Life, As It Was Once Known

I’m not sure you’re going to be able to understand all this—I’m still trying to understand parts of it myself. It all started a few years ago…well, a few years before the time that I’m recording this, which is in the year 2102 Common Era, as time is measured by my planet.

We—by which I mean the people of this planet—had done it all. We had been able to travel throughout the depths of space and time, mapping out the entire universe and all its inhabited planets. We knew everything about every living organism and every civilized culture on every life-abundant planet. We had everything documented and classified; all the civilizations and what they are capable of were all stored in vast libraries on our planet. I can only hope that this message will reach one of those civilizations of the Highest Class, so that you might prepare well for what is coming.

Our time, however, is over. Like I said, it started a few years ago—12 years, to be exact. I remember waking up early that cold morning, having been driven awake by the screams. People all around where I lived—people living in the apartments above, below, and next door to me, as well as the select few who were in the streets at dawn—were shrieking to look away from the sunrise. I looked out my window, which luckily faces the west, and became too shocked to do anything, let alone scream with the others. Actually, I thought I might be still dreaming, so I did the usual pinching test…nothing. Very much awake. Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on me? I rubbed them thoroughly and looked back out the window. Damn. It was still there.

There aren’t many words that do justice to the magnificent sight that ultimately became a part of everyday life from there on out. The Eye was bluer than any eye I had ever seen. It was so unfathomably deep, you felt as if you fell into its endless gaze. It pierced the very soul, and could see every last secret you ever thought you might take to the grave with you.

But that was ultimately the purpose for Him to arrive—to take us all to our graves. I don’t know how a creature twenty times the size of our entire planet was able to communicate with us, but it did. It spoke powerfully. Well, I shouldn’t say “speak,” since a fox whose muzzle is roughly three thousand miles long wouldn’t really be able to produce a sound that wouldn’t destroy the whole planet in one go.

In any case, He “told” us somehow—I don’t know how, but we all just suddenly knew—that He was displeased with us, and that it was time for us to all die. It was while I was still standing there, gazing out the window at His incredible Eye that we all suddenly knew, and a split second after that, I was thrown off my feet as the planet shook violently. I came to find out later—along with the rest of what was left of the world—that the Fox had, at that moment, taken a single mighty finger and flattened one of the most powerful countries on our planet—one of my country’s allies. All of it. Gone. In a single go. With a single finger.

What was this monster? I work closely with the information held in one of the main libraries where all extraterrestrial life forms were documented, and there was never any mention of anything even CLOSE to being this huge, nor did any other civilization have any way of creating such a beast. No…this was something new, something we never knew about. But why? We had traveled everywhere, learned everything. Surely we would have run into a fox that was over twenty-four thousand miles long, wouldn’t we?

He knew that this very question entered many of our heads before any of us even thought about it at any great length. “I am your God,” He informed us all, just as quickly as He had told us that we were all going to die. “I created you, and now I am going to destroy you.”

I think I lost it then. At the very least, my pants certainly became suddenly very wet. We all waited for it—the whole world waited with their collective breath held, waiting for the inevitable to strike down on us…seconds passed like hours, minutes like millennia, until some of us finally realized that He didn’t plan on killing us just yet. But why?

He wanted to make it a sport for himself, so He told us. He would destroy one part of the planet once a year, until his work was finished. But He never left—He wanted to see our reactions throughout the years, knowing that we were all ultimately doomed.

We immediately began to fight back. We fired our most powerful weapons at Him, barraging Him with enough destructive force to take out five planets, but all those toys were too small to scratch him in the least. We tried to figure out what he was made of, since no living organism could survive at that size—it was physically impossible. He couldn’t be made of regular living tissue, nor even matter as we had defined it…so what then? We never found out, so we ultimately gave up. That was about five years ago.

Many tried to flee to other planets, boarding ships that would take them away from this chaos, this “Ragnarok,” as it came to be known. Once the first fleet of ships was battered into nothingness by His awesome tail, no one tried to leave again. Our science had theorized about alternate universes, but we could never really find a way into them. I suppose that’s what I suggest to you who find this message, in case He ever comes for your planet—try to find someway out into some other universe. Hopefully, He won’t be able to follow.

All the while, mass suicides had been taking place all over world, as people desperately brought about the inevitable sooner than He would have. There was even the popular case when the news anchor for a national nightly news program slit his own throat on live television, suggesting that others follow his lead. Over two million took their own lives that night. The next morning, as I remember, He had laid a couple fingers over another part of the planet, flattening it all.

Why was He avoiding my country, known for being the most powerful on the planet? Did He realize this and thought it made good “sport”? I think I threw up when I thought about that one time. I was rather sickened by the whole episode. In fact, I’m not sure how I myself made it through all these twelve years of pointless destruction and mass pandemonium. Perhaps I wanted to make sure that He would really carry through with it all; perhaps some sick part of me needs definite assurance of the end result. Whatever the reason, I’m somewhat thankful I didn’t turn into one of those sniveling worshippers that tried to reason with Him and asked Him why He did all this.

There were so many that bowed down to Him, worshipping Him, encouraging His idea that He was God. There was never any existence of God before—why now? I guess that’s what I’m still trying to figure out now, as I sit here, waiting to be destroyed. We figured out the pattern—it wasn’t too hard to notice. Once a year on the same day, one more part of the planet was flattened, its people destroyed. Now, my country is all that remains, and today is the day. Once dawn breaks here, so will the remains of this planet and its peoples. It will come soon, and I guess I’m rather looking forward to it. The only thing I guess I’ll never understand is why. Why take so long to do this? Why create us as sentient beings, with no proof of His existence, no instructions from Him, only to come back later and take us all away again? Maybe we had the instructions, but we just ignored it. I guess that’s a problem with religions here—there were so many, I couldn’t ever know which one to follow correctly. So now it ends. War, struggle, art, music, love, hate, purpose, life…life, as I knew it, as others knew it…life, as it was enjoyed and hated and filled with a full-color spectrum of emotions…all of it lost, in one final blow. But why? I guess I’ll never know, because dawn just broke here.