#softapocalypse

The world ended in 2020.

Everything since has just been the server trying to render the aftermath.

Have you noticed the lag?

Seasons don’t feel like weather anymore they feel like settings on a loop.

Trends are just the 90s and 2000s being dug up and reanimated, like the system ran out of new ideas.

Even the sunlight feels wrong. Thinner. Harsher.

Like it’s being projected onto something that’s starting to break.

We keep waiting for things to “go back to normal.”

But you can’t move back into a house that’s already been demolished.

This isn’t reality anymore.

It’s an echo.

Every milestone feels preloaded. Every moment already happened.

We’re not living through the 2020s

we’re haunting them.

Ghosts in a world that forgot to turn itself off.

Stop looking for the future.

It’s not coming.

We’re just sitting in a dark theater, watching the credits roll

waiting for the lights to come back on

(excerpt from an unrelated document found in my notes)

I keep telling myself that line wasn’t meant for me. It was just something I copied into the wrong folder, a scrap from a briefing I wasn’t supposed to see. But it sat there at the top of my notes all through the interview, and somehow it feels dishonest to delete it now.

Maybe that’s why this conversation has stayed with me longer than most. Maybe that’s why I’m still awake, replaying the way E. spoke across the table, the way Jonah Price leaned back in his chair like he was measuring the century instead of the hour.

The question I asked them was simple enough: when you look at the political incentives around AI, who do you think will shape the future? Corporate resistance? Public pressure? Government reform?

E. didn’t hesitate. “It’s going to have to be corporate resistance,” he said, and there was no bravado in it. Just a tired certainty. He added, almost apologetically, that the U.S. government hasn’t cared about public opinion in a long time. “Less than five percent of policy reflects what people actually want,” he told me. “That’s not zero, but it’s close enough that you can round down.”

I wrote that down, but what stayed with me was the way he said it — like someone who has stopped expecting the cavalry.

Jonah Price, who has the quiet, deliberate cadence of an academic who knows exactly how much trouble the truth can cause, offered a small, almost reluctant line in response. “When a state becomes insulated from public influence,” he said, “the only counter‑forces left are institutions powerful enough to resist it.” He didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t need to. The rest of his meaning hung in the air between us like a weather front.

E. tried to laugh it off. “Humanity loves drama,” he said. “The hero usually shows up after everyone’s been beaten to dust. But all it takes is for the hero to be late one time.”

Jonah gave a soft, thoughtful sound — not disagreement, not agreement, just recognition. “Collective myth,” he said. “We wait for the hero because it’s easier than becoming one.” And then he fell quiet, as if he’d said more than he meant to.

E. shook his head. “I don’t think a hero is coming,” he said. “The only hero I’d trust is a cultural shift. People realizing we’re not living in caves anymore, so maybe we should stop acting like we are.”

He talked about the old survival instincts — the pond you had to defend, the strangers you had to fear, the violence that once meant your children lived another winter. “We’re almost a post‑scarcity species,” he said, “but we’re still running the same firmware.”

Jonah nodded at that. “Post‑scarcity bodies,” he murmured, “pre‑civilization reflexes.” He said it like he was quoting a textbook he hadn’t written yet.

…

E. smiled then, a little ruefully. “If I knew how to fix it, I wouldn’t be writing a fantasy novel.”

Jonah’s reply was gentle. “You’re not supposed to know,” he told him. “Maps matter even when they’re incomplete. Sometimes especially then.”

The conversation drifted toward stories — the ones we inherit, the ones we write, the ones we try to outgrow. E. talked about religion in his worldbuilding, how he’d made it “less awful” than the versions we live with. He said he’d waited decades to write because he wanted to have something of psychological value to offer.

Jonah’s last comment has been echoing in my head ever since. “History isn’t destiny,” he said. “The damage we inherit doesn’t have to dictate who we become.”

…

E. went quiet after that. “I’d like to sleep on that answer,” he said, and the interview ended.

I’ve been trying to sleep on it too. But that fragment at the top of my notes keeps staring back at me, the sentence that never finished. Maybe that’s why I’m writing this now, long after the recorder clicked off.

Maybe some warnings don’t sound like warnings until you hear them in someone else’s voice.

You have no idea

the things we have done

in the fanfics that keep at nigth

nasty, devastatingly life-changing things,

you guys and me.

On a desert island with a broken plane,

making bonfires, watching the days go away,

descending into madness and ascending into it,

singing songs and making up other worlds,

getting rescued by dream telepathy training getting caugth by whoever are they

meeting years on the line

and running fast,

hug and goodbye.

In other words, I know the killjoys

when the bombs already erased the world,

looking less humane:

some legs, some hands, and an ear left

in scratches of a tall city.

A flower field will grow.

We’ll sit to watch the sunset,

braid flowers in our hair,

and wait for the end.

But I’m glad I met you on this one.

I’m glad we are not of age.

I’m glad to have heard you when I turned ten.

I’m glad to have followed you my whole life.

I’m glad to have gotten tickets tonight.

If the world does not collapse

and the end is not as nearby,

I would take this life

just like it is now,

because I got

to see

I’ll decode your art history, your sacred geometry,

your goddamn Netflix queue.

The goddess you buried.

The sins you dressed in marble.

I already saved this planet once.

I sacrificed.

I suffered for sins I didn’t commit.

I cracked timelines in silence.

Now I’m yawning at your apocalypse.

If your salvation looks anything like mine,

you don’t stand a shot.

Not even with two legs.

(Especially with two legs.)

That pride? That mobility?

It’ll drag you straight into the pit—

one curated Instagram reel at a time.

🌀 Newsflash:

You don’t even need to wait for disaster.

God can make things disappear.

Flip of a switch.

Gone.

But no, that’s not “the end.”

That’s just Act I of the long, slow burn

you’ll call your “learning curve”

on the way to hell, or something like it.

And hell…

Let’s just say I’ve seen a few things.

Imagine Drew Barrymore scream-crying on loop,

the air thick with the smell of rusty nails.

And when you think that’s the worst of it?

Click.

Naomi Watts in Funny Games

screaming into the void,

begging the plot to stop,

but it just rewinds.

You get thrown under again.

And again.

✨ Then comes rebirth.

But not the pretty kind.

Smile for the camera.

Judgment already happened.

This post?

It’s just the epilogue.