Saturday, February 16, 2008

Two-Minute Warning

TWO-MINUTE WARNING

(Copyright©2004, Steven Douglas Huddleston)
“HUMANS—ATTENTION!”

Mike heard the voice echoing loud and clearly from deep within his head. What struck him to the core of his soul and froze him instantly to the spot was not the voice itself but the odd perception of it. For it came from nowhere and everywhere, and it most certainly rang out, in spite of the fact that it had never passed through his eardrums. The certainty of that origin made him hold his breath and look around at all the strangers who inhabited this particular street, at this particular hour, wondering if he had completely lost his marbles.

Everyone was doing the same as he. Everyone was frozen in mid-step and looking around at everyone else. Not only in this place but in every place. On the other side of the world, also, people were sitting-up suddenly in bed, and looking at those with them, or if alone, staring blindly into darkness.

The world had come to a sudden and absolute standstill. Children had stopped swinging in playgrounds, lovers had interrupted their passion, workers their labor, and leaders their talk. The entire population of the planet, excepting no one, stood and listened and waited and looked around at those who happened to be nearby.

After a pause the voice continued, startling many into screams or moans of assorted kinds, none of which served to drown out the voice, which rumbled on inside twenty-two billion minds, heedless of the terrible anguish it was inflicting. In time everyone quieted down and listened to the voice, as it delivered its message in a halting, pausing monotone, as if groping for the words within the very minds it impinged..

“YOU ARE...BEING...SCANNED...EACH OF YOU IS...EVALUATED FOR...MORAL...WORTHINESS...THIS...PROCESS WILL BE COMPLETED IN A...SHORT WHILE YOU WILL BE INFORMED WHEN THIS PROCESS HAS ENDED BY A SIMPLE TONE LIKE THIS...”

Twenty-two billion heads rang internally with a single, precise melodic tone.

“WHEN YOU HEAR THAT TONE YOU WILL KNOW THAT THOSE AMONG YOU WITH DISEASED MORALITY WILL CEASE TO EXIST IN EXACTLY...TWO MINUTES...”

Fear existed, but everyone was too shocked and dumbfounded to express it, the collective silence of the world was the loudest gasp of horror in the entire history of human civilization.

“WE ARE NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR...DEFINITIONS...FOR...RIGHT AND...WRONG THESE THINGS WE HAVE ALREADY RESOLVED AMONG US SINCE BEFORE...YOUR KIND...HAD DEVELOPED...AN EFFICIENT FORM OF...LANGUAGE...NEITHER ARE WE...CONCERNED WITH YOUR...PRIMITIVE...CONCEPT OF...JUSTICE...WE ARE ONLY CONCERNED WITH RIGHT AND WRONG IN ITS PUREST FORM...THAT IS WHAT...COMPELS US TO...INTERFERE AS WE DO WITH YOUR SPECIES...THE PROCESS OF...PURIFICATION WILL BE...HUMANE...AND PAINLESS...THOSE OF YOU...SELECTED FOR...EXTERMINATION WILL HAVE YOUR...MINDS...SHUT-DOWN TO AVOID THE...PERCEPTION OF...DISCOMFORT...YOUR...BODIES WILL THEN BE...INSTANTANEOUSLY...DEHYDRATED...THE...REST OF YOU CAN THEN GO ON WITH EXISTENCE AS YOU SEE FIT...IT IS UNLIKELY THAT WE SHALL EVER MEET AGAIN...”

The tone rang again, and the voice did not speak.

Everyone stood about and looked at each other for a few seconds, unsure of their own sanity. Mike felt his heart beating inside his chest and found breathing had become an exhausting effort. Some people started running and screaming, others were quickly infected with the rapidly spreading hysteria. Mike stood his ground and waited as did many around him. He thought of looking at his watch and counting the seconds, but realized that some of the time had already elapsed, and there would be no point in it. Many people did look at their watches and clocks and computer screens and many of them actually carried on with their business, dismissing the voice as a ridiculous hallucination. The people of Earth reacted each according to their character.

Then the time was up.

It did not spread from a single point as a bomb would do, and as far as anyone could tell, it was truly simultaneous. What Mike saw around him was thousands of human beings suddenly freezing in mid stride and turning a sickly white-grey. Their shapes were preserved for an instant so that even their faces were recognizable, but then they crumbled to the floor, into a pile of ash. Their clothes shriveling about their forms and collapsing to the ground in heaps. The bodies that once inhabited the garments no longer substantial enough to support them.

In an instant, only Mike and some little girl who had been walking her dog two blocks away from where he was standing remained on the street, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of piles of ash and clothes.

A car, venting ashes through an open window, came banging out of an alleyway, crashing against the sides of the buildings and rolling over the sidewalk. It finally collided at about five miles per hour against a garbage dumpster and idled to itself. The noise it made was similar to other noises that sounded from near and far all over the city, all over the Earth. Unattended devices idling down to a final silence.

Mike’s hands began to shake with the realization of what had happened. It was beginning to sink in, but his mind could not yet quite grasp the magnitude of the extermination. His knees gave in and he dropped to the sidewalk, unable to believe it, or that he had been spared. He wanted to cry, but he could not bring the tears to his eyes. The smell of human ashes started to fill the air as the wind picked it up and scattered it everywhere. It would not last longer than the next good rainfall, to be washed away and down the sewers, onto the rivers and into the sea.

“YOUR WORLD HAS BEEN CLEANSED”

“Who ARE you?” Mike shouted suddenly. His voice bounced eerily down the street and against the sides of the empty buildings. The voice did not seem to hear.

“MANY CHILDREN ARE NOW WITHOUT...PARENTS...THOSE THAT DID NOT...EXIST LONG ENOUGH TO LEARN THE MORAL DISEASE FROM THEIR...FAMILIES...AND...PEERS...THEY WILL NEED...CARING UNTIL THEY ARE GROWN...YOU WOULD THINK OF THIS...YOURSELVES...BUT FOR THE...SHOCK YOU HAVE...ENDURED...YOU MAY TAKE A WHILE TO...REALIZE IT...AND IT IS NOT...FAIR THAT THEY SHOULD GO...UN-CARED-FOR...UNTIL YOU DO...SEE TO THEM...AND TO YOUR WORLD...IT IS YOURS...NOW...FOR YOU ARE GOOD”

The voice was gone.

Mike suddenly remembered the little girl he had seen some distance away, and looked up to find her. She was kneeling on the sidewalk in the same spot he had seen her before, hugging her little dog and obviously crying.

Slowly, he got back up on very shaky legs, and started walking towards her.

A series of ridiculously cheerful tones rang suddenly out across the dead city walls, startling the little girl who quickly looked up at Mike as he approached her. Mike froze in the same instant and took a long while to realize that his cellular phone was ringing at this side. His mind leapt up in startled amazement as he recognized the melody which he had programmed it to ring with for only one caller. His heart pounded mightily as he reached for it and flipped open the device and raised it to his ear to listen to the anguished sobs of a female.

He listened to her despair for a long time, unable to speak, dumbfounded by disbelief. Finally, the woman realized the phone had been answered and spoke a single word between sobs and sniffles: “Hello?”

Mike answered, dazed: “Karen?”

“Oh my God! Mikey! Ohh...honey! Oh my God! Mikchael! Oh Michael I love you! I’m so scared! I’m all alone! Everyone is dead and I thought....I thought....Oh! Oh, Michael, come home, PLEASE, please, PLEASE! Please, please....”

“Karen!” He sounded harsher than he wanted to, but he couldn’t stand hearing any more. He took a deep breath and hoped he sounded gentler, “Honey, shhhhh—shhhhhhh! Please, baby, listen to me, I’m ok! I’m ok! You hear me?”

“YES! Yes! Yes, oh Mikey! I’m so scared...”

“Me too baby, listen, I’m going home as fast as I can, ok?”

“Yes! Oh please, Mikey, come home! Come home NOW!”

“Yes, yes, honey, I’m going! Don’t worry about a thing, baby, I’ll be there in ten minutes, ok?”

He had managed to sooth her somewhat, and she sounded more coherent. Mike turned around and saw the little girl hugging her dog. “Honey, Karen?”

“(Sniff) Yeah?”

“There is a little girl here on the street and she has no one left. I’m bringing her with me, we will have to take care of her now.”

“Of course, honey! What’s her name?”

Mike pulled the phone away from his ear and spoke to the little girl. “What’s your name, honey?”

The little girl stared at him with sad but grateful eyes, her little dog wagged his tail at Mike. “Cindy,” she said at last, “and this is Cookie.”

Mike smiled and spoke to the phone. “She says her name is Cindy, and her little dog is Cookie.”

“Come home, baby! Bring them, and any others you might find on the way, of course.”

“Of course, or course, honey. Bye-now!”

“Bye, baby.”

“I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you too.”

Mike closed the cellular phone and started to slide it back into its holster, then stopped and thought about it and pulled the holster off his belt and tossed it into a pile of ashes.

“Come” he said to the little girl, and offered his hand. The girl got up and took it, pulling her dog by the leash to follow them.

“Are you my daddy now?” She asked.

“I guess so, and we are going to go with mommy.”

“Did God do this?”

Mike thought about it for a while, then said to her, “No, Cindy. But they believed they were doing the right thing. We may not like it, but they are probably right.”

Cindy walked beside him for a while in contemplative silence, then suddenly offered, with remarkable conviction: “I know they are right.”

“Me too.” Mike said, “Me too.”

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Posted by Steven Douglas Huddleston  at 2:17 AM Edited on: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 7:13 PM Categories: "Monsters from the Id"