forsyth | A Sniplet from a possible future.

What was it like, they asked, watching the end of the world live?

They always ask that. You'd think by now I'd have a good answer, but I don't. I still don't know. What can I say, anyway, to these kids? They've seen it all, from every angle and perspective that survived, case studies in how not to run a world. I don't have any of that. Just memories of confusion and panic as we, collectively, lost our minds.

So I start out small. I don't even mention any of the big things, they've seen that all so often, seen all the comments then. There's nothing I can tell them there. And they wouldn't understand, not the way things are now. Besides, that's my little unique bit of me. Mine, and no one else's.

I tell them of how we then, like they now, thought we knew better. Thought we were better than that, smarter. Put our darker sides in the past, exposed the squiggly evil bits for what they were with the light of reason. And we still didn't notice when we all started to go insane. Like a frog in a pot of boiling water.

There were some that noticed. Voices crying in the wilderness that the kids point to, to argue with me. I shake my head sadly. It doesn't matter, I tell them, nobody listened or believed them. At least not enough. And like any crazies, the first we turned on were the ones who pointed our problem out.

Things just got worse from there. Paranoia, schizophrenia, on national scales. The ravening dark of humanity unchained across continents while we deluded ourselves it was for the best.

They try to argue, pick out a single cause, find turning points. I sigh and shake my head, tired. That's all for today, I tell them, go back to your books and your rational world. Go on like we did and I hope for us all, this time we can hang on to that world. But in my heart of hearts the darkness grins and I feel the echoes of history pounding in my ears again.