Breve relato dos anos 50 (ou talvez do final dos anos 40).
"Jetsam" , um conto de 1953 de A. Bertram Chandler .
No final da história, um dos exploradores encontra um maço de cigarros Camel e não faz ideia do que é - foi a nossa civilização que se extinguiu.
As he stooped to pick up the pair of binoculars he found one more trifle half buried in the pumice dust. He scooped it up carefully in his gloved hand. It was fragile, mere rubbish, a discarded container that had held something and which was now empty. There was a flimsy, inner box of metal foil, an even flimsier outer box of paper with an external layer of some transparent substance which had preserved the script and the picture of the familiar animal that had once symbolized—something.
The Captain stared at it.
"A camel," he said at last, wonderingly. "A camel. I'd like to know what used to be in this
packet . . ."
Essa é a versão americana da história que apareceu em Revista de Fantasia e Ficção Científica, abril de 1953 , disponível em Arquivo da Internet . Como Daniel Roseman apontou em um comentário , a versão publicada em New Worlds Science Fiction # 20 Março de 1953 (também disponível no Internet Archive ) tem um pouco final diferente:
As he stooped to pick up the pair of binoculars he found something else half buried in the pumice dust. He lifted it carefully with his gloved hand. It was a bottle — this was fairly obvious in spite of its being cylindrical in shape rather than spherical. Freakishly, as in the case of the flimsy book found by the Navigator, the paper stuck to its side had been preserved through the ages. There were words in the unfamiliar script and, oddly out of place, the picture of a familiar animal.
The Captain stared at it.
“A horse,” he said at last .wonderingly. “A white horse. I’d like to know what used to be in this
bottle . . ."