The Last Book

Oh, humans! I can’t help but think of how they used to be. Before those final wars they wrote such literary treasures. But, now as everything’s destroyed they barely read.

The last remaining traces of their languages are crude fashions of signing; the chest beating, mindless dancing sort. We, the gnomes, have tried to get more intelligible messages across but it always proves quite useless in their state of mind.

Through the fires that still rage in nuclear inferno my race has saved a single human book. We keep it for nostalgia sake.

Shakespeare for Dummies was the last writing on ordinary paper. E-Readers, computers and the internet had replaced all repositories for knowledge. When the electromagnetic pulses rang out from hydrogen fusion… everything vanished. Microchips, in all their superiority and clout, were fried forever.

The gnomes had never given in to technology to such degrees. Paper may have been a tree-killing ecological disaster but we held it dear. It was the death of nature, but still nature: something to remind us of the forests that were no more.

It is indeed a comfort one can only appreciate whilst living under rocks outside a vast apartment complex. That was how we dwelled for years and years, picking up old tomes from human landfills.

At times it seemed they threw away whole libraries as technology progressed. It was a time of great learning for the gnomes. Through self-help, and text-books we gained insight a world that had for too long shadowed us in ignorance.

Psychology allowed for mental anguish to be rationalized. Literature gave us flowing spirits to overcome diversity. Carpentry gave us ever greater space for books.

Yet, the forces bringing such enlightenment would ultimately destroy it.

The gnomes got hold of the last magazines in print. They told of an arms race and diplomatic failures. It seemed from all we read that mankind’s greatest weakness was its greatest strength. Jealousy, ambition and logic propelling them beyond the moon and stars had power for an undercurrent. This power could never allow for satisfaction of any variety. One human always had to be better, stronger than another.

We were always weary of these excesses we saw within their works. Gnomes had always wanted the best for all earth’s creatures. In every action, we weighed its impact such, never planting or taking or polluting too much.

But, in that sense, we were not confrontational enough to stop the humans; that would be our own great failure. Fallout and black skies remind the gnomes of this every time they take a look outside the human homes they now inhabit.

I hope to Gob we don’t turn out like them. Already I see with the younger ones more violent games. The scarcity of resources has led to hoarding, feuding in adults…

But the book stands as a symbol. Its pages represent the dangers of our greed and unchecked passion. Technology is more than simply progress; it is using what improves our lives and not what kills us faster.
I hope the violent ones see truth in this.