One moment, life is carrying on as normal. Electrical boxes and their content projecting onto young, impressionable minds and old, wary ones alike. Business suits, attached at the ear to metal buzzing radiation into soft tissue, bone and gray matter. Masses in buildings determined to be an acceptable part of society, wishing for the day when they can take hold of tons of paper rectangles and never have it leave their hands again, or have it leave for something new and shiny that gives them a short-lived rush of endorphins.
But it all came to an end, as everything does. The end came not with a bang, but with a whimper. Lives extinguished quietly at night, soft as a feather. The silence was hard in contrast. No cries were heard, no alerts came before – no ceremony ensued. Only the darkness consoled the mass extinction.
Soon, traces of the life before were erased by overgrowth. Slowly and methodically, all memories, all woes, all happiness, all technology, all buildings were dissolved and a race fizzled and dissipated like the last vestiges of an explosion. Society ceased to exist, under the act that it may never have existed. Connections and thoughts and ideas, snuffed out as effortlessly as a wind blows a flame. Whatever had existed was gone, forgotten and every part of it that had been significant had become meaningless as time wore on.
The universe continued as it always had, with indifference at the death of seven billion beings which may or may not have ever existed in the first place.
Eons later, life began again for a new race. A new start for new opportunities, a chance at redemption. But there is no way to fix mistakes that were not made, may not have existed. Nothing had ever existed before their race, which was slowly dying. They wondered why, why was there nothing before them? No sign of past life, not buried but possibly swallowed up by the ground and digested in its fiery stomach.
The more that was known, the more that become unknown, Eventually, the search for answers ended. Life carried on as normal. Electrical boxes, business suits, metal buzzing radiation, masses in buildings, paper rectangles – history repeated itself.
But it all came to an end, as everything does. The end came not with a bang, but with a whimper.
And the universe continued as it always had, the eternal mystery never to be understood but accepted.
