The Murphy Tape – Historical Log #214

[Static crackling]

Ok, uh, is this…

[Inaudible]

Ok, red light, that’s on. Good. Uh, hello, future person, and greetings from the end of the world!

My name is Nolan Murphy, and, uh, I’m recording this for posterity, I guess. For, uh, anyone who might be out there, who finds this tape. Who also knows how to operate a tape player, for some reason. I would have done this on a cd or a flash drive, or something, but, well, I’m sure you know how it is with no electricity anymore. Kinda sucks.

Anyway, I’m sure like a billion people have already done this, but I’m just gonna tell you how this shitty world ended. Kinda sucky way to go, honestly. I would have preferred zombies or nukes or something, anything but… fuckin’ this.

I’m pretty sure this all started back about… oh… I think it was like three, or four- no, definitely four years ago, when that one company had that explosion at their plant down in, like, Mexico, or wherever it was. Somewhere south, and warm, I know that much. I didn’t really pay too much attention to the news back then, but I do remember there being a big fuss about the cleanup, and that it wasn’t going well, but it was something you’d see on your Facebook feed and scroll past without much thought. Someone would tweet about it, and be like “Oh, blah blah blah, we need to save the pla-

[static crackling]

…ut, then it started to get harder to ignore. It was, like, a couple months after that when the place- oh, oh, it was Cuba, not Mexico, I remember now. Anyway, Cuba’s government admitted that their cleanup efforts were failing real bad, so they asked other countries to help. There was a lot of politics and shit I didn’t pay attention to. I didn’t do any research or anything, I mean, I figured it was an oil spill or something. Some fish were dying. Whatever. Big deal, right?

Well, turns out it was a pretty big deal. I mean, I wouldn’t be making this tape if it wasn’t, right? So, the other countries couldn’t fix it. They bugged the States to intervene and… Well, I do remember this bit, we put it to a vote in the senate, or the house, uh, whichever one does the really important votes, and we totally said no. I mean, that just figures, right? The world in crisis, and we fuckin’ do nothing. Kinda our MO, really. I mean, uh, to be fair, though, I thought it was the right choice. I didn’t really think it would have much of an effect on us, you know? We’re like, hundreds of miles away from that little corner of the world up here in New York, so… How could it hurt us?

I think it was around that time that I actually started to click those links on Facebook and see what all the fuss was about… Mostly because people wouldn’t shut up about it. I was really confused about the whole thing, honestly. I mean, it was algae. Just, like, pond scum. I didn’t really understand it, and I still don’t, really, but whatever that company down in Cuba was doing, they dumped some chemicals in the water that made algae reproduce, like, real fast. Way too fast. The fish loved it, though, I mean they loved it. Fishing was great, apparently, so much food for all those fish, I guess. But… it was spreading. Spreading real fast. AndSHIT-

[Inaudible, crashing noise]

[Sounds of muffled swearing]

Ok, ok, shit, it’s still on. Good. Well, anyway, uh… what was I saying? Oh right. It spread, like, far. Soon, it was touching Texas and Florida, and well, then we really had no choice. We put up all sorts of little inflatable barriers on the beaches, like they use for oil spills, and that worked for a bit, but it got through. The stuff got through, like, always. Never stopped, really. We couldn’t get rid of it. Soon all the beaches on the east coast were covered in the shit. Just nasty green water everywhere, even in the Hudson.

The environmental people were going nuts, of course, claiming global warming, or nuclear weapons, or whatever, but it was just algae. We all waited for winter to come around, figuring that it would just blow over when it all got too cold up north, but… when spring rolled in and all the ice thawed, well, there it was. It didn’t disappear at all.

So, that was life for about a year, nasty green water taking over the Atlantic. It took another year or so for it to cover just about everything except the arctic and antarctic, so yeah, it’s everywhere now. Remember what I said about the fish? Well, turns out thanks to something about the oxygen in the water, they started to die. I don’t know all the scientific terms for it, but, like, apparently the algae was using the all the air or somethin-

[Static, inaudible]

…al problem came when all that greenhouse gas stuff started for real. Not like it was back in the 90’s when people were scared of it, but, like, for real. Icecaps melting, fast. Water levels rising. It happened fast, way faster than anybody thought it could. New York City was under 4 feet of water, suddenly, and it was all covered in nasty green shit. We all had to move, of course, I mean, what else was there to do? Swim to work?

That was, I think, last year, with a couple months more or less. I had to move out in April, and I went north to my parent’s place, in the Adirondack mountains, a little summer house that we’d had in the family for years. I hadn’t been there since my dad died in 2004, but, well, it was there, and I needed a place to live. Nice to be up further north, though, since it started

A couple months ago, the green shit started to creep up onto the what was left of the beaches. Not, like, menacingly or anything, just… it went up. Like, there was more algae and it just kinda pushed itself further up the shore. But then, it just kept rising. Like, even though there was no more water for it, it kept makin’ more of itself. And it rose one foot. Then another, then another. Started taking over the land, an inch an hour. Animals started dying off after a few months, like, just pushed away from their water sources and habitats, an-

[Static continues for nearly a minute]

…ctricity stopped a week ago, and my little crank-powered radio is telling me that things are looking real bad. I dunno what’s gonna happen, but, shit. Like I said, this is the worst apocolypse, right? I wish it had been nukes, honestly. Fucking Genetech, or whatever, that made that plant, I hope those guys burn in hell, and-

[Inaudible swearing]

Shit, I might have just broken my toe. Fuck. Anyway, I’m just gonna seal this tape up in a plastic bag and leave it somewhere, I guess. I hear it takes like a thousand years for plastic to disolve, so who knows, maybe this will actually reach someone. Probably not, with my luck.

Ah shit, battery running out. Well, if someone finds this message, uh, put it in a museum or something. Anyway, guess that’s it. Uh, bye.

[End of Tape]