmosphere was slowly turning into poison. Thick, black pockets of some highly corrosive gas lingered in pools along the ground and seemed to eat alive the few ruins that remained. The sky was low, with fast-paced gray clouds covering an always-overcast sky. The air was hot and dry; it was breathable, but very unpleasant. I wore my spacesuit for excursions onto the surface and brought along my own oxygen supply.

The only plants that I could find were dry, half-dead weeds that were trying to eke out a meager existence in a few protected cracks in the mountains. I found a few sources of water but they were all polluted by a black, oily substance. The planet was so dead that not even insects could be found in abundance. Sand, wind, and a strange black gas combined to erode any surviving structures at a remarkable rate.

I landed my ship near one area of ruins and stepped outside to take a look around. For two days I found nothing, but on the third day something happened.

I was in the heart of what must have once been a giant city, trying to pick my way through a ruined courtyard, when a figure loomed up through the smoke. It was difficult to see through the black haze, but the figure appeared to be a man – a very old and thin man, eaten up with disease. I don’t know how long he had been watching me, but when I first noticed him he was already walking toward me. When he realized that I had noticed him he waved his bony arms and called out, but I could not hear him through my spacesuit.

I removed my helmet so I could hear him better. The atmosphere hit me immediately – it smelled terrible, and it hurt my throat to breathe it. If I wanted to talk to him, though, my helmet had to be off.

I walked toward him. “Hello there!” I said. “I’m Jones – a privateer. Who are you?”

The old man looked intently at me. “Nobody,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The curse has destroyed us all!” he said, wheezing and gasping for air as he spoke. “There is nothing left!”

“It looks like you are still here, my friend. I didn’t realize that there was anyone left alive.”

The man laughed – a short, harsh laugh, that sounded more like a wheeze. “There is no one left alive,” he said in a voice that sounded like a rusty hinge. It was hard to make out what he was saying. “Only the dead remain.”

By this time I had made it over to him. We both sat down on a broken stone column. I took a good look at him: he looked very old and was clearly in poor health. His bones looked brittle and his arms and legs were incredibly thin. His skin was pale and wrinkled, and he was very dirty. It must have taken all of his energy just to walk across the courtyard. I could only imagine what a lifetime of breathing that air must have done to him.

“Where do you live?” I said. “Surely you don’t live in these ruins.”

“There is no where else we can live,” he replied, as his gray eyes looked into mine. He stared at me constantly, as if I was the first person he had seen in ages.

“Are you the only one left?” I asked him.

The man shook his head. “There are a few others, but we are all dying. The young are all gone – they were the first to go. When we are gone the planet will be inhabited only by the dead.”

“What happened here?” I asked, as I got out my water bottle and handed it to him. He shook his head and pushed it away.

“It’s no use,” he said. “It’s too late for us. The curse has taken us – and it will take you as well!”

“The curse?”

“Look at all of this! All of this,” he said, gesturing feebly around with his arm, “was once a city. Now it has been broken. I was once a young man; now I am old. Decay, ruin, and death!”

The man had a wild look in his eyes, and I wondered about his sanity. How long could a man live in a ruined world and retain his mind? Were there really others, or was he the lone survivor of some terrible catastrophe?

“I don’t understand, Mr. – what is your name?”

“The dead do not need names,” he said softly.

“Sure they do,” I said. “Everyone needs a name, and you look quite alive to me.”

He sat there in silence and said nothing. I noticed that he struggled to breathe. I was struggling not to breathe; the atmosphere was more than I could stand. I wondered how long it had taken him to get used to it, and if he even remembered what clean air was like.

“What’s this about the curse?” I said at last. “Was there a biological war fought here, or something?”

“The curse is greater than that,” he said. “It levels all; it destroys everything. It turns mountains into plains. It turns buildings into rubble! It turns rubble into dust! None can withstand it!”

“Was it a virus? A bomb? An invading alien army? Some new, unforseen threat, perhaps?”

“The curse is old,” he said. “Very old.”

I sighed. “But when did it start?”

“Ages ago. We were cursed long before my fathers were born. We fought it as long as we could, but we lost. All of our efforts could not stop it. It destroyed everything we had built.”

The old man looked at me and shook his head. “You don’t believe in curses, do you?” he asked.

“Not really.”

The man laughed again – or coughed; it was hard to tell. “You came here in a starship, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“Suppose you where to leave that starship parked in a field for five hundred years. What would you find after you came back?”

“A ruined ship, probably,” I said. “Time would have eaten it away. It would be worthless.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, you know – the wind, and the rain, and the natural decay of things. Time takes its toll on everything.”

“But why?”

“Why?” I looked at the old man again. “That’s just the natural order of things. Time eventually destroys everything.”

“And you think nothing of it!” he shrieked. “The universe is running down! Everything is being destroyed! Why should it be that way? Why should we be cursed so? Why must everything come to ruin?”

“It’s just how the universe works,” I said. “There is nothing unusual about it.”

“There is everything unusual about it! If you lived on a planet where the sky was pink with black stripes, you would think it was the most natural thing in the world. If the sky one day turned to a deep blue you would panic and think that the world was ending. The curse is only normal because it’s all you have ever known! Why should it be that way? Why?”

“You mean that is your curse? You believe that things running down is a curse?”

The old man sighed. “One day you will understand. You have not seen a civilization decay into the dust, but you will. All civilizations die. All people die. All buildings die. Nothing lasts – the curse destroys everything. It cannot be defeated. It cannot be stopped. All you can do is hope that it does not hit in your lifetime. But us – we were not so lucky.”

“That is an awfully depressing outlook to have on life,” I said. “You need to think a little more positively.”

“I watched as our institutions decayed; as the safeguards that protected our way of life were slowly eaten away. I watched as our families disintegrated, as our nations gave way to chaos, and as the atmosphere was poisoned. I watched as it was all lost. In fifty thousand years there will be nothing left to indicate that anyone ever lived on this planet.”

“Of course not,” I said. “That’s just the natural order of things.”

“And suppose you had been born with two heads,” he replied. “Would that, too, just be the natural order of things?”

He walked away into the distance, and then was lost in the smoke. I called out to him, but he did not respond.

* * * * *

 
I saw him again the next day. “You are still alive,” I said.

“And so are you,” he replied.

“I still don’t know your name.”

The man sighed. “You can call me Jonas.”

“Jonas it is, then,” I said. There was silence for a few minutes, and then I spoke. “You don’t have to stay here, you know. You could come back with me in my ship. There is room on board for you and your friends.”

Jonas shook his head. “What would be the point? Death will take us all in the end. There is no place we can go to escape death. It is useless to run or hide.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but I know someone who has defeated it. I have met someone with the power to roll back this curse of yours – someone who has defeated death, and who has promised to help you, if you will let him.”

The man looked at me, surprised. “And who can do this?” he asked.

“Let me tell you about him,” I said.