The Zenith

Chapter 1: Nik

What we mistakenly call "peace" is just a frantic gasp of the doomed when drowning in the sea of chaos. To achieve true peace, we must drain the sea.

Chapter 1: Nik

"I'm getting faster at losing time."

Too many of the wrong kind are dead.

Too many good souls, lost. Forever wiped from the face of this planet.

Too many of the worst kind remain. When they walk, power and destruction cling to the very soles of their shoes. They clutch every fistful of tyranny and pain they can manage to scrounge out of the air. They sport armor of lies to their every battle.

I work for these people. I've done odd jobs since I was fired from my last job as a neuroscientist. I can't figure out what I did to get fired, but the company I researched for, Better World, has made sure that I got a bad reputation after they fired me for no apparent reason. My new, government-issued job is to clean the bodies off the street, where they would be left to rot by the survivors, and move them to a mass graveyard. It isn't very clean or pretty, but it keeps me from being killed by the government as long as I keep doing it. It keeps my life as normal as possible in this crazy world, and the armies usually won't shoot if I wear my government-issued outfit.

Even though I'm not dead, I don't know if I'd really qualify as "living". Perhaps my body is able to maintain homeostasis and my brain's neurons keep firing, but to me, I think life was about freedom. If I'm not free, I'm not living, so I guess that's my answer.

I can barely remember life before the First Day.

Many things happened on that day. It seemed so strange, then, when everything changed so drastically so quickly. The governments became suddenly corrupt, sending their armies out to kill anyone and everyone. That's right, every government around the world. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Innocent, good, kind people. Dead. At the same time, rivers and oceans all over the world flooded everywhere, drowning even more people in their torrents. Volcanoes erupted. Planes fell from the sky. Giant blizzards swept through, even though it was summer. Thousands of people had sudden medical emergencies. More and more people died from random occurrences like these. It seemed like the hurting and death would never end.

That night, just for a few hours or so, all the destruction ceased. Water receded. Patients healed a bit. Armies stopped shooting. Just for a few hours, there was complete peace.

But, of course, the chaos resumed.

It's been like this ever since, a light switch between utter chaos and perfect peace. Why? No one can figure it out. Not many people have been able to stay alive long enough to try.

I'd say that we're down to a good fifty thousand people on the earth, but that's a really rough estimate. In all honesty, I have no clue. Even though I'd like to know everything, I've had to accept that I know nothing.

The cycle isn't that strange now. The survivors are used to it. It's been a whole year, I think. Maybe it's just been a couple months. Time stretches and shrinks like a rubber band these days. They don't make calendars anymore, because whoever who did before the First Day is either dead or hiding. It's not like we can tell by the insane weather conditions and temperatures, and no one has really bothered to keep track of the date. It's the least of our worries.

I haven't even introduced myself. I'm Nik, and I barely know who I am anymore. I'm about thirty-five, I guess. My current life goal is to stay alive so that I might get another chance to live free. Unfortunately, that light at the end of my figurative tunnel is getting dimmer as I stumble and crawl towards it. Sometimes I think that I might be crawling backwards, and I'm getting faster at losing time.