Mother Nature has Sent her Regards

Like numerous instances in history, major corporations and tourism have wasted a new scientific discovery away.

In this instance, a small, humble private company had created the world’s first portal to another dimension. I was one of their scientists.

But what kind of dimension, you ask, was so appealing to everyone?

That would be a parallel reality where we haven’t destroyed the Earth.

Like our dimension, this one, dubbed the Wonderland (the portal known as the “Rabbit Hole”) held 8 billion nearly-identical people, their only difference from us being their sharp teeth. The tourists who paid to jump into Wonderland learned to get used to their copies’ (Doppelgängers) distorted mouths. It was the second contrast that shocked them even more.

The Doppelgängers actually coexisted, not dominated, their planet. They didn’t mine for metals or oil. They respected, not killed, their animals and biomes. They didn’t even eat meat.

Wait a minute…

We should have taken the fact that the Doppelgängers never ate meat around the Originals (us), despite having teeth specifically for it, as strange.

As a warning.

Yet we went ahead and, being humans, took advantage of them. Nearly all of us swarmed through the wiry door of the Rabbit Hole, sending in greedy companies and conflicting governments along. We chopped down their rainforests, purged their resources, slaughtered their animals, repeated the same mistakes that were taking toll on our Earth.

However, they didn’t fight. They didn't send in their militaries or gnash their naturally-weaponized jaws. While they still shared 95% of their DNA with us, they didn’t do the Original, the human, thing. We should have seen this as unnerving. As a red flag.

One day, once nearly all of us had immigrated to Wonderland and ruined their planet as much as ours, the Doppelgängers held a meeting with us, in their version of a UN building. I was there, my Doppelgänger gazing back.

The rulers of our Earth and their Anti-rulers talked, and eventually, our president decided to leave them to rebuild themselves. That’s when they snapped.

“I’m sorry, but none of you, including the others outside this building, cannot leave.” It was their Anti-president that spoke this, standing up slowly.

“What do you mean?! The Rabbit Hole is still open, thanks to our Doctor here!” The President gestured to me.

All of the Doppelgängers snickered, showing off the needles in their mouths. The Anti-president stopped and stated: “Only one person shall cross back to their realm and have to fix everything without the greedy fools here. Doctor, please step onto the podium. We must have a word.”

I walked up and faced the Doppelgänger representative, awaiting what felt like a verdict. I had known, in the back of my head, what was going to happen, but it seemed like more of a sci-fi show episode plot than an actual reality.

“Tell the humans on your side of the Rabbit Hole that…” The Anti-president grinned, teeth drawing blood on his lips. “Mother Nature has sent her regards.”

And with that, their feast began. I barely made it to the portal as Doppelgängers devoured their Originals, gore covering the remains of their ancient villages and our smoggy, makeshift cities. So that’s the reason they had such snappers.

The rest was a blur of interdimensional jumping and stumbling back into my lab. My Doppelgänger had torn one of my arms to shreds, but I was aware that, like the state of our planet without greed, it could all be fixed.

I repeated those Doppelgängers’ words to the my coworkers, then nurses, then news outlets, eventually to everyone (a population of less than 1 billion).

These days, we have restored as much as possible, but there is always work to do. I know that somewhere out there, the Doppelgänger are feeding off corrupt planets, doing their duty to Mother Nature (whether that be a mere concept or real entity).

We should have known, from even before the Rabbit Hole and Wonderland’s false utopia, that Mother Nature was the cruelest mother, and that someday, she would get revenge on what we have done to her.