Tag: science-fiction

The Last One to Leave, Please Turn Off the Stars

The end began on a Tuesday, not with a bang, but a corporate memo. Subject line:

“Due to budgetary constraints, existence will be discontinued effective immediately.”

At first, no one noticed. Birds kept chirping. Influencers kept influencing. A man in Tallahassee still refused to return his library books.

Then came the second memo.

“This is not a drill. Earth is being decommissioned. Please gather all meaningful memories into a single shoebox. Label it clearly. Return to HR.”

No one knew where HR was, but rumors spread it was located inside a vending machine behind the moon. The vending machine offered two items:

1. A bag of Dust of What Could Have Been

2. The Answer (temporarily out of stock)

A philosopher named Dr. Linda Spoon attempted to rally humanity. She declared: “Omnicide is just suicide with a better view.” She received a standing ovation, then spontaneously combusted from the irony.

The whales voted to stay neutral.

The bees unionized and demanded severance pollen.

The cockroaches opened a jazz club called “The Fallout Lounge.”

Meanwhile, governments responded the only way they knew how: with committees. The United Nations formed the Final Task Force on All That Is (and Isn’t). Their final report read:

“We deeply regret to inform you that everything was a clerical error.”

Earth filed an appeal. It was denied on the grounds of insufficient vibes.

In a bunker beneath Antarctica, a man named Derek attempted to reboot existence using an old Nintendo console and a paperclip. He succeeded, but only in resurrecting Disco.

The skies filled with mirrored balls and Donna Summer.

The oceans turned into soda.

The dolphins began speaking in limericks.

In space, the Galactic Oversight Council convened.

“Who authorized this?”

“I thought you did.”

“No, I outsourced it to a freelance algorithm.”

“Oh god.”

“No, just Algorithm-7. God was laid off last quarter.”

They voted to cancel the universe’s trial period. Turns out, no one had upgraded to Premium.

As atoms began untangling like poorly made spaghetti, one child—unbothered—drew a smiley face in the dirt. The dirt began humming. The humming confused the laws of physics.

The universe paused.

Time asked Space, “Are we… still doing this?”

Space shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I was just here for the free gravity.”

And just before the final pixel flickered out, someone whispered:

“Maybe this was a screensaver.”

Then everything crashed to desktop.

Ash and Seed

The cities fell quietly. Not with fire or fanfare, but with a flicker. Supply chains snapping like old rope, currencies crumbling into irrelevance, and governments too bloated to breathe. People had waited for rescue. None came. Then, something stranger happened: they stopped waiting.

Maya lived in one of the Transition Zones, carved out of the skeleton of what had once been Pittsburgh. Skyscrapers stood hollow, colonized by vertical gardens and data relays. Streets were no longer roads, but corridors of barterless exchange: food grown by solar-fueled machines, distributed by drones with no masters.

She remembered the old world in fragments: clocks, ads, the endless scrolling of fake urgency. In this new world, days were marked by need and contribution. Some days she coded for the mesh network. Other days she repaired the water-capture towers or helped with conflict mediation—though those requests were rarer now.

There was no money. No one starved. The idea of “earning a living” had become as quaint as leeches in medicine. What did it mean to earn what had always been a birthright?

Occasionally, envoys came from outside the Zone—wandering emissaries from collapsing enclaves or liberated factories. Some brought new blueprints, others just stories. Maya loved the stories. One woman spoke of how a collective in former Indonesia had wired up an entire island to run itself, then dismantled their last police drone ceremonially, like a funeral for fear.

In the evenings, Maya sat under the wind trees, their turbines singing above, and read aloud to anyone who wandered by. Tonight it was McCarthy. Tomorrow, maybe Marx. No one made her do this. That was the point.

They lived without rulers or markets, not because they had to—but because they finally could.

And in the ruins of profit, something strange had taken root:

Hope.

But not the kind you wait for.

The kind you build.