He had been chosen to turn the two switches, one off—-one on. The oldest in that sector, old enough to have known the stink of fossil fuels and the poisonous remains of fuel rods. Most couldn’t even remember those things, only the sun and wind and hydrogen push. The Push, that’s what they called those sources for electricity. The Push would be turned off for something completely new.

His fingers trembled, he wished he could say a prayer to a greater power, but what they had learned in those two centuries after The War That Had Ended all Wars—-and almost all of them—-they were on their own. Knowing there was no hope from above, at least not from any divinities, they turned back to the softer sciences of splitting cells instead of splitting atoms. They had turned back from striving to the stars and lying back to only look at their beauty. The Earth was their home, the Earth was their gem, they had learned to bring back the life that had and again adorned her. Their home once again a breathing biosphere.

He had watched it all. The turning away from earth raped metals, heavy and rare. Now what they used was biological and clean. As soon as their technology turned from the scrap heap of polluting wires and sheet metals to wood with organic chips pushing the bytes to the gazillion, somehow their hearts, their minds purified themselves. Wars and conflicts, capitalistic competition, and even the fights on the playgrounds ended. It was hard for him to believe, he who had been turned into something different in those times. In The Turn, now, would they lose something that was needed for what was left of those fish who crawled out of the sea, climbed up the trees and then jumped down onto the ground to turn the planet into a place of their own making? Their needs had changed, they had become smart monkeys. Smart monkeys with tools and then weapons and now something deeper.

The telepathic cameras lodged naturally in the heads of those who were born to be reporters began to take pictures of him and pass them to the minds ready to receive them. He smiled and did what he should. He explained it was The Turn, a turn for the best, the greatest turn ever for all humanity. Each sector had chosen an Elder, so that when the sun went down, the switches would be turned for the dawn of a new era. He had the honor, he had been told the Luxaeterna Bacteria had already had their global spread. Everyone had received their new devices which would automatically connect. Transportation, computation, and even humble cooking would all be done without a plug, without ever needing to be turned off and on again.

Again, a hard swallow in his throat pushing down his panic. This was it, this was the last turn for them on planet Earth. The sun was gone, the night was black but the lights of the city and zooming cars still glistened. He took that symbolic switch and pulled it down. It was the darkest night he had known. The sector stopped humming and the cars in the air hiccuped for just a second. Then he pulled the other switch up.

The Turn.

And there it was an unending bioluminescence filled the night. The cars went on their way, the city exploded in light, and each person found that they glowed with pastel colors of different shades. They hadn’t known that Luxaeterna Bacteria would react differently to each citizen’s skins. He glistened light blue, his favorite color. They all were so beautiful, monkeys who shimmered now in an angelic incandescence, only without wings. The stars, in their hydrogenic and heliumic fire, looked down burning with jealousy.