A Comparatively Short Story

     Perhaps it was the beginning of time, perhaps not.  Who knows what came before? It doesn't matter.
     The hot brilliant ball of light caressed the earth for the first time and like a new love, it responded with vibrant pulsating energy. Previously dormant particles of matter mated randomly in a frenzied microscopic orgy. Compatible particles reproduced and created simple life forms. On land, primitive vegetation sprouted and in the seas, early marine-life flourished. The process continued, naturally and unabated, for many eons.
     Slowly, those organisms most adept at adapting to their environment grew more complex.  Simple sprouts grew to woody shrubs, woody shrubs to majestic trees that seemed to reach the sky. Simple marine forms evolved to multi-celled creatures. Multi-celled creatures grew gills to process oxygen, and fins and tails for mobility. Fish began to populate and explore the vast reaches of the oceans. Many eons passed.
     Some marine-life, living near the shores of the oceans, found themselves washed up onto land. Over a period of millions of years, they adapted by growing legs for mobility and lungs to process oxygen, and the animal kingdom was born. Different oceans washed up different marine forms, which evolved to become different animals, adapting to the conditions of their environment. Eons passed. There was plant-life and animal/marine-life coexisting, evolving in an order of natural selection. What a perfectly balanced, magnificent place it was. Then came humans.

     Only a couple of hundred thousand years passed. In the blink of an evolutionary eye, humans raced through dramatic changes, from primitive people with sloped foreheads, stooped and hairy, to early civilization and people with perfect Olympian bodies, to modern humans, sophisticated, hi-tech, nearsighted.  Accomplishments like skyscrapers and laptop computers, space travel and modern medicine, did not translate into a more insightful, compassionate, fulfilling existence, merely a more decadent and corrupt one, leaving millions of people suffering in unimaginable ways.
     The culture morphed into hi-tech so fast that genetic codes did not have the time to evolve and adapt. Over a period of forty or fifty short years, the earth  became populated primarily by people raised in this strange new world--confused, misdirected, disoriented people whose genetic codes still demanded old-world living while their culture required hi-tech lifestyle. The confusion ran deep down in the hard drive, a permanent virus--vast hoards of people with poor impulse control who required constant, overwhelming input in order not to shut down. 
     Due to apathy and ignorance, the environment became less and less friendly. Random and rampant violence and pollution escalated over the years until the last vestiges of order disappeared and worldwide anarchy prevailed. Starvation and disease followed. The ugly side of humanity ruled until there were none.
     Their demise mirrored the quickness of their assent.