The End. A Story.

The world was coming to an end.

Few people had noticed.

There were some who waved banners outside government buildings, others who marched and held aloft placards depicting trees, and even some who went on television, looking very concerned and worried, who spoke of emergency measures.
None of them mattered very much. Because the world was ending anyway.

The ones who knew the truth had sensed it long ago. Now these few were staring up at the sky, into the infinite unknown, where hope might just spring eternal, where life might remain beautiful as it once had been here, though it was too late for this world.

Some people stood looking out to sea, studying the outlines of the giant skeletal remains of wind turbines. If ever there were a testament to mankind’s folly, this was it. Insanity takes the form of many things but this was the work of hysteria, brought about through the ramblings of deranged minds. And a thirst for money. But money could not save this world after all, even though many people had invested heavily in lunacy.

“The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind,” promised the Bible. And it had come to pass.

Now that every animal species was extinct, apart from a few insects and still fewer mammals that had adapted to the toxic concrete wilderness that mankind had created, people still could not believe that this was the end. Flights of fancy had replaced sanity. Compassion had been twisted, thought distorted, and deluded humans had killed all the birds. Yet even now politicians spoke of critical new policies and even now hypocrites brushed their teeth with bamboo toothbrushes before getting in to their cars to go to work. Work which meant nothing but provided a reason for being.

The world could go on for a while. Humans were, after all, used to failing health; they accepted taking drugs that would temporarily make them feel as though they were better. Researchers, backed by big business and fuelled by a futile desire to live forever, continued to seek a cure for all manner of disease. An obsession with keeping carefully chosen people alive as the world around them died.
But it wouldn’t be long now. There would be no life, no light. There would be no cure for dying. There would be no anything.

Only peace. The peace that some of us sought in life would finally come to every living, sentient being. And the book of life on earth would be closed, never to be read again.
Humankind would be forgotten.
Done, dusted and gone.

And what of the universe? Well, the universe would sigh.

And carry on.