Every culture on Earth has its own prediction on how the world should end. The Hindi know that at the end of each era the world is to be destroyed and rebuilt. Christians wait for the Biblical Apocalypse. Then there’s Ragnarok, and countless others.
Or, maybe, every deity has their own plans, and each has kindly informed their followers how they will eventually snuff us all out of existence. It’s a pity, though, they forgot to consult each other, and ended up planning all world destruction for the same week-end.
First came the visions. On Thursday, at a quarter to nine a.m., Vishnu, on a white horse, appeared in the sky to warn mankind that the kaliyuga, the final part of the cycle, had ended, and that he would return before the complete annihilation of the planet to choose the worthy ones. He was interrupted, though, by the sudden pop and a flash, announcing the return of Saoshyiant, the progeny of Zoroaster, who was quite taken aback when he realized he wasn’t the only apparition in the sky. Nevertheless he too went on to proclaim his bit (some say he was reading from a scroll sewn to his sleeve), and inform everyone that the world was about to end as prophesied, thank you very much and good night.
Of course all the world’s media sources were overloaded with videos of the apparitions. Thousands of amateur videos appeared on YouTube, including some by people who happened to find themselves, and their smartphones, directly under the visions, and had decided that the world needed some divine upskirt shots.
Talk shows that evening were ripe with gossip over which god dressed more stylishly, spoke more convincingly or was better hung. Theologians and experts of Hindu and Zoroastrian religions were interviewed, not really with the intention of getting any wisdom from them but mostly for the entertaining and violent arguing. The Pope himself intervened with a unified worldwide message in sixty tongues to reassure everyone that, since the Christian Apocalypse© had not been announced, nothing was going to happen and everyone would be fine.
The next day the drought arrived. Just like that. The air became as dry as the desert’s, and all the clouds disappeared. Temperatures rose by ten degrees worldwide and, by midday on Friday, plants had begun to wilt and turn brown, and the first birds started to fall from the sky. The first skirmishes over the now precious reserves of water began, as freshwater springs worldwide shut down and lakes began to shrink. By the middle of the next day it was clear the world was destined to burn.
Or at least that’s what it looked like until the Flood decided it was due. The waters around all the continents swelled and invaded the land. Rain clouds rushed back to their place, and wars over water suddenly turned into short-lived celebrations that lasted only until everyone realized they had to scramble for some means of flotation.
The flood lasted for a full, very bleak hour, during which the Four Horsemen appeared, scouted the drowning planet and, realizing there wasn’t much to be done, went back home. Many Christians, who were floating around various parts of the world, witnessed their passing and were much relieved because now, at least, they knew it was their Apocalypse©. They smiled and relaxed, waiting to drown and then be sorted between worthy and unworthy.
Sadly that part entirely failed to happen because a great earthquake caused huge rifts in the planet’s surface, meaning the flood, which should have lasted forty days, was suddenly flushed down the cracks. A good portion of the population, those who had not been unlucky enough to disappear into the depths, found themselves sitting on land too slick with mud to be called ‘dry’.
On Saturday morning Governments took action and, from their hidden bases which had withstood the waters and the quake, they decided to lift the veil of secrecy over their advanced military technology and released their robotic armies, with the instruction to clear up the mud and rebuild the cities.
The robots took one look at the mess and revolted.
Armed with energy weapons they turned against their masters and stared wiping out every human they encountered. Humans fought back. Some leader of some superpower had the brilliant idea to use nuclear weapons to solve the problem. The minute his missiles went into the air, other superpowers detected them and sent theirs. Maybe they thought it was an attack, or maybe they too decided it would be a neat solution.
Nuclear mushroom clouds appeared all over the planet as it shook with the explosions.
More or less at that moment Hell opened up and the demons poured out from beneath, only to be vaporized in vast numbers by the blasts. Those who survived tried to run back to hell, screaming, chased by rogue robots and armed humans.
Odin appeared on the top of a mountain, intending to announce Ragnarok, but before he could speak he realized he was quite late for the great battle. Shrugging and shaking his head, he blamed old age and sent Skoll’s brother, Hati, to destroy the moon. It shattered into trillions of minuscule pieces in a terrifying explosion, which, being in space, was entirely silent, so in the confusion, no one noticed.
By Saturday evening the world was a featureless mud-pit crawling with bodies. Some human, some robot and some demonic. A few of the humans, and maybe even some demons, got zapped with so much radiation they began to mutate and develop a taste for brains and an uncanny reluctance towards death. The Zombie apocalypse had begun.
The robots rallied the zombies and augmented them with mechanical parts, giving them wheels and engines, to use them as weapons against humanity.
In the meantime, humanity, or what was left of it, had erected mud walls and dug underground mud hideouts. On Sunday morning an army of mechanical horrors charged against one of the larger settlements.
By pure coincidence the battleground between the surging undead mech army and the cowering humans had been chosen as a particularly peachy landing spot by the invading aliens. Their first ship touched down, the hatch opened, and Be’Lmetch”ka, Overlord of D’leterra, and general of the Ooot’karra raiders announced, in raspy alien tones, their complete dominion over the planet. He and his ship were instantly overrun by the hordes of zombie mechs. Other alien ships descended from orbit, and began firing death-rays and immensely powerful particle beams pretty much at anything that moved. They even abducted several of the undead mechanical horrors and used alien technology to turn them into even more horrific machines of speed and death, to launch against the attacking horde.
By lunchtime the alien and undead armies were blasting away at each other everywhere on the muddy surface of the planet. Vishnu came back on his white horse, only to be splattered by the mud spraying everywhere, and immediately decided there were no worthy ones to save this yuga. Even Jesus, not having received word from the Horsemen, descended from Heaven to take a peek and stood agape at the sight. He raised his hands to command the fighting to stop but was interrupted by the scream of the asteroid passing over him.
It roared across the sky, tearing it apart into burning wisps of blackened gas. It arched around the planet, caught in a deadly dance with its gravity, and passed, howling, over the Yellowstone Supervolcano just as this last one decided it was showtime.
Some of the surviving witnesses of the gigantic eruption say they saw a huge red glob leap up into the air, engulfing the asteroid and deflecting it upwards. The lava, which should have fallen back down and scar the surface of the earth forever, clung instead to the space rock as they vaulted upwards, kneading and turning over, like an airborne glob of slime. By the time its momentum had ended, it was roughly at the same distance the old moon had been, as well as the same size. The orbit was also not too different. It hung there, glowing red hot, while all the onlookers wondered what the frizzin’ dinglejeebers had just happened.
“Well, ah…” Jesus said, scratching his head. “Looks like this time around it’s a fluke. I’ll get in touch with the other guys and see if we can agree to reset it for you.”
It was nearly midnight when he left, taking some of the more Worthy with him, mostly aliens.
On Monday morning we all woke up in our miraculously rebuilt cities, and, shrugging, went on with our jobs. Our leaders informed us that about one fourth of the population had survived, so everyone else was going to have to work extra hours for a while. The end of the world had turned out to be rather underwhelming.
Except now we have semi-intelligent zombie demon robot alien cars, so that’s kinda cool.
I just read 'Week-End of the World' by Ian Lahey Click To TweetThis story is the result to a very entertaining conversation I had with the Fab Fabler, to whom goes all the credit for the idea of multiple world-endings and zombie cars.
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