And just like that, the stars started going out, one by one.
And all humanity could do was go outside and gape at the darkening sky and wonder what it could possibly mean.
Astrophysicists were dragged away from their labs and telescopes and dusty little office and pushed in front of cameras and brusquely asked to account for it all.
“we’re just as surprised as you are!” they answered. This true but unsatisfactory answer only enraged the crowd.
“A cosmic dust storm is raging between Earth and the stars!” they tried next. This satisfied most of the Earth’s population and life warily returned to normal. Sky gaping become a hobby, not a breathless obsession.
But it didn’t last long – a week, ten days at most – because this explanation could not account for stars blinking out of existence like faulty Xmas tree lights, one at a time, and in no particular order.
Luckily, the astrophysicists had a new explanation ready to go. One they were pretty darn proud of. It involved some very convincing charts and diagrams showing how or solar system had been invaded by thousands of spherical objects of an “unknown substance” (dark matter?) and it was these mysterious objects that had been “misidentified” as a dust cloud at first but were now know to be mystery spheres.
Surprisingly, this worked. It was enough for most people that the scientists knew what it was and reassured them it was harmless (?).
It wasn’t much, but it kept civilization going for a while.
What really unleashed hell was when a very beloved and prominent and popular astrophysicist, a woman named Lucinda Parjeet (“Science’s Aunty”),, suddenkly broke down in the middle of a live interview and, with the mad clarity of a soothsayer, announced that everything she was supposed to say tonight was a lie and the that truth was that, “The universe is dying! THE UNIVERSE IS DYING! The Universe is dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying!” then collapsed into wracking, heaving sobs.
That clip became the most viral thing in the history of the internet, and wherever it spread, seeds of desperate chaos were sown, and soon took root and flourished.
By now the sky was mostly dark at night, making the moon seem like an enormous pale intruder by comparison. Under its light, the world went mad. Nightfall brought riots, acts of terrifyingly nihilist terrorism, the birth, death, and rebirth of death cultures, mystery societies, and fanatic religions, and worst of all, public “blood sacrifices” of anyone the mobs could get their hands on and thought might appease the gods and bring the stars back to the sky.
Then things got much worse when someone, somewhere (historians disagree to the point of fisticuffs on who and where) started up the cry of “The Sun is next!”, and now the madness was no longer confined to the night and consumed enough of humanity that civilization flailed itself to pieces practically overnight.
Cities burned. Suburbs were sacked. Violent clashes akin to small civil wars raged constantly. Mass suicides became routine. People asked each other if they planned to “be around when it happened” with the casualness of asking someone if they had plans for the weekend.
The few “deniers” who insisted that there was no evidence that anything bad was going to happen to our solar system were hounded into hiding by the howling mobs.
Humanity was in the worst trouble of its short existence. Doom was everywhere. Hope was absent,. Chaos, death, and madness ruled the day.
And the whole world burned.
Meanwhile, The Man Who Will Kill Us All was surprised by how unsurprised he was by all these events.
It was as through he’d seen it all before. Or rather, as if he had read the script and knew his part by heart and was just waiting in the wings for his cue.
Except there was no script, He had no idea it was going to happen till it happened. Until the first star blinked, he was as safe and secure in the knowledge that, no matter what, life would go on as the rest of humanity.
But the moment the news footage of that first star going out reached his hermetically sealed hermitage, a strange and terrible force awoke in The Man Who Will Kill Us All, and said, in a voice both terrifying and terrifyingly compelling, “IT HAS BEGUN. “
The days following had been a pitched battle between The Man Who Will Kill Us All and this strange new voice in his head. And at first, he was full of bravado and determination , ready to do whatever it took to eject this invader.
But the more he fought it, the stronger it got, like it thrived on the conflict. He felt himself slipping away as this entity came to utterly dominate his mind.
Eventually he gave in, not because he decided he couldn’t win, but because he was too tired to fight any more.
And besides, fighting it hurt so bad, Like razor blades slicing his brain.
And giving it felt so good, Like amazing sex, a great meal, the finest of massages, and a good nap all rolled into one.
No amount of self-disciplined and self-deterministic rage could hold out against that for long. Within a week, The Man Who Will Kill The World was reduced to being nothing but a silent passenger living in fatuous bliss and hating himself for it in a dark and dusty corner of his own mind.
One who watched in shock and horror as this new force used his body to access parts of his sealed world he never knew existed, made contact with the outside world using equipment he’d never seen, and spoke with other human beings, which he had never been able to do.
Eventually The Man Who Will Kill Us All gave up trying to make sense of it all and went to sleep with no intent to wake, effectively committing suicide.
Well, almost effectively. Because he was very much still alive.
And soon, he would awaken to a far, far different world.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.