Surrender

 Someday we will look back on this time, and we might laugh.

We might laugh at the idea of "getting used to" the masks we now wear every day all the time. We might laugh at the notion of a divided country. We might laugh at the idea of living on the surface of our planet. We might laugh at these memories as the beginning of the end times. 

"Way back when," we will tell our Morlock children, "your ancestors roamed the earth above us in cars and planes. We went everywhere."

"Grandpa? What's a 'car?'"

We will explain it, just like we will have to describe the two-party system of politics that eventually destroyed the very fabric of what was the greatest democracy ever. We let egos run the world and ignored our principals in favor of our basic instincts. 

"You mean like scavenging for grubs?"

Not exactly. I mean that we could have looked at these crisis points as calls to action. Not that some people didn't, but the number of "humans" who chose to ignore the warnings was ultimately too great to overcome. We were dragged down by the very freedoms that we never fully understood. We surrendered to the newest iPhone and the screens that became the center of our lives. We even had screens on our refrigerators.

"What's a 'refrigerator?'"

That's a story for another time. Maybe next time I will tell you about the billionaires who took other people's money and made rocket ships so they could take celebrities on joyrides in outer space while children went hungry. 

"Rocket ships?"

There used to be a group of very rich people who used famous people as test subjects for their test flights, and eventually they took all their money and most of the air with them to a distant planet. 

"Famous people?"

Yes. Like Morg-17, except better dressed and they could see in color. Now, back to work. Those grubs aren't going to surrender themselves.