It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost at full month since what the news is now calling the “Global Anomalous Event.” Thank Christ for the fucking internet, right? Without some sort of integrated timepiece we could all share, can you imagine how much worse it could have been? I mean, I’m not any better than the next guy- I still lose track of the days, but at least I can check without having to guess the number of hours I’ve been awake/sleeping. Switching the cell phone to military time helps too, and I am getting better about keeping a regular schedule. Thousands of years of human time keeping now dwindled to the electronic husk of the most taken-for-granted thing any of us had: day.
Not that I’ve had a difficult time of it. It’s been a change in lifestyle- I certainly don’t hang out outside as often- but just one more reason to thank the internet. I thought I’d miss it more. You know, after the initial shock of that first day you thought you woke up too early (or woke up way too late,) checking your clock and window with equal amounts of confusion. The majority of us still went to work that day. Hell, my early-bird boss didn’t even know the sun wasn’t showing until the rest of the office told him when they showed up. We even stayed there for most of the day, not getting much work done, but I guess we all wanted to insure our sanity... not something you can easily do if you lock yourself away from people.
I think it was about 2 in the afternoon when panic started setting in. Reports from other reaches parts of the world were coming in with the same phenomenon. The news reports kicked into their emergency broadcasts, repeating the same information every, well... 5 minutes, because there simply wasn’t that much information. Dawn never came; that was it. No reason, no explanation. Only hearsay and speculation. Eventually the radio simply became an audio forum of the panic and lunacy as people called in claiming the end of the world or that mad scientists, aliens or the Taliban were to blame. Eventually the scientists’ reports did start coming through, answering some of the simpler questions:
Was the Sun still there? “As far as we can tell, we are still in orbit around the sun, and that spectrographic experiments conclude that the sun is where it should be, but either it is no longer shining or visible light is somehow being blocked by Earth’s atmosphere.”
If the Sun has stopped shining, what could that mean? “In the worst case scenario, it could signify that the sun has turned on itself and has reached the size and mass of a singularity, or black hole. Our experiments however have ruled this out however, as data continues to show that radiation outside of the visible light spectrum is still reaching Earth from the sun’s location. The truth is, out study and knowledge of cosmic bodies, such as our sun is rather limited and we feel that much more experimentation is needed before we can responsibly answer that question.
If the Earth’s atmosphere is now blocking the light, then how is it that stars are still visible, and what could have caused it? “There are a number of hypothesis’ floating around as to why Earth’s atmosphere has suddenly become so selective, and so far we are conducting experiments with airborne chemicals common in industrial pollutions, commercial byproducts, and the Earth’s ozone. Right now, though, experiments have been inconclusive.
Without the sun, are we going to freeze? “As we mentioned earlier, the sun is not gone, it just can’t be seen. The radiation emitting from the sun is evidently enough to continue warming the planet despite the lack of visible light, as our meters have yet to detect any abnormal fluctuations in temperature. We should expect to see little change in temperature and resulting weather patterns, but we will continue to monitor the situation.
The next question hit like a bomb in the minds of the listeners. What about the plant life on Earth? “Top biologists are still looking into the phenomenon, but so far we have concluded that plant life has in fact stopped photosynthesizing.”
And that was it. That last answer was all people needed to let all hell break loose. It didn’t take long either. Evidently people are not as stupid as they appear. They were able to recognize, even if it was on a primal level, that with bottom of the food chain completely erased, it was only a matter of time before the food chain itself would collapse. It took governments a full 12 hours to mobilize their respective National Guards to defend food storage facilities and sellers, but by that time looters and hoarders had left a mere fraction of stockpiles. Some regions had it easier. Places where food rations where already the norm, not much changed... but I remember the first week here in Providence, driving out get food was tantamount to driving into a possible warzone. Evidently we Americans don’t appreciate being told we can’t do something and the asshole end of our society has a propensity for violence to get what they want. Needless to say, for a while there I seriously debated the 2 year old dented carton of Cup O’ Noodles and spoiled stew meat to any other alternative.
In the absence of scientific explanation, it seemed that religion took a new spotlight. Doomsday prophecies, the wrath of a vengeful god and telling of the apocalypse soon became a non stop sound bite well... everywhere. New churches cropped up gathering waning faiths or fenced skeptics. Even I went to a Ministry of the New Dawn mass, once Don’t you fucking call me a hypocrite, neither. Sure I think religion is bullshit, but when you face cataclysmic anomalies like NO FUCKING DAYLIGHT, fear’ll encourage you to do things that might go against your moral grain. But I don’t have to tell you that, do I? How many of you didn’t spend at least one night on your knees in a cold sweat praying until you passed out from exhaustion? The alternative to people I guess was suicide... what was it? 900% increase in self inflicted deaths the first week? Yeah, fear makes you do weird things...
It makes you think weird things to, apparently, because it didn’t take long for the rumors to start cropping up. Internet virals of local news reports and blogs talking about people coming back from the dead. I know right?! It seems like shadows are playing tricks on one too many minds. Either way, I’ve never seen one, or know anyone who’s seen one... it’s always my friends’ brother’s
roommate or some shit like that. Other reports were coming in with neighborhoods having some of their tenants turning up dead by exsanguination, blood loss, except the victims don’t have a mark on them and the blood is never found. Evidently this is how my neighbor a couple doors down passed away. The crazies are saying vampires... and my theories aren’t any better. Of course, this month has been textbook for the unexplained... so why should I expect anything to make sense. At least the murders where they find people torn apart, blood decorating random alleyways... that makes some sort of sense, although it’s still more than a little unnerving. Like I said, fear and darkness make people do weird shit.So even with all this unexplained bullshit happening, fueling the religious fire of the End of Days, the end never came. It’s been a 27 days and other than people freaking the fuck out, the only thing different is no daylight. Like I said, I thought I’d miss it more... but the world keeps turning, although you can’t really tell anymore. People started going back to work weeks ago, the lootings have almost come to an end... hell even the scientific community finally came up with something to help with the entire food issue. Giant sun lamps. Yes, it sounds fucking stupid, but they say that tests confirm that the crops that haven’t died completely in the interim have started growing again. Of course there was a huge loss, but at least we won’t be starving to death. But that’s also the baffling part about all of this. It seems that every other day there’s a new technological breakthrough. Some of it seems kinda trivial, like giant sun lamps or longer running generators to power them; but these other new inventions seemed to crop up over night. Anything ranging from plasma casting technology to ultra-long distance laser relay to night vision contact lens. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it is the 21st century and a lot of this has been a long time coming, but the suddenness of it continues to shock me. It’s like God turned out the light, and man immediately turned it back on.
The breakthroughs have admittedly done wonders for the economy, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. The people that have more faith in our survivability in these “dark times” are having more than a go at it with those that still think the end is near. Those who haven’t bankrupted themselves on worldly pleasures and/or insane safety devices have found themselves with more than a steady pay as the profits continue pouring in. Honestly, I can’t say I blame them for extorting those poor fuckers, but sometimes I kinda feel bad being part of the system that perpetuates a near fatalistic environment for a few extra bucks. But it looks like the big corporations have bounced back pretty well even after the initial crash, if the haven’t exceeded record breaking polls like NuSon Developments has for the past 2 weeks in a row.
So regardless if this is the end of the world, it looks like we’re here to stay. Maybe something as pesky as the sun dying may have killed us off a hundred years ago, but is heresy to say we’ve evolved past God’s plan? It is our world now, after all, shouldn’t we be the ones to decide when it ends?
