Author: R. J. Erbacher

This was bizarre.

He hovered over the planet and examined it.

During the last check of this planet, there were more than eight million different species. Most were instinctual but others were fairly intelligent residents. Some of those species had billions of inhabitants, some of the smaller ones even had trillions. Now there was just one. And not just one species but only one single entity of that one species.

True, there was a gap of time. He hadn’t been back here for a couple of thousand years but what could have gone so wrong, so quickly?

More importantly what was this individual essence? How had it survived on a planet by itself? And what happened to all the rest?

Was it just lucky enough to be the sole survivor of a global disaster? That seemed far-fetched. Maybe this one ‘thing’ had enough energy to destroy everything else, including every little bug and tadpole. That would make it pretty damn powerful but again, highly unlikely. Or was this an enormous blob like presence that was not indigenous to the planet and methodically sucked all of it up, absorbing all other life entirely into its own massiveness? None of these prospects were really feasible. Yet it was all just a little bit scary.

The last time that things had gone this haywire, an incident needed to happen; to make a correction. Bulky little-brained beasts meandering around for millions of years and not developing as they should and not making a substantial contribution to the higher cause. So, a big rock was redirected, and the impact blotted out the mistakes. It took a while but when things were back on a more congenial path it was time to move onto bigger and better things.

Now this. This planet was becoming a real pain. Time for another correction.

A smaller rock was meticulously nudged into a bigger rock which was now perfectly aligned with the singularity that harbored down there. The ball of destruction screamed through the atmosphere and lit up the sky. This should take care of things. Then there would be the waiting for the whole process to become reestablish and hopefully progress into a more acceptable design. That could take another million years or so. He’d have to be persevering. Maybe third times the charm.

He waited for contact. The ground shaking divot into the crust. Waited for the tremendous plume of dust, billowing out until it covered the majority of the planet. He waited. But there was none of that.

Instead, some ‘thing’ threw the rock back at Him.