So, there I was, just walking down the street, minding my own business when suddenly,

boom, the world ended.

To say that it surprised me would be to state the obvious. I mean, when the world ends

unless you’re a bonafide prophet then it’s going to come as a surprise. A limited surprise, of

course, because you’ve got less than a split second to be surprised and then you’re dead. It’s

pretty cruel, really. When I’m surprised I enjoy the privilege of being able to relish in it. But

when the world ends, you can’t even enjoy it because as soon as it happens it’s over.

So, you may ask, was I let down? Yes and no. I’ve already given you the why of the yes.

But, as for the no… well… to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s the end of

the world, after all. There are so many ways for it to happen. Biblical cleansing, nuclear

holocaust, a comet smashing into the Earth, the sun exploding… I could go on, but I’d rather not.

Point is that I could never have predicted how the world would end. Who could have?

I doubt Nostradamus had the power to have seen this coming. And Saint Paul? His

version of the apocalypse didn’t even come close, outside of the world ending and all that.

Really, the only people I can think of who would have guessed this would be God Himself, and

maybe good ol’ Lucifer.

But still, what a joke, eh? The world destroyed by cell phones and capitalism.

* * *

The way the world was before the end made the actually ending itself a complete

surprise. Things were going pretty well, all truth be told. Almost everyone was affluent, in one

form or another. Even the homeless had a source of income so that they wouldn’t starve to death

(law stated that you had to give at least one dollar every time you passed by one of the homeless,

so that would usually add up after a few days). All laws were enforced by having your credit
 2

card immediately revoked for three months. After that, if you still didn’t comply, they took away

your debit card for another quarter of a year. And if you ended up breaking the law even further,

then they’d freeze your bank account completely for a month (the bank would buy your groceries

for you and make sure your bills were paid for, they’d just take it straight out of your account).

One step after that and you’d find yourself in jail. After serving your sentence you’d find all of

your privileges handed back to you. Only the worst of offenders would find themselves facing

the death penalty: Embezzlers, money launderers, counterfeit artists, those accused of fraud, and

any other economic crimes—petty thieves aside.

Overall, as I say, things were good. We were all happy. Well, most of us were. Those

who were homeless weren’t exactly the cheeriest of people, but they knew how to get by. The

poor, stupid souls on Death Row were the worst off.

The World Government wouldn’t have this, of course. This was the New World!

Everyone had the right to happiness! But the laws had to be obeyed and enforced, so they

devised a solution to the unhappiness of those to be killed:

They put them on television.

The entire execution was treated like an awards ceremony, with a number of convicts up

for the “award” for embezzler of the month (or whichever crime they were being executed for).

It was quite a spectacle, all things considered, and the ratings were always huge. Whoever won

would be given their choice of death, and depending on the region it would range from needle,

gun, and chair to the truly exotic and erotic (have you ever been beaten to death with golf clubs

by scantily clad or even naked beautiful women? No? Well, Damon Fairweather of Old New

England did, and he died with a smile on his face). The executions were always shown in

complete detail as well, no matter how explicit. The ceremonies were always broadcast with a

warning:
 3

The following contains scenes of dying that may or may not be graphic in nature. There

may or may not be sex and there may or may not be nudity. Children should not watch this, nor

should the religiously devoted. Viewer discretion is, therefore, advised, and for those who don’t

take this advice, just remember that should you feel ill after watching the following program,

don’t write or phone or e-mail in to complain, because to be quite honest with you: We told you

so.

* * *

Everyone owned a cell phone. I did. My brother did. His best friend did. That guy who

lived on the street corner by Jim’s All Purpose Store (Jim sold groceries, rented videos, ran a

greenhouse, had a hardware store and an electronics section; the only things you couldn’t buy

from Jim were clothing and furniture, though he was working on expanding when the world

ended) did. Everyone owned one. If you walked down the street, seven out of ten people you

ran into were talking on a cell phone. They’d babble on them in public restrooms, and even

those places had universal cell phone battery rechargers. Every car came blue-tooth

enabled(research showed that most car accidents that involved cell phones were ones that

required the use of at least one hand, so the car manufacturers and telephone companies decided

to work together and bring us safe car phones; it took some doing, but then the phone companies

decided to take over the car manufacturers, so it solved quite a few problems; by the end, for

instance, most people were paying their car payments on the same bill as their telephones).

When they first came into being, cell phones were considered a privilege, but by the end of the

world they were a universal right.

Of course, rights weren’t free. Cell phones cost money, and if you couldn’t afford one

yourself, then you panhandled until you could. The little electronic gadgets were considered a

necessity of life; some people were reported to the police as missing because they hadn’t
 4

answered their calls for a few days (usually because they had gotten too busy to recharge the

battery though that was never an excuse; more often than not it was because they were on

vacation somewhere). Children were often given them on their fifth birthday (I know I was

given mine on my fifth, as were all of my friends). It wasn’t unknown to see two people across

the room talking to each other on their phones.

So, yes, things had become a bit impersonal, but we were quite well off, all things

considered.

And then the world ended.

* * *

It was a nice enough day, really, as I recall. It was a Saturday afternoon, mid-July, and

the sun was shining. There were a few clouds, but they were the kind that were cute and fluffy. I

was walking down the street, as I say, and I was admiring a tree that I was approaching. In all

due honesty, it was a nice tree, full of healthy green leaves. I was staring at it as I walked when

my cell phone rang.

I answered it.

I saw the tree.

I blinked.

The world ended.

* * *

When they first became horribly popular, it was said that cellular telephones caused

cancer. I don’t know about that. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. But by the time the world

joined the choir invisible—along with the rest of us, I might add—cell phones had become

completely cancer free.

 5

They had become small, too. Most fit in the palm of an average person’s average hand,

and that’s when the phone was opened up. When closed they were half the size of the average

person’s average finger. It’s amazing to me, in hindsight, that something so small could be so

destructive.

It all has to do with how they were powered. By this time nuclear power had been

perfected to the point where it produced very little waste. We were told that it was safe to use,

that there was very no danger at all. Scientists had developed small packets of nuclear batteries

for our cell phones that had been introduced just one year before everything ended. Nuclear

energy powered a lot more than just our telephones, of course. Ten years ago they introduced

nuclear car batteries, and five years before that we stopped using hydro energy altogether and ran

our houses on nuclear power.

We never really questioned why nuclear energy was becoming so popular, though maybe

we should have. It was very profitable for the power plant company, first of all. Secondly,

because it was being touted as environmentally friendly, it seemed like using hydro to create

electricity was a waste. And because we were a Global Community rather than a bunch of

irresponsible foreign nations, there was no threat of a nuclear war. So it all seemed perfectly safe

for us to implement nuclear power into our everyday lives. Forget that it was costing us a

fortune, it was the smart idea, plus it made more money than solar power or wind power ever

could have.

Again, hindsight makes for an annoying companion after the end of all things. Case in

point: We were surrounded by nuclear power. Fact number one: Nuclear power is extremely

volatile. Fact number two: Everything was powered by nukes. Fact number one plus fact

number two equals fact number three: We were a global Chernobyl just waiting to happen.

* * *
 6

My cell phone rang. I let it ring a few times before I reacted. I glanced down at my

pocket then back at the tree. I pulled out my phone and opened it. I looked at the tree as I

opened my mouth and blinked. When my eyes opened, the world ended.

* * *

All it took was one explosion. That caused a chain reaction, and within minutes we had

unwittingly nuked ourselves.

Capitalism preys on making money. It’s a glutton for that sort of thing. Now, how do

you do this effectively? You keep up demand for a product. You make certain that people are

always in need of something. This way you’re always selling that product, therefore always

making money off of it. The best way to go about this is to make the product faulty to begin

with. Oh, not blatantly faulty, mind you. You’d lose business that way. But you’d put a flaw

into the product so that it wouldn’t last longer than, perhaps, a year. That way the customer

would have to go out and buy themselves a new one, maybe a more expensive model that would

last a few months longer than the last one.

This is a principle that was followed very closely. I’ve had more CD players in my short

life than most people have breaths. It was like that for everything. Sadly enough, some gifted

twit had decided that the same principle should apply to nuclear cell phone batteries. To my cell

phone battery.

It was a faulty, cheap battery.

I answered my phone.

Ah, hindsight. You want to know something about hindsight? When you’ve destroyed

the world and there are therefore no more lessons to learn, hindsight is pretty damn useless.