1. Chapter 

1. A losing battle.

It was the late 80s; my father’s research on wormholes and the possibility of time travel were still theories at the time, my mother had just received a grant to study climate control and the effects it was having on the insect population; specifically the main pollinators; the monarch butterfly and bee. Back then no one cared much, to them insects were just pests. I mean who would care if mosquitoes disappeared, right?

Little did we know each and every insect was integral to the survival of the planet. Insects were in all actuality the reason we were still alive, the main reason our planet was even alive. We were too arrogant to consider that; we had the larger brain, we were superior in every way. However, larger doesn’t always mean smarter or better.

That’s where we were wrong, that’s how it all started. Right now you’re likely sitting there wondering how the extinction of bugs could have led to the planet’s destruction. Well, I’ll tell you exactly how. As far back as the 70s bee farmers noticed their bee population declining steadily after each winter.

At first, it was attributed to the harshness of the season and the age of the insects... nothing out of the ordinary there, however as time went on more and more bees started dying for no reason. It didn’t stop there either, the Monarch butterfly too started disappearing and by the year 2017 insects were put on the endangered list, by 2019 all but roaches and flies were extinct.

Conservationists and scientists like my mother fought tirelessly, to no avail. No one in power would listen, until a company named the Stone Heart Group interceded. By this time my mother and her team had been all over the world pleading the case of the insects. Stone Heart was the only one who thought my mother made a valid point.

For a while it seemed that the earth would be saved after all. Stone Heart used its vast influence to lobby for the law on cloning major pollinators in hopes of repopulating the planet. Mother was not at all sure that cloning was the solution, but there was no other way. While Stone Heart fought in the courts and lobbied in parliament the world spun out of control. Crops, started withering in the fields, fruit trees never bloomed again, even wild flowers and grass turned brown.

The effects of the insects’ extinction was felt across the world; 90% of the human and animal diet had been wiped out. Even if we could feed ourselves with processed foods we couldn’t feed our animals which would mean the other 10% of our diet would soon be gone too.

Instead of addressing the problem, congress threw excuses at it. New factories sprung up to meet the demand for processed foods; polluting the air and killing the little oxygenating plants and trees we had left. The more my mother warned the more people ignored. The earth was on her last legs and the human race... the superior race... the race in charge, was watching it happen, but continued on the path of self-destruction.