Before

The world ended, nobody noticed.

Not one soul looked up from their phone long enough to see the world dying and decaying all around them. Total collapse. We were all so busy collectively consuming gigabytes that we forgot to care for the Earth and each other. We let her die and now we reap the consequences of our sowing.

It took about three months for the world to understand things weren’t going back to “normal”. Life, and living it was forever and irreversibly changed. No one is fully certain what happened, or why. We got so comfortable with the status quo. Looking back there were signs, but nothing that jumped out and said “Hey! Don’t fuck this up idiots!” So we keep moving forward, unaware. Slowly and surely eroding the only viable ball in the known universe.

No! Hold on, back up. That’s bullshit! People, super smart people screamed from the roof and mountaintops about the impending and inevitable disaster. The truth is no one important or powerful enough took it seriously until it was beyond too late. The powers that be just kind of waved them off and scoffed globally at the so-called “alarmists” and obvious “extremists”. What they were saying couldn’t be right. How could humans be destroying the Earth just by existing?!

Not possible. Fuck off! Was the general sentiment, only made worse by our elected leaders driving the same lies and rhetoric down our throats every other night on the evening news. Fear is a fine method of control, but what our inhumane leaders realized is that utter nonchalance was far more powerful.

Now we find ourselves at the end of civilization, what few remain—after war and famine and disease had their way with us—are betting someone, not them, will know how to regain some small piece of the before. We all remember what it was like, but none of us know how to restart the world, it ran out of juice, and nobody knows where the breaker panel is. We’re all just waiting for death.

The world ended, nobody cares.