In an average ancient, Babylonian home, in a room lit bluely only by a small tube TV, sat Bu in a chair and Bu Jr. in front of the little box.  “Now Roseanne! Not Roseanne from the TV show Roseanne! Agh criminy, you kids these days cancellin’ good old American values, like the Conners on Roseanne.”  Father Bu pushed himself off from his chair, scuttled over, reached a long, encrusted, spindly finger in front of Bu Jr., and clicked the TV off.  He muttered all the way off to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of hot coffee.  

Mother walked in.  She was beautiful and human.  She had chocolate hair and olive sunkissed skin.  Her eyes were icy blue.  Bu Jr. didn’t understand how she could love an arachnid as his father was, and a fire spitting scorpion at that.

“You used to be different before” Bu Jr. had heard her whisper in the rising time of warmth between dawn and the sunrise before he went to sleep.

“Times were different” he’d deflect back and walk away.

He was right - the times were different now, but Bu Jr. didn’t think that was all such a bad thing.  Things were changing.  

He’d walk around spitting outlandish prophecies.  “The dark days are coming, and they will be cold.  See how much you care then when I’m dead and you’re paralyzed from the waist down from frostbite. Maybe if you’re lucky, you won’t have to watch your mother die of heartbreak.  I hope to almighty Shamash that for her sake you’re not so lucky and she goes before you, Junior.”

The thought of losing his mother or causing her imminent demise made Bu Jr.’s eyes well up with tears.  His father wouldn’t stand around very long to watch that and he no longer was allowed to sting his son per his wife’s request.  

“The end of days is near, Bu Junior.  Mark.  My.  Words.”

Bu Junior looked down at his fleshy, mortal stomach; his scaly, crustaceous ends.  He looked at the scars where his father’s pincers pierced into his skin.  He felt the strength of his own lower shell, yet he felt so weak.  He also needed, like his father, the heat.  Without it, half of him wouldn’t survive.  

The humans around them didn’t seem to care.  His father wasn’t wrong there.  They could survive.  But he, and many others, most of his family and friends, wouldn’t.  The weather predicts great falls and massive world ends.  Only, who’s world will it collapse? The humans would turn their heads and live on without worry - until it is their sons and daughters, mothers and brothers, sisters and friends affected.  Only then, it would be too late.  

It already is too late.

This time last year was 115 degrees on average.  The average highs alone won’t even reach 105 this year.  At this rate, the Aqrabua would be killed off within a matter of 50 years.  The halflings, like Bu Jr., in a few more after that.  Generations of advances in inter-species mingling would cease and go lost to time and history.  The world would never know peace if they kept turning so soft.  

Maybe Bu’s father was right.  Maybe cancelling Roseanne was the right call morally, but cancelling the reboot would change the very fabric of the world.  The world would be a better place again, if we could all just come home at 3:45 and catch the 4:00 showing of Roseanne: The TV Show featuring Roseanne.