The Futures Yesterdays

Cities lay in ruin. The once indestructible towers of man now lay low in sheaths of vines and mossy over growth. The decadent hotels reclaimed by nature, their rooms now serving as dens for packs of wolves.

Bear sleep in the abandoned subways. Hawks build nests in satellite dishes and hunt the forested streets between the skyscrapers. Alligators line the riverside were business men and women once  lounged during their lunches.

Humanity persisted in a form. Now hunched, searching the low growing shrubs on the cities edge searching for mushrooms and wild berries. Their skin is dark now. The endless search for food has pulled them from their buildings and out into the sun. The men have faces covered in beards and their hair in long and tangles, forming their mats of protective padding that cover their necks.

They are faster than their ancestors, thick legs with larger longer feet. When forced to hunt they chase game down the highways, those wide flat places that lace through the open fields. They are thinner than their ancestors too, forced to move 14 hours out of the day, venturing into the wilderness of the cities to forage for tools, gather herbs to heal their sick, and the endless collection of edible plant life.

All things are not lost for them though. To the contrary, many things mankind had lost along their technological advancement have been reclaimed.

In the dead of night, around slowly burning fires, families gather. Tribes join to share the spoils of the day. They come together to eat, drink, tell stories of the strangeness they have seen in the city.

The wise men gather and collect the picture stones scavenged for the fallen ancestors. They press the “power button” and through means of magic they can not unweave, are show the world of yesterday. The artists render the pictures seen in the picture stones with charcoal on animal hides, and the scribes write the ancient runes of the long dead language. The musicians note the music that plays on alien instruments, recreating their rhythms and melodies on reed flutes and buck skin drums.

And then the “Batteries” die mankind thanks the heavens for the glimpse back in time, to that horror filled world when man had to live in the cities.