I felt like I hadn’t slept at all
when my alarm started screeching, and I dragged myself out of bed, splashed
some water on my face and had a slurp of coffee. When I looked at the wall
clock, it said 6:39, and it took me a moment to realize that I’d set my alarm
for an hour early. “Oh, well, it’s not the end of the world,” I thought. But
when I yanked back the curtains, I saw a smoldering landscape of twisted,
leafless trees, blackened chimneys, and burned-out cars. Total annihilation.
It was a Saturday, too, and I’d
planned on going out to breakfast. Now I wasn’t hungry.
I poured more coffee and turned on
the TV and it showed what I think used to be the White House, now just a pile
of rubble. The crawl at the bottom of the screen said, “Idiot sets alarm for an
hour early, triggering global apocalypse.”
Then the TV went blank and the
lights went out.
I don’t
mind admitting that I felt pretty stupid for all the times I’d worried about
how some conflict or other would spiral out of control and bring on Armageddon.
Nukes? Turns out they were no big deal. Global warming? Didn’t make a
difference. Donald Trump isn’t even worth mentioning.
I thought that maybe the survivors
would find me and take their revenge, and I couldn’t blame them for that. Here
they were living perfectly ordinary and peaceful lives and I make a simple
mistake that destroys everything they know and love. I’d be mad, too. But then
I realized there weren’t any survivors, and felt really bad.
The thing was, I really didn’t even
need the alarm clock. I usually woke up around 7:15, looked at my cell phone
and see what time it was, then played Words With Friends for a few minutes
before getting up. But my battery had died just before I went to bed and that
threw me off, so in the dark I fiddled with the clock and just made a mistake. Maybe
if I’d read the manual, I’d know this kind of thing could happen, so I’m really
disappointed in myself. That was just careless.
I imagine that if they’d survived,
religious zealots, politicians, and people in the news business would be really
upset, too, because up until now they made a pretty good living from their
predictions of the coming apocalypse. If things had gone as they expected,
there would have been lots of drama, and escalating desperation, and
countervailing forces that sought to reverse the inevitable. I think the
religious folks would’ve taken it hardest, because they had the most colorful
take on things, with convoluted prophesies, and devils and messiahs and the
faithful floating up to Heaven and all that. I’ve got to admit that would have
been something to watch!
The politicians, well, you can’t
feel sorry for them, because no matter what they said you always knew it was
just to get a notch up in the polls or to make their opponent look weak or
stupid or dishonest.
Then there were the news media. Catastrophes
were their bread and butter. Every time someone made a dire prediction, the press
horned in on it. If it was dramatic enough—or had video—they could speculate
and prognosticate for weeks. The news business had an especially sweet deal when
scientists were involved, too, and not just when it came to climate change, but
also giant earthquakes, massive volcanoes, and asteroids. Any one of those
things could have ended the world in dramatic fashion, with all the elements of
a disaster movie, which would have in some ways been more satisfying, but also—let’s
admit it--a little clichéd.
This is probably better, and it has
that added attribute of the unexpected. Yep. This just confirms the fact that
no one can predict the future.
I finished my coffee and looked at
the clock. I wasn’t even seven yet, so I decided go back to bed. It was up to
me to rebuild civilization, somehow, and I needed my rest.
