Nampa, Idaho - November 9, 2026 - Please allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s 11:59 pm on New Year’s Eve. You’ve plunked your middle-aged body on the couch to await the final countdown of what’s been a tumultuous year, beginning last January 1st—12 long months ago. In late February, you developed an infection—single-celled organisms across most of your body. By mid-November, they festered into complex, multicellular life forms, giving rise to an array of roaming dinosaurs a month later. They walked, ran, swam, and flew all over your body until you caught the worst cold of your life, an icy malaise that seemed to last forever but was gone after only a couple of weeks, taking the pesky dinosaurs with it by December 26th. Unfortunately, your renewed vitality lasted up until 30 minutes ago, when a particularly nasty virus—modern humans—laid claim to your body’s healthy resources, building its first cities with less than two seconds remaining until the start of the new year. But you’re not worried—not since you’ve outlasted every single invader, shaking each and every one of them off like irritating fleas.
Of course, I’m describing our beloved Earth—its first 4.5 billion years scaled down to a single calendar year. Isn’t it interesting to conceptualize how humans have only recently entered the frame? It is indeed mind-blowing, but my mind isn’t focused on single-celled organisms, multicellular life forms, dinosaurs, or even human beings; I’m interested in the lobe-finned fish called tetrapodomorphs, better known as prehistoric lungfish, who evolved out of the primordial soup to move between water and land. Now these little guys pique my curiosity and inspire my imagination:
“Hey! What’s up, Stan? Where do you think you’re going?” asked Clyde, flailing his nubby fins against the soft mud. “I thought you were going to stay here with me, soaking up the sun and taking in all the eye candy.”
Stanley stopped and rolled his big fish eyes at his disappointed wingman. Ever since their juvenile teeth fused into tooth plates for food grinding when they were just wee little fingerlings, Stanley and Clyde spent most of their spare time together chasing the all-important lady lungfish. Sarcastically, he replied, “My bachelor pad isn’t going to build itself, you know?” He continued undulating toward a thicket of small shrubs and ferns growing underneath a stand of softwood river trees 30 feet from the reed-filled swamp. Stanley approached his chosen target, propelling himself using his fleshy pectoral and pelvic fins to dig through the spongy earth, his tail dragging limply, leaving a trail of flattened dirt behind him.
Clyde rolled uncomfortably onto his scaly underside to watch his friend slither away. He could still feel the undigested mixture of algae, worm, and crustacean in his stomach, a concoction that made him feel sated but bloated under the sun’s warmth. He shouted toward Stanley. “Your new love nest seems a bit too far from the swamp! Aren’t you worried about being eaten alive? Rumor has it that lungfish taste pretty good!”
Stanley laughed, causing his gills to expand and contract. He raised his head and gulped the humid air, filling his lungs with life-sustaining oxygen. “You’re such a scaredy-cat, dude. Don’t you know lungfish are on top of the food chain in both the swamp and on land? Come on, Clyde—educate yourself! Not a single species has a more developed brain than us, and—get this—we’re like the only ones with a freaking backbone!”
I’m certain I’ve given the cucumber-sized lungfish far too much credit, but even if I’ve outraged a few monocle-wearing paleontologists, I feel confident that Homo sapiens weren’t the first nor will they be the last dominating species on Earth. Did the squishy lungfish rule the planet back then? Maybe. Did a wild and woolly water-borne organism evolve to thrive on exposed rocks, thus preceding the tetrapodomorphs as the reigning species two billion years earlier? My Magic 8 Ball says, “As I see it, yes.”
The point I’m trying to make here is that Homo sapiens—modern humans—are merely the “soup de jour” in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know how long rock-clinging organisms or lungfish dominated primitive Earth; however, history books and Google report that dinosaurs existed for 165 million years. Comparatively, modern humans have only been around for 300,000 years. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time imagining our species surviving another 100 years, let alone existing through countless eons to match the dinosaur’s tenure. If you don’t agree with my sobering outlook, then you obviously don’t go out much or waste hours on the internet—and you certainly don’t have any social media accounts. In that case, I applaud you!
Atmospheric change may have wiped out early multicellular organisms; predators could have turned lungfish into a delicacy; and the Ice Age most likely put the kibosh on dinosaurs—but what will be the reason behind the end of humanity? It’s not a question of “if it will end,” but rather “when and how it will end.” Earth is still roughly 500 million years from crossing the midpoint of its expected lifespan. Will anything be left on Earth to celebrate the milestone? I envision a vastly intelligent species holding balloons and wearing party hats. They just won’t look or act anything like human beings.
-Chuck Trunks
“This work was written independently by the author without the use of generative AI.”
Trunks Art moved from Columbia, South Carolina, to Nampa, Idaho, in 2025 and has made this city his home and writing inspiration.
To see more of my work, please have a look at more posts or email me at chucktrunks@gmail.com. Or, visit my website at www.trunksart.com. Also, you can find me on Instagram (chucktrunks) and Facebook (Chuck Trunks).
