The Vivaxe: A Polluted Future Ohio Tale
Once-ler Vivek came rolling in deep
From a land far away where the rivers run thick
With factory sludge and the skies never clear—
“Why clean up the mess? It’s someone else’s year!”
He planted his flag on Ohio’s green ground,
Where the Once-lers of old left the Truffula sound.
“Data!” he shouted, “Big servers! Big racks!
I’ll carpet the state with these humming black stacks!”
The trees whispered warnings, the rivers ran cool,
But Vivek just grinned like a kid after school.
“In my old country we don’t fuss with the dirt—
We build first, apologize later (or never, it hurts).”
So the concrete poured thick and the cooling towers rose,
Swallowing farmland and quiet old roads.
The air grew a haze from the endless machine hum,
While Ohioans squinted and muttered, “How come?”
A short fuzzy fellow (the last of his kind)
Poked up from a ditch with a leaf on his mind.
“I speak for the soil and the water and air!
These centers are cooking the whole watershed bare!”
Vivek just laughed and adjusted his tie,
“Progress, my friend—watch the stock tickers fly!
Where I come from we never let ‘green’ slow the game.
Earth’s a resource. The rest is just shame.”
The servers kept spinning, the power lines strained,
The rivers ran warmer, the groundwater drained.
Night turned to day under LED glare,
And the last little fellow just sat in despair.
Unless…
Someone somewhere decides that the bill
Isn’t paid by the next kid who inherits the hill.
Unless someone plants something other than racks—
Something living that doesn’t need megawatts and stacks.
But Vivek just shrugged as the turbines spun hot:
“Dirty countries build first. Clean ones… do not.”
(And the data centers blinked on through the night,
While Ohio kept wondering who’d switch off the light.)