The Heir To The Last Man

One of the symbols of places without history is refuse. Space is menaced by garbage. Waste is no longer coped with as in civilized countries; it outgrows the structures. When a ship founders, the wreckage drifts ashore. The mast, the planks are used for building shacks or as fuel. People live on and from the refuse—among garbage heaps that they exploit. Naked hunger follows bygone wealth and its lavishes. Growth fails to keep pace. 

At first, thoughts are twisted, then actions become ominous; there are foretokens. One such sign, according to Attila, is the passion—a humanist legacy—for excavations. “Something like subterranean cargo cults began back then; only the graves contributed artworks. The disempowerment of the gods progressed at the same rate. Then came the exploitation of fossil remains, followed by earthquakes and the destruction of primeval forests by the hunger of energy. Even the ocean became a dumping ground. The ash tree was no longer bent, it was chopped down.” 

The degenerates, whose behavior Attila studied in the Great Dump Site, lived there in dugouts; they were virtually unclad and unarmed. “That is how mushrooms live on the chlorophyll of other plants.” As gathers and hunters, they grubbed for roots and set up traps for small animals. Unable to work either stone or wood, they used them in whatever way they fit into their hands. That was also how they utilized the vestiges of metal utensils and machine parts. They seemed barely alive, drowsing in a dreamlike state, as in the days before Prometheus had given them fire. “The heir to the Last Man is not the primitive, but the zombie.”

Clearly Attila had given them medical attention, but without success. Now and then, pirates would land and hunt them down in order to try out the weapons that they had obtained from uncontaminated bunkers. And they carried off a few people in order to reconnoiter those same bunkers. As slaves, they captives were useless.

-excerpted from “Eumeswil” by Ernst Junger (1980)