Seasons of Man

The old man sat close to the fire, warming his aching bones. He watched the children running, laughing, playing, and smiled. Children had such a resilient spirit, almost immune to the weariness felt by the adults struggling to cope with the hardships of this new life that had befallen them.

He remembered the petty worries and concerns that had plagued people in his youth. A life of leisure, of luxury and convenience, with a myriad range of gadgets of every kind to keep everyone amused, had not brought even a fraction of the happiness the children derived from their innocent games. Perhaps there was something to be said for these simpler times, after all.

But then he glanced at the ashen, grey clouds above, shrouding them in an unending twilight, and he shuddered. He looked back at the children and saw not those who were there, but those who weren’t, the ones they had lost. Peter, his own grandson, had fallen from a cliff and broken his leg: something that would have been easy to fix when he’d been Peter’s age, when they had doctors and hospitals. But not anymore: Peter was gone. Then there was Sanjeev, a bright, intelligent boy, a delight to teach: he’d been taken by a wild beast, no-one knew what it was; his screams had filled the air, they never found him. And then, of course, there were the ones who’d succumbed to the sickness, four in the last year alone, victims of the poison in those grey, ashen clouds, and the rain that fell from them. He sighed, feeling a deepening sorrow as he prepared to bring the children’s happy games to an end.

“Come and sit by the fire, children, it is time for the lesson.”

He gave them a minute or two to settle down. One of the youngest asked, “What is the lesson today, Teacher?”

He smiled at the pretty girl, one of his favourites, even brighter than Sanjeev had been, “Well, Marita, today I am going to tell you about the seasons.”

“You mean like in the olden times, when sometimes it was warm and the pants grew, then it got colder and all the leaves fell off the tees?”

“They were plants and trees, not pants and tees, Marita,” he chuckled softly, “but, no… not the seasons of the fields; today, I am going to tell you about the seasons that shaped us, the seasons that brought us here… the seasons of man.

“First, there was the springtime. Man blossomed and multiplied, filling every corner of the Earth. We sewed the fields and reaped the harvest. We made simple tools to help us, and we lived in harmony with the land. As time went on, we made bigger, more complex tools to do more of our work for us, and machines that allowed us to travel further, and faster, so we could see all the world and everyone in it.

“And so, spring turned to summer. We learned many of the world’s secrets. We found its treasures beneath the soil, and beneath the sea, we used them to make our lives richer, easier. We made ever bigger machines, even machines to make more machines. And we learned how to fly.”

“Like one of those bird things you told us about?” Marita stared at him, wide-eyed with wonder.

“Faster than that, further… we went to the Moon, we sent probes to distant planets, we hungered for ever more knowledge, power, and wealth: ever-seeking, ever-yearning, never satisfied. But, in our endless quest for still greater riches, we forgot where we came from, we forgot who we truly were… and so, inevitably, came the autumn, what some call the fall, the shortest, and swiftest of the seasons of man.

“You see, children, we had made so many machines to do all our work, but we still had to design the machines, make the decisions, do all the thinking. But then, in our foolish pride, we tired even of that, and we replaced ourselves with machines that did our thinking for us.”

He sighed, lost deep in thought.

“What happened next?” asked Marita, interrupting his reverie.

“Look around you, children, this is the winter we made. Some say the machines decided to take our world from us, that they wanted what little was left of the Earth’s once abundant resources, that they needed it to survive; others say we fought among ourselves, that we poisoned our world with terrible weapons of destruction.” He shrugged, “It does not matter: either way, in the end, we were to blame for our own downfall; man brought the winter on himself.”

Everyone fell silent for a while, until Marita asked, “Will the spring come again, Teacher? Like it used to for the pan… er, the plants… like it did before?”

He looked at her through the tears blurring his vision, running down his cheeks. Something in her bright, inquisitive eyes cut through his despair, gave him cause for hope. Mustering a weak attempt at a smile, he nodded, “Perhaps, my child, perhaps… if you want it enough.”