[SF] Where We Are
On one side of the living room, the television screen flickers at a steady brightness, while a red ticker bar flows repeatedly along the bottom. The anchor’s lips move clearly, but the sound spreads flatly through the speakers, slightly compressed. On the right side of the screen, an enlarged image of the Sun’s surface shows a powerful sunspot eruption bursting outward, looping continuously. Next to it, a semi-transparent model of the Earth overlaps the image, rotating at a constant speed as its axis tilts. At the bottom, a graphic traces a comet’s path, a moving point drawing a line that gradually approaches the Earth. The remote control rests on the table, with subtle darkening between the buttons where fingerprints have accumulated. The light from the screen reflects onto the walls, filling the room with a slightly bluer tone than it actually has. The anchor’s expression remains unchanged, but the speed of the ticker is slightly faster than usual. The words “Breaking News” repeat at regular intervals, lingering briefly in view before disappearing. The room itself is quiet, yet within the screen, multiple layers of information unfold simultaneously.
Inside the bus, the air is already occupied by the accumulated warmth of those who boarded earlier. The hanging straps are slightly warm, and the vertical metal poles are smooth with the residue of countless hands. Through the window, buildings pass by in a faint blur, softened by a thin film of dust on the glass. Sitting down, the seat cushion holds its shape just enough to support the thighs without fully sinking. Each time the brakes engage, the body shifts forward by a small, measurable degree. From somewhere nearby, a faint leakage of sound escapes someone’s earphones, barely distinguishable, yet present in the shared air.
The café door releases a small bell sound upon entry. Inside, the air is lightly saturated with the aroma of ground coffee. The sharp, fleeting hiss of steaming milk repeats in the background. Condensation gathers on the outer surface of a cold cup, forming droplets that transfer an immediate chill to the hand. When the cup is placed on the table, it makes a light, contained tap. The straw pierces the plastic lid with a brief moment of resistance before giving way. With each sip, ice collides softly within the cup, producing small, contained sounds.
Preparing for sleep, the lights go out and the room’s contours simplify instantly. Lying down, the mattress receives the body and lowers gradually under its weight. The blanket rests lightly across the skin, forming a thin layer of contact. The pillow feels slightly elevated at first, then reshapes itself to match the curve of the neck within seconds. When the smartphone screen turns off, a brief afterimage lingers before fading. With eyes closed, visual input ceases, and smaller sounds become more pronounced—distant traffic, occasional movements of air. Between them, breathing repeats in a steady rhythm, until even that rhythm slips beyond awareness.
Five years ago, an emergency session of the World Human Species Preservation Organization was convened after detecting signs of the three catastrophic events described above. A crisis meeting was held to discuss countermeasures, but the conclusion declared the end to be unavoidable. In response, a project to network human consciousness was rapidly initiated. Several thousand individuals, selected as representative human samples, were discreetly extracted. All aspects of their daily lives, along with their neural signals, were collected and integrated into a network without public awareness. The network preservation facility was constructed 20 kilometers beneath the surface, designed to withstand any catastrophe indefinitely through the use of geothermal energy and nuclear fuel.
Solar Sunspot Eruption
The brightness of the sky surges into overexposure, color dissolving into a field of white. Electronic screens flicker on and off, pixels failing to hold a stable arrangement. The smartphone in hand trembles faintly, input lagging before freezing in place. A wide-band static emerges in the air, pressing against the inner ear without direction. Traffic lights display overlapping colors, halting movement at intersections. Touching metal surfaces delivers faint, irregular pulses of current. Interior lights in elevators go dark, then return out of sequence. Time continues, but every measuring device reports conflicting values. Light arrives, but the systems that interpret it collapse first. The visible world remains, while the signals sustaining it begin to fail. No recovery is observed.
Axial Shift of the Earth
The body’s center shifts from within, as if displaced from its original alignment. The horizon does not visibly tilt, yet it settles slowly toward one side. Each step lands at a slightly altered angle, balance requiring constant correction. Water in a cup refuses a perfect level, lingering toward one edge. Doors no longer close evenly, moving faster along a single direction. Muscles compensate for a gravity the body no longer fully recognizes. Shadows stretch inconsistently, distorting the sense of time and position. Distant vertical lines no longer appear perfectly straight. Nothing collapses immediately, yet all reference points dissolve at once. The world persists, while the axis that defined it has shifted. The deviation does not reverse.
20 km Comet Impact
Sound disappears first. All surrounding vibrations collapse into a brief total silence. Then the air compresses, striking like an invisible wall against the chest. Light expands across the horizon, erasing form into a single, overwhelming brightness. Windows shudder, then rupture inward, fragments scattering across the interior. The ground lifts and drops, suspending the body momentarily off balance. Heat travels through the air, the skin reacting before direct contact. Vision persists, but focus destabilizes, unable to hold a fixed point. Structures emit low, strained sounds as they begin to deform. The impact arrives not once, but in waves of differing velocities. Sensation fractures, each signal arriving out of sequence, displacing reality itself. The state does not stabilize.
A day before the full onset of summer heat, the surface of the bus stop is paved with gray tiles faintly cracked, the fractures filled with compacted black dust. The air rests somewhere between cool and warm, thinly clinging to the skin. The route map pasted onto the metal pillar has faded under repeated exposure to sunlight, its colors dulled, with small scratched marks where fingernails once peeled at the edges. Before the bus arrives, its presence is felt first as a subtle vibration in the air rather than sound. When it stops, a brief release of compressed air follows, and the door opens with a dry mechanical tone. The transit card touches the reader, producing a short, precise beep that passes quickly through the ear. A small phone rests in the hand, its surface slightly warm from earlier use. The thumb presses a raised button; a muted click follows, contained within the plastic body. The screen glows in a dim, uniform light, characters forming in simple lines without depth. Each input appears with a brief delay, then settles into place. When the phone folds shut, a short, hollow snap marks the closure, and the light disappears instantly.
The time of the end arrived simultaneously, matching predictions within the margin of error. The underground network system, based on the accumulated data and information gathered over time, immediately activated the species preservation project.
The era within the network is set to the late 1990s and repeats in 100-year cycles. In other words, when it reaches the late 2090s, it resets back to the late 1990s. This is a strategic configuration designed for the future.
The first line on the network system monitor, as it began operation, read: “Living organisms on Earth: 0. System initialization date: February 3, 1999. Activation initiated.”
Deep beneath the surface, 20 kilometers underground, the system’s internal indicator lights flicker and move without pause. Above, the entire planet is engulfed in a burning atmosphere, ignited by the impact of a massive comet.
