Deviation Actions
Literature Text
It is an essential fact of evolution that whenever the world changes, it is the big animals that die and the small animals that survive. The dinosaurs and the woolly mammoths both had their turn ruling the world and then disappeared, but the birds and the rats lived on.
It is the same way with nations. In the twenty-first century, when the air filled with smoke, the waters rose, and the technology causing all of this raced ahead at terrifying speeds, the vast majority of nations simply could not cope. They fought the changes tooth and nail but in the end they were just too big to adapt. All they knew how to do was argue with each other, and that just wasted valuable time. Some said they needed to band together, others that it was every country for itself, and the most important power refused to admit that anything was even happening until it was too late. When the storms began, it was the last straw. Nation after nation failed to save their people and crumbled. Communications was virtually impossible, and nobody knew who was still hanging on and who was not. In the end, only two were left; the two small nations who tended to be kept out of the arguments.
The first was the smallest of all. He had the least to lose, which only made him fight more valiantly to protect it. His father, who still didn’t believe he was a real country, offered to let him stay at his house until the storms had died down. This was probably simply because he would be by far the most affected by the waves, but the young nation would have none of his pity and babying. He built an air filtering system and a garden. He shut in and waterproofed everything, and along with a dozen of his most brave or foolish citizens, he barricaded himself in with food, medicine, and tools, and hoped that they would be enough.
Everything was constantly breaking or leaking, and he worked himself to the bone trying to keep his people safe and healthy. He considered himself lucky if he got eight hours of sleep a week. Many times he considered striking out for the mainland, but he always reminded himself of how proud his father would be of how he handled the situation, and how he would have to admit that he was a real country after all.
He only lost one person, a young boy like himself whose face he remembers vividly to this day. When the earth calmed and the rains ceased, he emerged, exhausted but proud. He was ready for some admiration from the rest of the world; he had earned it.
To his horror he found that there was nobody left to admire his bravery. There was nobody left at all- with one exception.
The girl didn’t share his fighting spirit. She could easily have died with the rest, but for the selfless man who sacrificed himself to save her. She begged and pleaded him to take better care of himself, but she could do nothing but watch him starve slowly and exhaust himself so she could have enough to eat. On his deathbed, he made her promise that she would not give up, that the world would not end here. When the storms ended, she would seek out any other survivors and they would rebuild together.
He died holding her hand, and it took her days to let it go.
They both wandered alone, horrified by the destruction, until finally they found each other. Almost anyone would have given up there and then, but the boy had a singularly cheerful and determined outlook, and although the girl was not so energetic, she was still hopeful about the fate of the world. Besides, she had promised her “brother” to keep trying.
At first they planned to split the world between them, but they quickly realized that neither of them could handle that much responsibility, especially in a disaster. After sharing out most of Europe and bits of the rest of the world, they turned their attention to finding the raggedy clans and alliances that began to spring up and nurturing them into countries. It was hard work, but they put their hearts and souls into it, and were not disappointed.
Most of the new countries needed help naming themselves, but the two friends struggled to find proper ones. It was too painful to call them after their deceased friends or their regions, so they chose names of legend or ones that dated from before their birth. Songhai, Aztec, Vinland, Phoenicia. The three remotest and most deserted regions they left as Antarctica, Himalaya, and Sahara on the theory that natural features outlasted human structures. Society slowly rebuilt itself, and the two friends did their best to make sure the new world would not repeat the mistakes of the old. They taught the young nations how to guide their people and handle their government. They tried, unsuccessfully, to get everyone to get along. However, whatever squabbles broke out, the two greatest powers always stood united, trying their best to resolve the constant conflicts.
Countries grow fast when they need to, and when the world began to be able to handle itself, the thoughts of the two turned inexorably to their lost friends. The girl had taken to drawing, and created piles of faithful reproductions of the old countries laughing and smiling in better times. Together they scrounged to collect every fact they could, and compiled them into great libraries and museums. However, the new nations had little interest in their predecessors, and although the two did their best to keep the memories alive, they eventually accepted that sometimes the old has to be lost to make way for the new.
