The Punchline

He looked at it and experienced a familiar sense of wonder and worthlessness. Throughout his long life, gazing up at the sky each night had been a comfort. A constant. And although the great expanse often made him question the pointless struggle of a person’s life, it still filled him with optimism. Space was a tantalising, depthless ocean of opportunity stretching ever outward, the earth nothing more than a cliff edge waiting to be leapt from.

But that was then.

Forty years later, that opportunity was gone. Forever out of reach.

The mountain on which they all stood was now crumbled, and the once solid foothold disintegrated.

Mankind was falling.

Backwards.

Into a charred abyss it had fashioned for itself.

The man smiled.

Following years of warnings, denials, and empty promises, The Escalation, as it came to be known, arrived. And it was true to its name.

Slow at first.

Academic articles ignored. Weather rationalised. Science discredited.

Because money is smarter. It shouts the loudest.

Then, inevitably, a catalyst.

Some crises.

The Escalation.

Vehicles stopped.

Shelves emptied.

Money became paper.

It was then that he barricaded the door.

He could hear distant voices on the other side of it now. One of the many packs that stalked the lower levels. They ventured inside occasionally, when the weather forced them off the streets, but the top floor was too much effort since the lift stopped working.

It was only a matter of time before the low hanging scraps were exhausted though. Then they would get desperate. Be forced to improvise. Climb for the unspoiled fruits.

The makeshift barrier of bookshelf and bed would only encourage them then. Be a sweet nutshell to crack.

He was dying on borrowed time.

He stared back through the telescope. He’d never known the sky this clear. Never experienced such an absence of light pollution.

He stifled a laugh.

What a joke.

To end all.

The beautifulirony of it.

Leaning back, he blinked out of the window at the city which sat in almost total darkness. Most of the big fires had burned out days ago, but there were still the occasional flames flickering in a broken window or car husk.

A set of headlights weave through a nearby street. When a figure danced out in front of them, he hoped to see red and blue lights illuminate in response. But it was no use.

Order left days ago.

Days that felt like months.

Order was returning though. He comforted himself with that thought as he crept silently across the room.

Order was returning.

A natural order.

Soon all this would be gone. They would be absorbed, folded, and confined to the archive of something greater than history.

Geology.

Soon they would be nothing more than a fossil. A fossil formed in an injection mould.

He grabbed the last can from the darkened fridge and returned to his perch. As he drank the warm beer, he studied the calculations in the book beside him.

How many other people knew?

How many others were in on the joke?

Maybe the people in power had always known. Maybe that was why they governed the way they had. Encouraged people to live the way they did.

Doubtful.

No, he alone knew the punchline.

He picked up his old transistor radio, checked the volume, and held it against one ear. The voices were distant. Metallic. Worried. Their well-worn scripts spoke of economic catastrophes, escalating tensions, and violence.

Even so, they were welcome.

When the can was empty, he threw the radio at the wall. The sudden noise caused a fissure in him, from which spewed a guttural, uncontrollable scream.

He indulged it until his throat rasped.

Behind him, he heard scuttling on the ground floor.

Calmly, the man walked into an adjacent room.

Two hours later the scavengers found his body.

The next day, following the meltdown of the global economic system, collapse of all governments, resulting in complete loss of any social cohesion, one particularly astute opportunist spied an opportunity. They made a land grab too far, which, in turn, triggered a series of irreversible, mutually assured measures.

Fast forward six years and, what had initially appeared as a fleck on the lens of a telescope, entered earth’s atmosphere. Measuring three and a half miles across it was what certain, so-called educated members of a hitherto species named ‘homo-sapiens’ would describe as a ‘planet killer’.

Seems they were doomed from the start.

No one heard the punchline land.