The end of history

I look out on the horizon and I can see the end of history.

It's always been endless before, you know.  Beyond the horizon as far as one can see in any direction.  There have been some perilous cliffs and abysses we have had to skirt around here and there, but otherwise, we have been moving toward a history with no end, until now.

I can see it.  It is a sheer drop off in every single direction.  It is still a fair distance away, but it is definitely there, coming toward us ceaselessly.  But no one looks to the horizon any more.  Their gaze is down, around them, at where they are right now.  They see no problem as every single action we take shakes history to its very foundation and crumbles and fragments our future into more and more obstacles that we must avoid.  We have done too much.  There are no ways around.  

I will not abandon my own part in this journey and will not take the coward's way out.  I will face the end as everyone else, but as I am aware and certain of its end now, many others will have to slowly and painfully realize that there is no escape.  "How did this happen?"  "What do we do?"  "How can we go back?"  "Who is to blame?"  

I will be there to say "I told you so."  Not in any smug, egotistical way, but as a sad, simple statement.  They, too, should have known.  And now there is no one to blame but them.  

And as we fall, the failed experiment known as the human race ends.  All for the folly of humanity.  The lack of awareness and the ego and the greed and the hatred.  That is what brought about our history's end.

It's basically too late, and would take the entire world changing to create one single path through the abyss that would save us.  But I know that will not happen.

I don't like air conditioners

Utterly alone, except for that noise.  

I hated that noise.  From room to room I ran, trying to escape it.  The noise of a box air conditioner.  The box air conditioners -- the ones that are mounted from windows, hanging out from them and secured by the closed window -- were everywhere.  They were in every single room.  Even the bathroom.  I don't like air conditioners, I repeated aloud.  Over and over, running from room to room.  Every time I saw one, its droning hum invading my mind, ruining my thought.  I don't like air conditioners.  

Running to the center of the house, into the kitchen, I found a small place in a corner near the door that was as far away from the air conditioners as I could get.  Beside me was a door.  Where did that door lead, I thought?  I don't remember...  I felt drawn toward it.  Maybe to a place with no air conditioners.  I wanted to know what was behind it.  

Before I reached the door, a pair of arms with gnarled hands came out from underneath the door -- somehow bigger than the small crack underneath -- and grabbed both my legs.  I screamed in surprise and fear, and began yelling as the strong hands began to drag me underneath the door, through the tiny crack.    I heard evil cackling, and the hum of machinery.  Looking around in fear and panic, I saw an impossibly large room, filled with gears and pistons and cogs and other mechanical things.  I was floating in midair just in front of the door, as the room was not only impossibly high and wide, but also deep.    And a witch, somewhat like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz, flew overhead.  Not aboard a broom, but floated around, in long, grayish robes, her face twisted and purely evil.  I began to fall into the room.  Into a twisted, chaotic collection of gears.  

Screaming and crying, I awoke in my mother's arms, in front of the television, in a rocking chair.  I was somewhere around four years old at the time.    I still remember that dream, vividly, over forty years later.