Janery 9, 3263
I make my way through the tangle of vines covering the massive dune, climbing higher and higher into the cloudless white sky, tall grasses like razor wire against my skin. They draw no blood, but I know I’ll itch fiercely later. I stumble as soft sand gives way underfoot and I begin to slide, but catch hold of an exposed root and use it to regain my footing. This place is wild, but all the plant life has a gnarled wrongness to it, the result of drinking in poison. The roots of these plants run deep, reaching into soil far below the loose sand of the dune, but even deep soil is tainted this close to the venenum. I inhale, tasting salt and sulfur. The air is safe to breath in the short-term, but generations of children born with extra fingers or misshapen hearts or lungs lead to coastal areas slowly being abandoned. I haven’t seen a single person or animal since I left HP forest.
Cresting the dune, I get my first glimpse of the roiling black expanse called venenum. It’s an oily scab, with edges that ebb and flow across the shore. The tide is low, and the beach is covered with an undulating line of slick, marking where the waves crested. The skeletal remains of buildings jut from the sand, like bones protruding from a gruesome wound, and hundreds more pepper the surface of the venenum as far as a thousand feet from the shore. In the wake of its retreat, the poisonous sludge deposits relics of the age of the ancients: half decayed transparent vessels, hollow metallic cylinders, sheets of shiny, crinkled film emblazoned with half-ablated symbols and iconography, their meaning lost to time. Chee Tos. Co Ca. Do Itos. epsi. The rolling tide and gusting wind alone disturb the eerie silence. No birds cry, no rodents chitter. Only the occasional deformed corpse amidst the decayed artifacts gives any indication this area was once a thriving ecosystem. I begin my descent.
Half walking, half sliding, I make my way down the steep opposite face of the dune. The sand levels out before it begins its gentle slope into the distant venenum, but it’s so loose here that my leather-strap sandals are a hindrance, so I discard them and continue barefoot. The sand grows wetter and firmer as I press on but causes an unpleasant tingling in the soles of my feet, so I backtrack to retrieve my sandals. Finally, I find myself at the water’s edge. It’s almost black, and I can make out lumpy irregularities within that could be flesh or mineral in origin. The stench of sulfur now overpowers the hint of salt, and I carefully position my feet to avoid wetting them. If the moist sand was toxic enough to make my flesh crawl, I shudder to think what the venenum itself could inflict.
Turning, I walk down the beach, scanning the sand for objects of interest and doing an occasional double-step to avoid a larger than average surge. In places, the deposited refuse forms small mounds that stink of rot and acrid chemicals. Suddenly, a glint catches my eye and I stoop to examine what caused it. I use my pocketknife to carefully extract a smooth transparent pebble from the sand and surf. Placing it gingerly in my handkerchief, I polish it clean before allowing it to fall upon the naked skin of my palm; experience has taught me no amount of care is excessive when dealing with toxins we inherited from our ancestors.
It's flat, amber, and squarish, with pleasantly rounded edges. I know from my own reading that it’s a piece of ‘see glass’, most likely a fragment of an ancient container for holding liquids. Apparently, the term comes from a misspelling of an old name for the venenum, but I’ve heard conflicting reports. Slipping the charm into my pocket, I continue my walk, eyes roving over the beach for more interesting artifacts. If my map is correct, I’ll be able to follow the coast past Bosstown to a delta within the next day of walking, and the river that feeds it will lead me to a small town where I can trade for supplies and drinkable water. My waterskin will have to last me until then: Even in ancient times, the venenum was undrinkable due to its salt content, but now even touching its waters can sicken or kill. Nothing edible grows here either; the plants express the soil’s toxic nature, and game is scarce. I’ll subsist on the rations I carry on my back; hard dry flatbread, salted meat and some fresh berries I collected on the journey here. All that I’ll find here are fragments of the ancients’ world, solidified bits of memory that, like a half-forgotten dream, no longer compose a coherent whole.
It's beautiful in a strange, terrible way, I think to myself as I wait out a passing shower on the side of a dune, covered by the folding canopy I carry on my back. The venenum churns below me, high-tide having brought it to the very edge of the dunes. One of the lectures I attended posited that life on this planet originally formed in the venenum, eventually adapting to breath air to exploit terrestrial environments as modified fins became flippers became feet. Before the ancients began the toxification, the venenum remained home to over a million species of plants and animals, including bizarre, tentacled creatures and translucent gelatinous blobs with stinging tendrils. Those organisms are gone now, their DNA excised from the universe, perhaps never to be seen again. The venenum was the cradle of life, and now it’s a grave.
And yet, every change humans have wrought on this planet will be undone by time. The chemical slurry of the venenum is loaded with complex, energy-dense molecules begging to be exploited by the right configuration of adaptations. It may take tens or hundreds of millions of years, but eventually life will find its way back into those inky depths, and the venenum will be transformed once more. New forms will emerge to colonize it, turning waste into biological inputs, and their waste will become food for still other organisms in turn. Eventually, there will exist living things even more terrible and beautiful than those rendered extinct by my ancient ancestors, and they will owe their existence to that very intervention. It’s the human curse to be capable of such momentous changes, and yet ignorant of their consequences in our own time: when the dust of human drama has settled and the full consequences of the carbon blip that was our species have come to fruition, there will be no one around to see it. Earth will continue to spin, covered with life, until the sun, in it’s own death throes, expands outward and consumes it.
The rain stops and I pack up and move on, following the tide back out as it recedes. The sun has begun to set and the ruins of Bosstown come into view; a chain of islands out in the venenum, separated from the beach by a wide channel. The sheer preponderance of submerged buildings along every coastline makes it clear that the venenum rose by at least fifteen feet since the ancients built their gleaming cities: a direct consequence of their industry. Among those surviving documents from that era are research findings that show the ancients knew the consequences of their actions as early as the year 1970 and yet did very little to course-correct. Despite their vast power, they were ensnared in a multi-polar trap: a techno-industrial arms race between competing empires that made temperance a vice. The momentum of their collective endeavor carried them beyond the material limits of the natural world their civilization depended on, and when it contracted around them, they were crushed by the very forces they helped unleash.
As the sun disappears behind the dunes, I finally lay eyes on the river delta. Turning to give the venenum one last look, I swear I see a distant light threading the nearly-invisible line where inky-black venenum meets darkening grey sky. A ship? Few venture out onto the venenum, but some determined shipbuilders labor to create vessels that can cross it. There’s a whole other landmass on the far side, or so I’ve heard, but no one has made that journey in a thousand years.
Or… perhaps it’s an airship. I know, I know; it’s just a myth that the ancients built such things. But The villagers I spoke to back in HP this morning saw that light last night as well: They told me it was a spirit making its way from Earth to heaven, but between you and me, an ancient flying machine seems the more likely explanation. The place where I’m headed is supposed to be home to a few scholars of history; maybe they’ll have an explanation for me.
Until then, dear reader.