THE SERVANT AND THE MASTER

To uphold a promise, he had made to his long-aged servant, the master arrived at their meeting place a few minutes early. The servant, this servant, was different from all others that worked for the master. It rarely complained when it was put to work and provided all and what it could for the master without fail. So, when the day came that it finally protested, with rumblings and thunderous calls; the master was ready to hear its complaints. They decided on a place to meet, and after trekking a considerable distance from his home, the master found himself standing at the spot they had chosen.

There was nothing on the green hill but strong, aged trees and uneven grass to tickle his bare feet. The wind was gentle, softly blowing over the land and providing some warmth to combat that bothersome sting of the sun’s ray. The servant was also looked out, but with different eyes compared to the master. Its gaze once vibrant and inquisitive was now hollow and distant. There was pain carved around its eyes. Its feet were scoured and ashy as if it had walked over hot coals or trekked through a dry desert. 

“You wanted to speak to me.” The master began. His voice was firm but gentle. “What can I do for you, old friend. You look as worn as weathered leather.”

“Isn’t it beautiful?” The servant asked, almost mournfully, eyes still on the stretch of land below them. “Very beautiful indeed.”

“Quite.” The master agreed. “An amazing site, and quiet too.”

“I don’t know how much you can do, but that is yours to decide.” The servant spoke, addressing the master’s early question as it turned away to finally face him. “All I can do is speak and hope that you listen and try to understand, as I have tried to understand you.”

The master simply nodded, willing to listen in hopes that there would be something he could do for it. The servant bowed its head, showing humility to the master in hopes to ensure a favourable response. It’s didn’t have a clue where to begin. There was so much wrong and so much hurting, it feared that it would never be able to say it all. There was little left to do but try. Suffering in silence helped neither it, or its master

“Since the beginning, I served you faithfully. When you were hungry, I provided food for you to eat and water to drink when you were thirsty? I knew your needs, and you learnt to use my every product to your advantage, consciously or unconsciously. Out of the pores of my leaves and from my seas poured out the oxygen that you saturated your lungs with it. I took your own gases from you and soaked it into myself, and in that little detail alone began a long cycle of traits that connected you and me. We were never equals. In honesty, you need me more than I need you, but I have never been your superior; you were always above me. My resources were yours, my lands, yours and my water yours. 

You were innovative, and from me, you made into reality ideas that formed in your minds and birth with your hands. You took wood from my trees and stones from my fields and built yourselves homes to live in. You created equipment and fashioned tools that made life easier for your survival. You tilled my soil, planted your seeds, and out from me sprung your food. You cast your nets into the rivers and seas. Out of it came the fishes you roasted over fires and used to fill your empty stomachs. Your crops were watered by the downpour from my clouds. You used my horses, cattle and other animals as means to earn income, a way to move or as food to eat. If I were to give an account of my work, I would say I have done a good deal of what I was meant to do.

Still, I can’t be oblivious to the fact that I have cost you a lot of things through the years. I would not deny this. So many storms you have seen and weathered because you had no other place to run to when they arrived. You have put up with my quakes, my floods, my thunder, and my droughts. My waves have often risen against you, washing away your homes, and sinking your great ships. I have claimed more of your lives than I care to count. So, I am not perfect, but I do what I can to keep you alive. 

I have done so for many years. Served so many masters and provided as much as I could. Millions have come before you. I serve millions now, including you, but for the first time, I don’t know if I would be here to serve the next. 

It has been so long since the beginning. You have either greatly overestimated my durability or cruelly underestimated my worth. Over thousands of years ago, when you dug shafts deep into me in the hunt for minerals, I stood by and watched. Maybe I was like you then, ignorant and curious, watching you explore me and find new things from me to improve yourself. I loved seeing your work. Your innovation greatly impressed me because it was a measure of evolution for you and me. Your inventions never seemed to stop. Decade after decade, century after century, you made more and more things. I wanted to be proud of them, and I was, but most of them did more damage than good. 

All you have needed from me, I tried to provide for you. My trees for your furniture. My minerals for your energy and even your jewels. I gave them to you freely and without hostility. In truth, what can I do. Remember, I was made to sustain you. So, when you needed the trees, you cut them down. I took the pain of having their roots ripped out from my nurturing grounds. When you wanted the minerals, you drilled them out, and I bore the pain of your rupturing my grounds.

When you felt pride in your creations and designs, I felt proud because I was the source. Then you grew in number, and your houses evolved from wood to brick. You cleared mass fields of my trees and slapped your houses of iron and stone over them. 

Your cars came soon enough. And an excellent invention it was. Trips that took days could be accomplished in hours or less. I have not forgotten any one of your numerous creations. Many leave their mark year after year and carve their presence into my memory. The more you grew, the more you took from me. The more you took, the more poisons you shot into me with fewer means to clean them out of my system.”

The servant paused to catch its breath. It doubled over with a rumbling groan, holding its side that had further blackened as he spoke. The master tried to help, but there seemed to be too much broken. He had no idea where to even start. So, he settled for holding the servant, waiting until the flashes of pain had passed.

Unexpectedly, the servant clutched his arm and looked into his eyes with its blackened ones, tears of mud tracking through the cracks of its weathered skin. “Do you remember…when you saved me once?”

 “I remember.” The master softly replied, tears welling in his eyes as he took in his friend’s suffering. 

“You had created something new, something I wasn’t used to like everything else you made in me. Your chemicals soaked into my atmosphere and it burned, master. It burned like nothing ever had, tearing a hole through me with an intensity that shocked even you. I peeled me away piece by piece, ate at me month after month. Then, back then, you saw the damage and its likely consequences and you came together to save me. You acted quickly, and I can’t help but wonder if it was because the ill effects were so unmanageable. Whatever the reason, you took away the poison and slowly I healed. I am not healed yet but more sores are growing in me now. 

Many years later I see the consequences of those first days. I feel them as you fill my atmosphere with filthy gases that choke me and stress both lands and seas. I cry out for help, and a few hear, but you have gone too far, and some are too selfish to stop. I don’t judge you for yearning for growth, I don’t judge you for making mistakes, in the beginning, they are necessary when gathering knowledge. What I hold against you is that after gaining knowledge of your effects on me, you are heavily hesitant on changing because you only see how it would disrupt your lives. The lives you have grown accustomed to. 

I am doing my best to fight for you, striving that you still have a place to call home but I can only hold up so far. My ecosystems are doing their best to fight, giving you more time to get things right and turn around for the better, but how long will it take you? Every year I get hotter, and absorbing your gases is affecting the balanced cycle of my waters. You have even further worsened their condition by introducing your polluted creations into them. The fishes, which, by the way, are dwindling in number as a result of your actions, are not everlasting. On land and in the sea, you are hunting many of my animals to their extinction. 

You keep pushing, and I fear for you, oldest friend. I fear for the day, I would watch as you cast your nets into the waters and drag up nothing but your poison from the depths. When there are no longer fishes in my seas or animals on my lands to feed you. When the floods wash more and more of your prized civilizations away or your land burns from the heat. We have been linked from the beginning, and all that you have harmed me with has begun to break you as well. You might not be here for that day that I fear, but would you wish that on the generation I am to serve after you?

You show little interest in slowing down. All most of you think about is growing more and more, earning more and more. In all this, more than a few of you have forgotten that while I was made to sustain you, I was placed under your care. You were supposed to care for me, not abuse me. You have grown but at the cost of me. How much more do you believe I can take? How much do you believe I can give? A few of you fight for me, and I am not numb to your efforts, but just as you once all came together to save me from the dreadful gas that tore a hole in my ozone, you should all come together to save me from the rest of your hands’ work. Listen to those who advise. 

Not everything can be rectified at the snap of a finger. It took you centuries to get me to this point, and it might as well take centuries to repair the damage you have done. But I beg you to start sooner rather than later. I don’t know if you can see it, but I am losing grip on myself, and things are spinning out of control. The more I burn, the more I melt in certain areas that you know well. You are aware of how that affects you. I am afire with the trees that have blazed because of this heat, and I can list hundreds of more things going wrong in me. I don’t mean to scare you, but there is more to go wrong and more to come if you don’t take a stronger stand against yourselves. 

I don’t want you to fight or clash. All I want you to find some common ground. Listen to those who caution you. Those who have dedicated their lives to reversing the damage you have caused. Understand their concerns and make it your own too. You need me to survive, and I will always want to help, but give back as much as you can, so that I can heal myself in time. If you take just enough and put back just as much, I can begin to rebuild. I would not be as before, or at least not so quickly, but there would be hope for us both in the end. 

After all, where would all your development lead you if, at its end, I am destroyed? You marvel at the wonders of the universe, but in that great expanse you are yet to find another servant like me. Who would support you and all your needs effortlessly.”

The servant could no longer hold its own weight, and it staggered, finally falling to its knees while the master tried to hold it up. A tear slipped from his eyes as he struggled with the weight, but he did not let go. He held on, muttering words of reassurance as the servant’s breathing grew laboured. He did not pull away even when some of its heat and grime rubbed off on him. 

Together, they sat on the top of the hill, holding each other. The master listened to the ragged heaving of his friend’s breathing, unable to offer any true comfort. So, he embraced it and looked on, in silence as the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains.