The End of The F#cking World

PROLOGUE

The slowing was not something that Andrew Minyard noticed immediately.

In fact, it was something no one did.

          Days stretched out slowly, by seconds, eventually growing into minutes. Minor changes in the duration of the time taken for the Earth to revolve around the sun went unnoticed by its human inhabitants at first, animals realizing that it was happening much longer before the humans did. There were too many distractions- politics, money and other things that would prove to be much more unimportant than the strange phenomenon itself. Some people on Earth may have prepared for 'the end of the world', but of course, nobody would have ever expected that what they called 'one day' would stretch from twenty-four hours to much, much more, eventually taking years to complete a full revolution.

Of course, everyone hoped that the changes would not go beyond a minute.

But then again, life was never fair. People didn't always get what they deserved.

          Time had always been precious. Maybe not to Andrew, who wanted nothing more than to finally end his moments of life, but to others. Every moment spent breathing, on their numbered days on earth, was a blessing. Every breath taken was so 'small', though by only doing such a minute thing as taking in oxygen, an entirely new substance. Life was precious too, and now, as the people felt like their living breathing moments on the planet was being threatened, everything was a mess.

Grocery stores shelves' were sucked empty.

Thousands of plane flights were booked.

Roads were clogged with cars, vans and mobile homes alike.

          The thing that didn't make sense, however, was that they were flocking to different places on Earth. There was nowhere on the planet they could go, the sun was still setting and rising at different times of the day. Scientists knew it would not be long before side-effects of the phenomenon would start showing up in living things, animals and humans alike. Gravity would be affected. Temperatures all around the world would change. Animal species that were unable to adapt would soon die off, affecting the food chains. A single second, added to the duration of the rotation of the Earth on its axis, affected the entire world silently. As the seconds grew to stretch into minutes, even more so. Clocks became useless, digital and not.

Technology was advanced. Humans were evolved.

But of course, there would always be issues that would never be solved.