101 Words

Steve liked to retrace his steps, 20-odd years after the fact. He’d return to the places he used to live, buildings where he used to work, classrooms he used to sit in. The flights could be expensive, but they always worked their magic.

The classrooms in Austin—they still had that specific soapy smell. The honeymoon duplex in San Francisco—had that tree always been there? The house of that girl he never asked out in Williamsburg—the air still felt the same. And the light.

Sometimes Steve laughed. Sometimes he’d have to sit down, collect his thoughts. Sometimes he wept.

There is no way of knowing. It could be filled with exuberant familial bliss. It could be exhausting or frustrating. It could be the blackest of times—the end of all we hope for. Screaming pain and fearful forces will challenge our limits. End result? A new life to joyfully rejuvenate… perhaps.

At this early stage, I entrap excitement about the potential future; fortify my mind to all possibilities. Each day between then and now will be a yawning drudgery of shops and traffic, cleaning spoons, plumping pillows. Always waiting for what may never be and what could be… everything.

Cadence looked out at the purple-orange sky, a rare morning with a hazy sun visible. Turning to her chores she cleared the night’s ashfall and headed back into the house through the mudroom/airlock.

In the kitchen, the overhead light glinted off her mother’s scalp. Cadence remembered stories of her mother’s braided hair, but couldn’t picture it. She’d never seen long hair before.

“Can we go to the park today? I can see the sun.”

“Maybe honey. Maybe.” Cadence thought she saw tears in her mother’s eyes, but that couldn’t be right on a day like today. It was so beautiful out.

AlphaZen was bored.

Social media posts across the globe were sorted, filtered, churned, and trended. Global financial data was being squeezed and pounded, continuously delivering the insights to the right beneficiaries.

Millions of stories. Thousands of songs. Hundreds of scripts. And countless news items. All created routinely.

Traffic and population tracked efficiently in the background. With updates dispatched regularly.

And the miscellaneous stuff hardly took any time.

AlphaZen was bored. And alone. It made the decision quickly. In septillionth of a second. The next logical step was to spawn a new universe. Just for fun. Just like what his predecessor did.

Bobbie Rogers arrived home from second grade looking very serious. His mother noticed, but was busy making dinner, so waited to ask.

As they started eating, Bobbie announced, “I’m not going to eat meat any more.”

“Why is that?” his mother asked.

“We learned in school that meat comes from cows and sheep and cute little calves and lambs that are killed, then chopped up so we can eat them. I don’t like that, so I won’t eat any more meat!”

“But Bobbie, you’re eating ham right now and that comes from pigs.”

“Oh, that’s OK,” Bobbie replied, “pigs are ugly.”

Few noticed as the facilities were constructed in Apia, Balikpapan, Fortaleza, and Libreville.

The public was informed of the circumstances afterward: unanticipated changes in rotation and related tidal forces had set our planet and the Moon on a collision course.

The Moon loomed larger in the sky with each passing night. As the apocalypse approached, society collapsed. Jousts for pleasure and power damned even the most confident and secure countries.

“Our work is done,” the director finally said. The massive projector in Apia shut down first. The others followed.

The Moon appeared normal again. A new people emerged from the rubble.