With reverence, I recover the sacred stone tablet from underneath my bed. Fashioned from a slab of solid, indestructible rock, this tablet serves as a record of all those in the recent past who have made many field goals in an NBA game without missing one. As I hold it, I feel the significance of its existence flowing out of it and into my hands, even though it is just stone with no supernatural qualities.
When all of humanity’s databases are wiped out, when all of the paper stat-sheets are destroyed, when mankind itself is made extinct by an escaped, lab-grown superpathogen and the subsequent nuclear bombardment deployed to halt the pathogen’s progress, this stone tablet will survive as a testament to the achievements of humanity.
As far-future aliens search the plutonium-seared hellscape for any signs of culture, few will be found among the ruined buildings of Earth. But when my sacred stone tablet is discovered, carved with inscriptions that they will eventually come to understand are a representation of language, those aliens will know that a learned culture once resided where there is now only destruction.
With utmost precision, I chisel a new name onto the tablet: “DWIGHT POWELL: 9/9”. Each letter is a painstaking process, but I do not resent the time and effort expended, for I know that this slab of stone in itself holds more importance than my entire highlights archivium. The job done, I replace the tablet under my bed, and allow myself the guilty pleasure of hoping that humanity’s nuclear-enabled self-destruction will arrive soon.