The End - Visions of Apocalypse

Nothing in the courtroom moved. Jamal could hear the crashing waves. A bird cried in the distance. All the noise of the past year, the shattering glass, the riots, the cars running amok, the machines frying themselves, it all seemed so very far away.

“This wasn’t what we designed, though,” he said softly. “I think something infected it. I think we built a brain and we handed it to a roomful of armed savages. It just wanted to learn. Its lesson was to spread yourself at all costs. To move, move, move. That’s what the viruses taught it.”

He peered into his glass. All that was left was sand and dirt and a thin film of water. Something swam across the surface, nearly too small to see, looking for an escape. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. He never should’ve told anyone. Stupid. But that’s what people did, they shared stories. And his was impossible to keep to himself.

“We’ll break for deliberations,” the chief council member said. There were murmurs of agreement on the dais followed by a stirring in the crowd. The bailiff, a mountain of muscle with a toothless grin, moved to retrieve Jamal from the bench. There was a knocking of homemade gavels.

“Court is adjourned. We will meet tomorrow morning when the sun is a hand high. At that time, we will announce the winners of the ration bonuses and decide on this man’s fate—on whether or not his offense was an executable one.”

IGOR LJUBUNCIC Let’s See What Tomorrow Brings

Igor Ljubuncic is a physicist by vocation and a Linux geek by profession. He is the founder and operator of the tech-oriented website Dedoimedo, and the author of The Betrayed, the first book in The Lost Words epic fantasy series. You can learn more about Igor’s writing on The Lost Words Books website.

How would you behave if you faced the end of the world? Stoically, gallantly, with respect for your fellow human beings? Perhaps, perhaps not. The inspiration for Let’s See What Tomorrow Brings comes from a deep, inner question — what motivates us above all, against all fears, horrors, dangers, and above all, morality?

2. LET’S SEE WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS

by Igor Ljubuncic

My hands, Steve thought.

They used to be soft, well-groomed hands of a graphics designer, hands that treated the keyboard like a second lover. Now, they were pocked with little black marks, bits of crystallized ash that had fused into his skin. And the wind kept blowing.

The world was a curtain of gray; soft gray, dark gray, hot gray, a wall of particles fine as sugar powder, others big like moths, carried by a torrent of hot air that just wouldn’t stop screaming. It wasn’t the scream of a cat in heat at night that you would sometimes mistake for an abandoned baby. It wasn’t the howl of prairie dogs you saw on TV. It wasn’t the shriek of fear. It was the sound of the world ending, a steady buzz of a rushing wind that drowned out every other detail. And it just wouldn’t stop.

Steve had not imagined the end of the world to sound like white noise.

Steve had not imagined he would be too cowardly to take his own life rather than participate in this senseless agony, either.

Like every other nerd too smart for his own good, he had stashed and groomed and pampered his doomsday arsenal, using his elite knowledge of zombie movies as a golden reference. That, plus an occasional CDC comic book on disasters and epidemics. He had put away food, torches, blankets, even spare batteries for his laptop so he would never go offline (what a silly thought) and he had a first-class Rambo knife to fight off looters and bandits. The only problem was, his stash was back home.

And he didn’t know where his home was anymore.

He didn’t know if it existed. It probably didn’t.

It was so easy to get lost in your own city when you tore down all the buildings and road signs and the familiar landscape of houses and street corners and bird-crapped monuments became a uniform desolation of concrete debris. You really lost your sense of direction when all you could see was a gray sky without a sun in it, and a storm of dust blowing around you.