Atop the mountain lookout, sunlight glints off the metal cover of the coin-operated telescope. Three sisters, clutching coins in fists slick with the sweat of anticipation, drift towards the lone viewing tower, which has stood as sentinel over this valley for more than forty-five years. To be precise, the telescope has witnessed 16,519 sunrises; and, less precisely, has digested in excess of a million coins.
Priscilla steps up first, deposits her coin, squints into the eyepiece, then gasps. What does she see?
Ancient creatures she’s seen only in textbooks roam the grassland and soar above it, but from the horizon, an army of storm clouds advances. The seething mass approaches, puffy white tops towering above the bulging, black base, grumbling ever louder. Lightning streaks from its belly – blinding flashes setting the grass alight. Reptilian birds screech their warning and lumbering diprotodons take heed, galloping to safety as fire – nature’s housekeeper – licks the land like a child does an ice-cream, delicately savouring its bounty. The rain, when it comes, drenches the landscape, salving the wounds from fire, filling waterholes, flushing rivers and streams, and seeping into the ground to replenish aquifers.
Triti steps up next, deposits her coin, peers through the telescope, then groans. What does she spy?
A valley no more. In its place is a festering sea of putrid garbage. Bulldozers in their thousands crawl over the mounds of human waste; scooping, dumping … but barely scraping the surface. Triti adjusts the focus, zooming in. Reduced to scavenging, people pick through the detritus, delving for the precious resources buried in the filth. Fires rage, fuelled by toxic waste. When the storm clouds come, they dump acid rain which does nothing to dispel the noxious miasma that blankets the contaminated, ruined landscape. There are no rivers and streams winding their way through the countryside; they were long ago clogged with plastic, along with the entire food chain. What animals remain to battle the rising temperatures, are filled with plastic too.
Finally, Hope steps up, deposits her coin, allows the lens to guide her gaze, then smiles. What does she find?
Now that the Earth has emerged from successive ages of fire and of ice, creatures Hope does not recognise roam the grassland and soar above it. She watches as a volcano belches smoke and fiery rocks from its gut. Lava dribbles down its sides delivering molten minerals from deep underground to the surface. The wildlife close to the volcano scurries to safety – shrieking, roaring, or trumpeting their displeasure at the interruption to their business of grazing or hunting. What Hope doesn’t hear is yelling or sirens or engines. Humans are a memory. Hope wonders … is the only record of them buried as fossils or oil? She scans the landscape but finds no trace of a new species digging for the past.
The sisters retreat, comparing notes, while the coin-operated telescope salutes another sunset and enjoys a short respite from those visitors who see only what’s in their mind’s eye.
This was written for the Furious Fiction challenge in October 2023. The criteria were:
Story to feature someone looking through either a TELESCOPE or BINOCULARS.
Story to include a five-digit number.
Story to include the words BLIND, WIND, FIND and MIND.