The Humble Sea Sponge

        Homaxinella Blafourensis—known to its friends (of which there are none, as it is an Antarctic sea sponge and rather standoffish in demeanor) as Four—was older than the Roman Empire when it decided to up and collapse.

        Four didn’t notice this, as it lived in a nice little niche of the Antarist Ocean and was also a sea sponge, so it generally didn’t keep up with current events.

        When, around the 1800s, voyages to the Antarctic Circle came into vogue, Four continued to not notice. It had, fortunately, remained a sea sponge. It was quite pleased with slowly growing, filter feeding, and not watching the news.

        A great deal of things happened in Four’s life. Four continued to not care, as Four would continue to be a sea sponge the rest of its multi-millenia lifespan and thus wholly uninformed on the general state of worldly affairs.

        There were a few notable occurrences—anchor ice encroaching on its progenitor, a strange mechanical fish cutting a bit off of Four’s neighbor, a particularly busy spawning season—but all in all, things remained uneventful.

        Its neighbor did keep complaining about the whole ‘mechanical fish stealing a bit of my hard-won me-ness’ for entirely too long, but had been blissfully quiet since Four politely told it to shut up. All was well.

Above the sea, thousands of miles from Antarctica's waters, a whole mess of people did some rather stupid things and proceeded to maybe end the world.

        Well. End their world. The human world.

        The world of the Antarctic sea sponges continued for a great long while. Such a long time, in fact, that the concerning radioactivity of the Earth killed them long before anything else could.

        I cannot tell you how the seas sponges began—before even my time, I’m afraid—but this is how they ended:

        Four’s neighbor said nervously, “I do believe the water’s getting warmer.”

        Four said, rather politely, “Shut up.”