At World’s End

It was called the greatest cataclysm in Earth’s history.

Half the world saw the sun explode in a burst of light that temporarily blinded even those who closed their eyes and turned away. The clouds burnt off from the light pressure alone, yet it would be fourteen hours before the plasma burst hit the Earth.

Hysteria reigned, and in the western hemisphere, people woke to a sunless morning and the certainty of the end of the world. They wandered in shocked disbelief, having missed the main event that sent the rest of the world into chaos.

With only eight hours until the plasma shock hit the Earth at ten percent of the speed of light, humanity prepared in a very individual, very human way.

Many spent the entire eight hours in prayer. Many more found religion as the hours ticked down. Still others drank, and made love, and consumed every drug available, while others rampaged. They looted, destroyed, and killed wantonly. There was no law, and here at the end, nothing mattered any longer.

When it came, humanity met it head on, staring into the sky, awaiting their deaths.

When it left again, repelled entirely by the Earth’s magnetic field, they sang songs of joy and life, and soon turned on those who had revealed their true destructive natures at world’s end.

Scientists raced to come up with and test theories on their impossible survival.

And without a sun, the global temperature dropped twelve degrees overnight.

Meanwhile, one Aboriginal tribe in eastern Australia gathered ninety kilometers north of Cape Melville. While the world searched for an explanation, they told a story some fifty thousand years old, that exactly this would someday happen.

And at dawn, the entire tribe sat in lawn chairs and watched the sun tree give birth.