(AUTHOR'S NOTE

Although some facts in this text are actual representation of events or circumstances of present days, this is a work of imagination. No prejudice is implied or targeted against persons of any sex or creed and the author sincerely wish that this story remains what it is, fiction.)

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[ A curious fact in the arc of civilization is the dearth of female conquerors. Sure, there have been outliers in a male dominated specialty; Lady Fu Hao of Ancient China's Shang Dynasty, Queen Cordelia at war over one of Britain's succession slaughters, Lagertha the legendary Viking warrior, Joan of Arc leading an army in her mascled armor.
Greek mythology tells of the Amazons and of Atalante the never defeated runner who had her competitors slain, but was eventually vanquished by her breaking pace to pick up three golden apples on a track. Still, violence has not been an instrument foreign to what once was known as the weaker sex. Take the formidable Freydis surrounded by a party of Skraeling raiders in Vinland; she simply bared a breast and slapped it with her naked sword. She was pregnant at the time and the terrified assailants ran and paddled away. Maybe they had heard of her killing propensities, five women with an ax, as told in The Saga of the Greenlanders.

Yet, most of the world's religions have a male figurehead with women in supporting roles. Dismiss the minor case of Helen of Troy and it could be held that no woman has led or caused significant conquest or major change on this planet but, as the saying goes, there can be an exception to prove the rule. The Archivist. ]

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A NEEDLEWORK INFLUENCER

She was a stunning sight that suddenly appeared on screens across the world. A flaneuse on a stroll beneath massive tree crowns untouched for a century or more, a huntress with a bow in her left hand, two arrows in her right, a knitter perhaps, her only garment a form-fitting tricot of a skirt belted with a thin cord above her hips and ending at mid-thigh. Practical in her grooming for sure, she had two pointed pegs skewering a chignon garnished with the errant curls of a hair more pepper than salt.

Who was She, the mysterious being whose twelve-second screenshots of mediocre quality instantly went viral? She, who caused millions to fall in love? Where was She and where did She come from in her sandals of leather and wood? Which one of the myriad game cameras scattered over the natural world had caught her passing by without a side glance? What color were her eyes? Was She white and darkly tanned or was She another product of the genetic blending that was supposed to eliminate prejudice.

Cynics promptly called it a plot from the powers-that-be, just a scheme to amuse the populace and they named her Triple B, Bare-Breasted-Babe. But governments did not know of any such plot, and folks everywhere knew her as She. She, who dwelled in untold fantasies. She, whose arrows evoked the cupids of antique paintings or the chaste Diana tracking a deer. She who wasn't paired and strolled alone in a wilderness. She, the one in any and all dreams.

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A DYING WORLD

[ By the first of the twenty-third century AD the writing on the wall had been long submerged by rising seas and there was no more questioning of the impending fate of the human race. Crowds on their knees in cities of millions were still praying for relief from indifferent deities, although that didn't change anything but release more carbon laden hot air above their sweaty veils.

We all knew it, we were toast and we had built the toaster. The Archivist.]

Behind the crenellated ports that passed for windows in urban zones, the shadow of doom brought no relief from the heat beyond the ever-buzzing dehumidifiers that supplied drippings over ersatz coffee and filled water tanks for the residents' weekly seven-minute shower. And there, like an apparition from a disgraced literary genre She had passed across the wall-sized screens of the world's living rooms. Was She a vision of times unknown, an extracted obscure masterpiece from a shuttered museum, a video rescued from a primitive SIM card?

Artificial Intelligence routinely triaged the content sourced from the game-cams and distributed it across the globe. Severe imaging criteria rated the displays and the spooling of the scenes appeared worldwide once and sometimes many times depending on the counting of fascinated eyeballs, but NosyHarry, the AI in charge of the visuals had been programmed cheaply. Though the cameras' location was known, their output was not specifically attributed or recorded given the storage burden of untold numbers of videos every day.

Also, while the image of a skunk on a fossilized trampoline would carry the animal's moniker in seventeen languages, no such tag appeared below the critter walking by in her knitted summer wear. With zero expectancy of one such animal ever sauntering by, NosyHarry's programming did not include bare breasted babe recognition and She certainly didn't look like an ape. Worse, NosyHarry could not precisely tell where strolled a woman was carrying killing paraphernalia at a wooded location assumed to be in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere given its mix of mature evergreens and deciduous species in leaf.

She was not supposed to be there, no human was supposed to be there and good luck to DirtyHarry, Nosy's prompt replacement, to figure out where in hell or creation she was, breaking the Law.

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CALAMITY AND ADAPTATION

[ A century had passed since two shocking notions had become public knowledge. Of the total biomass of living creatures on earth, humans and their animals raised for consumption accounted for 96%, with wild creatures' biomass rounding up the total with 4%. Further, the mass of human created products was far greater than the mass of earth's natural growth. Concrete, plastics and tar, airplanes, cars, trucks and trains with their fuel needs and infrastructure, glass skyscrapers, sheetrock and tiles, baby cribs, cat litter boxes and washing machines, all of that and more weighted well above all the trees and shrubs in the world, the wild pampa grasses, the mosses and the lichens, the weeds in sidewalk cracks and the algae and corals in the sea. The vastness of industrial agriculture and cattle grazing was ever increasing contributors to that old greenhouse effect and the immense fields of wind turbines and solar farms would eventually fail the challenge to power universal air conditioning for all.

Given the price tag of carbon capture technology, given the costs of the massive levees designed to prevent the flow of backed-up rivers from turning abandoned suburbs into poisoned wetlands, given the failed dreams of billionaires seeking suitable planets to escape to -who would want them quipped the wags-- the solution became inescapable and drastic. To survive, mankind and nature had to share the globe's terrestrial habitat equally. Secure enclosures would contain humans while a global re-wilding would let photosynthesis return to its carbon consumption habit without suffering predatory destruction by its former conquerors.

Of course the success of the scheme would depend on prohibiting human access to natural areas and the flag wavers of the world were quick to rise and proclaim their God or constitutionally given right to access wilderness, be that for hunting, mushroom picking or a walk in a park. The uprisings caused a welcome diminution of the consuming masses but, be they living, cremating or rotting on a sidewalk --a speedy process in the eternal summer-- their associated carbon counts kept on rising.

An excruciating endeavor in the heat, flag weaving and marching eased promptly leaving governments to implement various concepts of walled cities and their automated industry satellites. Consoling features were devised, the most popular being that wall-sized screen in every living room. All programs were free, but the most popular had been NosyHarry's perpetual loop of images from what was left of the natural world. After the ever-depressing daily news, parents could relax with the kids and watch relocated polar bears sloshing amidst ice floes on the coast of Antarctica, or a duck pirouetting into reeds on a missed approach to a narrow stream. A hare bounding across a meadow, gorillas sharing jungle fruits, a ferret crawling under a desert boulder all were soothing treats allowed the desperate, disciplined multitudes. The Archivist.]

In normal families the lady was in charge of children and domestic duties and only ventured outside on short errands, preferably veiled. The hijab-over-dress was appropriate for many, but the outfit had morphed into a more primitive style, the gear of the long-gone Tuaregs, the Blue People of the Sahara Desert. It was a robe of dark violet folds topped with a turban or a hood of many layers showing the eyes of the wearer in an anonymous face darkened by the dye in the cloth. It was a genial, simple solution with the dark outer layer absorbing the radiated solar heat and the inner layers providing an insulated space for the wearer. It hadn't taken long for the fad to become a preferred outdoor gear, a unisex choice made quite pleasant by a more modern habit, there was no need for underwear.

University eggheads often neglect fashion tempests as a factor in disruptive events in the history of human populations but, predictably, the wardens of morality frowned on this efficient protection from fierce sunlight that had gained millions of fans. The no-underwear option was just too suggestive in densely populated communities claimed the eternal spoilers, the religious fanatics who quickly condemned the craze as a disguise for sinners on the prowl. As usual, women were the first targets of poorly received legislation. Really, what copper on the beat would resist taking to the station a slightly built citizen showing painted toenails and the pretty turn of a tattooed ankle beneath a dark cloth, the obvious disguise of a perverted witch. Only married partners walking in step were allowed the outfit.

A Supreme Court's contemplated response to a challenge of the rule was not encouraging when, by coincidence, NosyHarry's twelve-second video and its record-breaking tally of likes hit the screens after the evening news and ran amok from time zone to time zone causing an Internet overload that effectively brought any government's concerted action to nil.

If She could walk in a skirt, why couldn't everybody?

Beyond consideration of sunburn or sunstroke, neo-libertarian ideology would have found a way to calm down the populace by dismissing the event as an isolated case of a primitive tribe's survival. DirtyHarry could be entrusted to find her and her folks for gentle re-introduction into a world where one was free as long as one conformed. Unfortunately, the implementation of the walled cities concept had required a strong alliance of ruthless leaders and those well-funded keepers of the soul whose fundamental values could not abide the sight of the primitive She, the barbarian. She had to be found and brought to order, walk under the tutelage of a husband and give birth to further their lineage. She, who walked alone and carried a weapon.

She had broken the Law

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ENFORCEMENT

The ensuing clamor brought a fatal mistake from the powers-that-be. There was no need for AI, they thought, the hunting of She would be entrusted to the fleet of drones that patrolled the cities' outer wastes for obviously demented escapees. What the heck, the drones knew who they would be looking for in the far-flung expanses of the northern latitudes, it was just a question of redrafting their itineraries.

Unexpectedly, an avant-garde of millions broke through the now unguarded city walls to head north and face the reality of a frightening, alien world. The unforgiving heat promptly killed most of them and the wild environment of the recovering forests frightened off most of the rest. The taunting waltz of the fireflies in the dark of the nights, the slithering of unseen beasts, the furtive flights of astonished birds, the shocking caress of nettles or poison ivy all terrified the former videos viewers. The circling of vultures above a pack of coyotes feasting on a corpse brought to actuality a version of the not-so-cute images they had seen on their living room screen. At home, the news from the wild took prominence with their body counts and sank the ratings of the game cams' regular output. DirtyHarry resigned its position to return to its law enforcement duties and NosyHarry was put in charge of the struggling platform where a clip of lion cubs hassling over an aluminum can tumbled off an eroding trash slope had replaced the knitter's stroll. Unlikely as it was, the scene had caused a substantial peak in the revenues of that classic soda brand and NosyHarry sought to add to the shows' content a substantial dose of product placement advertising.
At a wind farm atop arid mounds surrounded by valleys of regenerating woods, a game can was tracking snakes headed for the warmth of the dark letters spelling the manufacturer's brand name on a broken aluminum blade as buzzards hovered above. Nosy switched to live mode and zoomed-in to better frame the action just as an eagle plummeted down to the hard and the lucky buzzards headed down for dinner.
Nosy could be proud, it was a perfect action shot over a well-focused field covered by countless carcasses of desiccated birds below the spinning blades.
It was like one of the vast burial sites left by the wars of previous centuries, but without the stark rows of crosses with pretty flags or dainty poppies where the mowed grass would have dried and the sacred grounds gone to dust long blown away to reveal the shattered bones. Another tragic evidence, the naked truth about a failed endeavor.
Mankind was still destroying nature and its ballyhooed efforts were in vain. Ships were running down whales at sea and driverles lorries killed wildlife on the cities' connecting highways. Artificial Intelligence had no soul; efficiency was its sole credo. The news shows' stellar rating were a lie, it was caused by viewers looking for familiar faces in the bedraggled groups racing death on a trek to shelter, as if the migrant millions who once fled their baking lands had turned back to climb the border walls of the times.

A great despair spread over the cities. The reign of AI's technocracy fell into irrelevance when people didn't bother to walk away from their wall screens. Procreation, the last and only human function which wasn't a tool of control by the powers-that-be, dropped to zero. Who could ever look at the smile of a baby knowing the death sentence of the child was pending.

The cat was out of the bag, She would die like everyone else, the close of the Anthropocene was at hand.

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EXTINCTION ?

[ It would be simplistic to view the disintegrated relationship of nature and the human species as a failed marriage. Yet, the same hardships and exploitations were at work. It began in a shared Eden. With populations growth, conflicts ensued. In the great march out of Africa, perhaps someone picked up a glittering diamond. Mining began. Boats crossed rivers or seas and timber was cut to build more boats. The appearance of coins caused a trade of goods to become commerce with ever increasing wealth transfers to culminate into digital currencies validated by cryptographic proof requiring an enormous consumption of energy.

Nature and the human species, how long could it last?

Yet, amidst the multitudes gone from the cities in search of She, some had previously sought knowledge of antiquarian ways. They recalled traditions, read ancient texts, visited museums, observed how a drop spindle could make a filament out of an animal's pelt and how that thread could be used to weave or knit and be shaped into clothing. It is not known if any of them were to meet She, but the fact is irrelevant. With a remarkable economy of theatrics, She had been a sign, a promise. The few survivors were now onto a task, the settling of an earth's continents in harmony with the natural world, just like the natives of the past had done before they were betrayed by the so-called western civilization.

A new era, at long last. The Archivist. ]

THE END.

AUTHOR'S CLOSING NOTES:

In the story above, the estimates of the relative proportion of human and wildlife biomass and the weight of human creation versus natural production are scientific tallies reported on The Guardian newspaper's website in late August 2022.

'The Last Knitter of The Anthropocene' is dedicated to a Wattpad author who once described herself as "the daughter of a savage" in a story comment. I do not wish to reveal her identity but, should she read this work, I hope she enjoys the message in the Knitter's tale. The savages haven't lost all of their battles yet.

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