It was said that bees were vanishing without a trace. That in a world without bees humans would die and go hungry. That was mostly true. As it turned out only half a billion people died, the majority due to individual panic and national outbreaks of egotism. What no one spoke of was the diminished variety of plant life as a result of lack of pollination. And before science could come up with global solutions, un-pollinated plant life outside of manual and mechanical pollination efforts could feed no insects craving sugars of flowers, and no insects could feed no birds, and no birds no bigger birds and no bird droppings and bird carcasses and eggs feeding no insects and worms and carnivores on the ground, feeding no larger carnivores and other herbivores living off of the ground, and slowly, but securely every bit of land outside of manageable crop areas became devoid of animal life, which either struggled unfairly with humans for a brief while, or just gave up and died out. Nobody thought so much could predictably become lost. But no one, possibly due to all predictions being borne out of statistics, absolutely no one predicted the loss of nature’s beauty. Within ten years children were being borne, who never sang a ladybird up to negotiate for sunny weather; there were no longer any ladybirds. And these children as well as everyone else knew only of birds in cages. And foxes in stories and cougars and beavers and badgers and deer stuffed and in zoos here and there, their population diminishing as there were no new ones in open nature to replace those injured or dying of old age, or those born dead or malformed.
People learned. Fast – but too late in the general sense of the word. In a scant few years Nature lost the majority of the spectrum of colors. And where before birds and insects would break the monotony of a walk, now all forests of the world were quiet. Not a sound besides the wind. And even that could not dispel the planet’s largest and most ominous ghost that true nature had become. Soon normal people dared not enter the woods, even during the day. Artificial housing, of which there were many at first, circling crops without need of pollination, became the sanctuary’s and the remains of humanity. And slowly the forests and the plains and the mountains were forgotten and became as they were thought of: Wastelands, where only imaginary beasts and fears hunted, and to catch those sensitive enough for such speculation.
This was the new time of creation. In the minds of men and transported into the empty lands by those craving sensations and fear and the rush of a challenge, and the rest of the satiated had no marks to leave. In the wilderness new life in new forms and shapes came into the world that were partly human, part… other things; mostly of darkness.
This story intends to deal mostly with those of light, against heavy odds it will seek them out and measure their value.
Wasn’t that, what beauty was for? Comparison?