Love in the Time of Apocalypse

(1)

And the voice from the sky rang throughout the world in every tongue.

'Okay, look! It's like totally obvious this just isn't working out the way we planned for you guys.'

People from Philadelphia to Beijing, from Cape Town to Madrid, from Iceland to Australia looked up in panicky bewilderment.

A magnificent gasp filled the air.

What does it mean? they thought.

Aliens?

Judgement day?

Other?

'Oh, don't go acting like you didn't know this was coming, or anything,' said the petulant voice rather harshly. 'So stop your snivelling.'

Many, assuming this to be a messenger from God, if not the Big G himself, fell to their knees murmuring in prayer.

'Oh and cut that shit out. That's part of the problem with you nitwits. I mean, we gave you enough time and all. You should have had this all figured out by now, don't you think?'

There was a funny sense of dread, which accompanied a funny sense of fear, which accompanied a funny kind of numbness, which accompanied a multitude of other emotions which weren't really funny at all.

For the moment, the entire world fell into quiet anticipation as people, looking skyward, waited in what could generously be called, intense, panicky fascination.

'All right,' echoed the voice from the heavens. 'I don't mean to sound overly harsh, or anything, but, look, we gave you guys like, what... three million years to pull this together? And so far, all you've done is blow each other up every fifteen minutes, build some really cool cities, which you then blew up again and again over some really lame shit. I'm just sayin... try to see it from our end, will yeh?

'I mean... like... look out there, all right? See those funny little sparkly things filling the night sky?'

'No, not really,' said all the people on the side of the Earth presently basking in daylight.

'Oh, right,' answered the penetratingly loud and not-so-discreetly patronising voice. 'Well, you know what I mean, though, right?'

'Yes,' said millions of voices all together at the same time, more or less.

'Good. It's nice to see you've made some progress since sliming your way from the seas. Anyway, where was I?'

'The stars?' said pretty much everyone in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, in a vast chorus of shaky voices.

'Yeah, Right! Stars. So what's with you guys? I mean, thousands of your years walking upright and what... the Moon? Phhhhaaaargraphhh!'

'Well,' said several guys in white shirts standing outside NASA. 'Maybe Mars, in 2024? And the New Horizons probe to Pluto was pretty cool.. Uhm...The Hubble?'

'C'mon, guys! No, no, no. This just won't do. You guys cook up these great novels and make some awesomely cool films about buzzing around at least your own measly little galaxy, and what... The moon?'

People held close their children assuming the worst.

'Olgarb, it's for you,' echoed an equally powerful, but different, menacing voice from the sky. 'It's the High Commissioner.'

'Does he know I'm in the middle of...?'

'I think so.'

'And he still wants me to...? Oh, all right,' said the voice of the being now understood by all to be someone or something or perhaps all things but just sounding like one thing for our unfortunate intellectual limitations called Olgarb. 'Okay, everyone, hold tight for a few. I've got to take this. Try not to blow anything up for the next few minutes, okay? '

As they waited in worried anticipation, wondering their fate, many again fell to prayer. Others hugged their family members or themselves or anyone within the general vicinity who appeared opened to the idea.

Dread filled the air.

The all-consuming quiet slowly turned into soft, quite noticeably less than quiet, nervous murmuring.

'It must be an advanced alien culture,' said someone in Central America.

'I think he's right,' said someone in Mongolia who'd claimed he'd heard them before.

All over the world people grew anxious.

Then...

'Okay, so listen up,' resounded the heavenly voice. 'It looks like we're going to give you another chance.'

From every country on every continent, except maybe Antarctica, because no one with any sense really lives there, people cheered like ginko maniacs.

'Thank you,' they sang out from every corner of the globe. Many wondering what was to come next. Others wondering about things that certainly fell within the same category while some wondered who came up with the idea of corners on a sphere in the first place.

'Hey, look!' came the voice. 'It really wasn't my call, so, don't go thanking me. If it was up to me, you guys would all be neutrinos.'

'Oh,' said everyone, feeling less enthusiastic but still mostly happy they'd been spared.

'Well,' said the voice. 'Everyone hold on.'

It was a flash of light - bright and blinding and considerably whiter than the whitest imaginable flash of white light, but sort of in the same area of the spectrum, accompanied by a feeling of intense acceleration.

Then it was dark and cold and dreary and bleak like an endless winter night only colder and darker. The dreariness and bleakness were, however, pretty close, but granted little in the way of comfort to the seven billion homo-sapiens who were clinging to anyone or anything they could.

The animals, especially the fish and other aquatic creatures, seemed to take things in stride, for they knew long ago this wasn't going to last.

Then, after a while, when everyone had pretty much lost all hope that things were going to turn out even a little bit all right, the light of a distant star fell again in delicate tinsel like steams upon the graceful, but unquestionably misguided, planet Earth.

But wait...

The sun is bluer than before, said the many who could see it clearly enough to feel their claim valid that it was definitely bluer.

And the word from a mountaintop observatory in Hawaii confirmed that they had indeed travelled 1006 light years in a matter of micro-seconds and were now orbiting a young star in a far distant, and quite very different galaxy.

And a quiet hush of incredulity fell upon the land with the knowledge that, whoever they were: Aliens? Gods? Other? Had the power to manipulate time and space and even space-time with very little bother.

'Can you really do this?' asked a man from somewhere in Europe.

'All right!' The voice boomed. 'Who said that?'

No one dared answer.

They waited.

'C'mon,' said the voice. 'No one's going anywhere until whoever said that owns up to it.'

'And what will happen to him?' Voiced the man who actually said it, who immediately disappeared to a wonderfully dense jungle on Arcturian III, where, now clothed in fashionable animal skins, he sat clinging to a branch trying to reach an extremely large mango.

'Where did he go?' yelled the man's wife biting hard upon her clenched-white knuckles.

'Oh, don't worry,' thundered the voice. 'He's fine. He's in a place where lots of, uhm... creatures speak from the heart but forget to run the words through their brains.'

'Oh, dear.'

'We're in the Gansar GN15 Elliptical Galaxy, orbiting an eight billion year old star listed as GKL 107-A1-Alpha-9378,' said an Astronomer stepping from the observatory in Oslo. 'But,' he said, peering high into the sky. 'As the fourth planet in this system, with a distance 12.7563789% farther out from the star than our last, the climatic consequences will indeed be drastic if not catastrophic.'

And, like before, he too vanished from the face of the planet.

People gasped from one end of the Earth to the other wondering of his fate.

'But why?' asked a boy of 19 who worked as a janitor and part time assistant at the observatory. 'Dr Breckhart was possibly the smartest man on Earth.'

'Oh,' roared the voice. 'It's Okay. He's doing swell on Karajillian V. Let's just say he's more in his element there. They've already colonized half their galaxy and have done some really cool things with space ships and stuff.'

'So,' the voice decried. 'Like it?'

People were spellbound as they gazed in awe upon their new sun. They felt its warmth. Those on the other side gazed into the inky black night-ness of the night sky and saw vast space freighters, and swift cruisers, and space stations and a myriad of wondrous space stuff they had only dreamed of or seen on Star Trek.

They looked up.

No one said a word, afraid they'd end up on Arcturian III wearing woolly Mammoth skins climbing for mangoes with... that guy.

'Well,' said the voice of Olgarb. 'You guys hang out here for a few... millennia, or so. Get to know everyone, you know? Evolve a little. I'll get back to you.'

Everyone gasped.

'Oh, cut it,' he said. 'One star's as good as the next. Just settle in and see if you can learn how to get along for a while. But...'

And they waited.

What would follow the cautioning but?

Not just any old but, but a but from an almighty and super incredibly powerful being from the sky.

'If I come back and you guys are still blowing shit up...'

'We won't. We promise!' they yelled from each edge of the globe.

'Well,' came a sceptical voice from the heavens. 'We'll see.'

'Thank you!'

'Yeah.'

'We owe you our lives!'

'Mm-hmm.'

Olgarb spoke no more.

Whatever - whoever - wherever - why-ever, he, or it, was, he'd seized the opportunity and returned from whence he came.

But, in all reality, this was a flimsy supposition based on insufficient, highly speculative data as voices from the sky are intrinsically difficult to trace. Records of this can be found in most of the world's religious literature, classified government files and on page 1158 of the International Psychiatric Desk Reference of rare and incurable human mental disorders with recommended drug therapies and disturbing surgical procedures.

And the winds blew cooler than usual for this time of year, and many, the more pragmatic, but also philosophical, of the lot, found their way back to their homes, their schools, jobs, and provincial routines, wondering.

Life.

Our place in the universe.

Just when we thought we had it figured out. Ha! Someone comes along and takes our planet on an intergalactic voyage.

Oh, well, said the many.

I hope the neighbours are friendly.

They gazed up with deep apprehension at the third planet - a mere luminous amber dot twinkling in the darkness, wondering what creatures were there right now peering back at them.

Would they open their hearts and homes, extending genial invitations to the proverbial new kid in the solar system?

Or would they view them as a dangerous, uncouth sub-species, barely worthy, but just worthy enough, like maybe to keep in practice or something, of a quick annihilation?

Hmm.

So much uncertainty.

They turned and looked deeper into space to the large aquamarine gas giant holding tight its position as number five in this system of seven, now eight, planets.

The Saturn-like rings of ice and rock, glimmering the faint light of the distant star, were dull, indistinct and diffuse and really not worth mentioning, as they did little to enhance the otherwise majestic beauty of the massive blue orb.

With little flashes of light, spaceships perhaps? Saucers? Other? Darting here and there between the planet and its moons, and some simply heading out into deep space, perhaps just for a night out - a chance to get away from the hectic pace of the inner-solar system rat race; it was universally assumed they were now members of a highly advanced system.

Some stared as if in a temporary paralysis while others simply went inside and went to bed and thought no more of it.

There was still work to be done - bills to be paid - stores to be opened, or closed - class assignments due. Dusting - dishes from the night before - children to smack for putting their hands, yet again on the hot burners.

These were facts of life regardless of one's position in the universe.

The world simply wasn't going to go on pause simply due to a little cosmological, geographical, thoroughly improbable rearrangement.

...it was a blessing and a day of reckoning, wrote Perry Brambles, typing anxiously at his desk in his favourite striped sweater from Fitzrovia. The sweater was actually from a resale shop in Bloomsbury. He wore it every day during and since college. It was warm. He continued as another thought swam slowly and deliberately through the haze of confusion and the six gin and tonics he'd had with his late evening snack.

"... the day had arrived, without forethought or foreknowledge. Would man now feel obliged to repeal or remedy his aggressive nature? Was he adequately humbled by such a display of power and the knowledge he was no longer alone in the vastness of the universe? Would he learn to temper his innate hostility and... erm... temper?"

'Oh, shit!' He back-spaced. 'What's another Goddamn word for temper?'

He stared out the window gazing at the unfamiliar stars.

'PERRY!' called his wife Isadora. She was from Peru. They'd met on the internet. Then got married. It was nice, for a while.

'WHAT!' he shouted angrily. Grunting like a Neanderthal.

'THE US PRESIDENT IS ON BBC 4 ALONG WITH THE PM.'

'SO?'

'THEY SAID THEY'RE ISSUING A WORLDWIDE ALERT AND ACTIVATING OUR MILITARIES.'

'Oh, brilliant!'

Perry closed out his partially written document and walked to the window.

His eyes took a brief snapshot of the magnificent young star and its peaceful children loping lazily along in their gracefully elliptical orbits.

He thought.

'Ha! I give us a month before we totally screw this one up.' He turned off his computer and walked to the door but paused in thought while gazing into the unblemished heavens. 'Oh, Olgarb, you all-powerful, probably omnipotent, being, you should have done your homework