Changes

The world didn't end at 6:00 p.m. on the first day of October 2025. There was no fire and brimstone. No comet, its orbit disturbed by Planet Nine, escaped the Oort cloud and hurtled towards Earth, ending its long travels in a gigantic fireball as it smacked into the planet, devastating all life on a world once crowded with it.

Neither did an incurable plague, borne of some ancient virus set free by thawing permafrost, scour the Earth, clean it of humankind, life in oceans, forests, and river deltas. The world did not end at all; it just kept chugging along, but it was changed. Made into something new. Forever? We still don't know.

I know you remember the day it happened. We all do. The very moment the VOICE first spoke, indelible, is etched into our minds. I thought it a prank at first. I didn't recognize the sound for what it was.

Did you? Did you realize it was the sound of the world-changing? Of course not. None of us did, not at first. I know you think of the words; remember watching as the power mongers of the world vanished before your eyes.

I remember exactly where I was. I will never forget the initial feeling of curiosity and confusion. There was no fear, not at first, just a "what the hell was that" thought echoing around in my brain.

I recall my wife turning to me, a puzzled look on her face, asking, "Rob? What the hell was that? Who said that?"

I believe others all over the world asked each other the same question. "It's a joke," I thought. Some teenage super geek sitting in their dad's basement hacked the TV station.

People everywhere were bewildered by the Event. Fear came into the world later, hours and days after The VOICE (it's always all caps in my mind. I can see it no other way) spoke. Later still, fear diminished, and hope blossomed.

I witnessed the Change as I settled into my favorite armchair, grabbed the remote, and thumbed the TV to life. With a glass of good rye whiskey in hand, I sat, admiring the amber liquid, anticipating the first sip. The evening news broadcast, just starting, recapped the day's events.

There had been a mass shooting (isn't there always) at the Franklin Roosevelt Public School, a combination elementary/middle school just down the road from us. This time, it was close to us, much closer to our home than ever before. Another crazy person or just outright asshole (take your pick) shot a bunch of kids at the middle school. So far, seven known dead and eleven wounded.

I wondered if I might know some of the dead.

The shooter, young and white, a middle-class boy, was the offender. Locked inside room 203 ("Algebra 1," said the announcer. As if that fuckin' mattered.) with a stack of dead bodies, the police negotiations going nowhere fast, he stuck a pistol in his mouth. Smiling, he pulled the trigger, spilling his brains against the black scribbles littering the whiteboard before the police could take him captive.

The police officer at the scene, severely shaken by the violence, was troubled not by the shooting (he had seen others) but by the smile on the boy's face just before the bullet exploded from the muzzle, erasing his grin (and most of his head.)

That boy would've been 14 in another couple of weeks. What fills someone so young with the need to kill people. I don't get it; probably never will.

The officer didn't understand the smile. He couldn't decide if the boy beamed because of all the young lives he took with him or if he was just that thrilled to end his own.

In other, slightly less troubling news, the Russians, shaking their fists at the U.S. and the European Union, announced the development of their newest hyper-velocity nuclear weapons, bragged about the devastation they could unleash and the Russian Federation's willingness to use them.