I shall use it. Apparently this is making its circuit around the world as a meme, and I figure that so long as it's relatively fresh and interesting I'll add my own two cents. The question goes as such...
"You wake up tomorrow and every person on the planet has vanished. What do you do?"
The replies are:
Day One
Week One
Month One
Year One
Day One: Since tomorrows Tuesday I will have work, and I'll also have been sleeping in my apartment. The first hour or two will be odd, since I'll have gotten up and gone to my families, undoubtedly not noticing the lack of people. In my house I'll assume that my parents had gone off somewhere and will think nothing of it. Depending on my choice of actions and how our power grid works I'll either discover that there is no one around when I start scanning news stations and see that there is no one there, or perhaps if the power grid or Internet is down I'll find out when everything is off and I go outside. Regardless if the time gets close to when I need to go to work I'd attempt calling or messaging my associate Abe. I will feed my cat, as she will be the only one around.
There would be no answer, there would be no one to speak to. I would quickly discover that no one is picking up, and within an hour that there is no traffic on the street outside. I would become paranoid and fearful of some unforeseen disaster, attempting to analyze my previous night, hopefully pinpointing some event or action I took that would spare me yet seemingly eliminated everyone else. I would then arm myself and take a walk around the neighborhood, going to the local government center and marveling at the lack of security, but also fretfully acknowledging that there is no sign of anything, no uniforms and rumpled clothes laying where their owners were last standing, there is merely a void. Behind all of this will be a white knuckled terror, that I will be unable to shake, why did everyone disappear? Langoliers? A new weapon outside my ability to understand? Am I in a coma and this is my creation, a Silent Hill for me to occupy. I will live in fear of the sound of sirens and the sight of industrial rust, I will quake when night falls, waiting for the sound of clattering metal, clutching a knife or metal rod to myself in my dark house believing that I will self manifest Pyramid Head to annihilate me for my own tortured crimes against myself. However this will not be the case, because there is merely no answer, everyone is gone, I am alone, and there is no boogieman out to get me, unless you count the ones I can create for all the shadows and unseen corners of a room.
Week One: Depression will set in almost immediately, probably a soul crushing malaise will capture me during the first day once I realize everyone I care about is possibly dead or that I am and will never see them again. Knowing me however I will think of The Mist and determine that the real enemy is my own despair, that if I quit then it really will be over and I wont see anyone again. I will assume this is some form of insane test, and that I must survive to be reunited with humanity. Armed, dining on simple cold things, those things which are good out of a package and are still fresh from grocery stores I will take my haversack, cloaks and hats and set out for my friends Matt and Owens houses respectively. I will walk to Matt's in under an hour and break inside, acknowledging that property rights ceased to exist when everyone vanished, I will take his prized katana, sharp as my wit and then make for Owens house. At each place I will look for signs of life, some sign that possibly some relative or friend of mine survived as well, that perhaps I am somehow the center of some bizarre cosmic right of passage. At Owens I will break into his car and steal a book of survival techniques from the turn of the 20th century. I will get a leash for my cat, and we will begin walking and riding in cars to a new destination. I will worry endlessly over my cat and whether she'll get loose, and if so what she will do for food and shelter. The rest of the week will be spent walking and hiding at night, moving North towards Amanda and Derek's house. If within the week I arrive at Santa Barbara and have seen little more than birds and bobcats I will be forced to re-evaluate what is happening. Considering that once I reach my next friends house I will be able to undoubtedly determine that there is no one there, and that there is little chance that anyone is anywhere. I will eat little, drink whenever I can and sleep lightly, dreaming of friends and waking in a sickened depression.
Punishment, some unseen force, though not a God must be punishing either humanity or me, either I am a clerical error in a cosmic number crunch or the victim of some scheme or carefully concocted revenge by an entity I never knew existed. I will steal a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, wishing I were Arthur Dent, hoping that Ford Prefect will show up and show me that Earth was merely an accident and that there are other 'people' alive elsewhere in the galaxy. I will look up and hope that this isn't universal. I will grab a towel, preferably green and stuff it in my haversack.
Month One: I will be thin and weak, I will worry too much, and spend too much time moving North. I will decide within the first two weeks to finish my plan, I am intent on moving to Portland, land of delicious salmon and majestic trees. I will drive when I can, stealing cars when I find them, I will find one that suits me and steal it decorate it, I will live in my own hollow version of the Road Warrior. Everyday will be a struggle and I'll go days without talking, in the evenings as I'm falling asleep I'll worry that I will lose language in time, through simple lack of use. Pressing on there will be many hard sights, familiar places and memories of friends now lost to the 'event'. I will instinctively hold onto the sword, convinced that in a cinematic sense the moment I release it I will find myself beset by monsters or wild men. I will not have smiled for weeks. On the way I will pick up apple seeds and plant them, becoming a modern Johnny Appleseed, I'll ponder if the missing can see me, if they're dead and are all watching me, wanting to see what I do. Perhaps they know what happened, perhaps they know there's a way to save them, bring them back. I'll spend long hours wondering if my intuition is leading me somewhere, if a subconscious narrative is forming, and if I'll be challenged to save them, everyone on the Earth. I'll fret over it, I'll battle with Hope, wishing it to go away so I could simply accept the grim reality of things and go on living for the pure bullheadedness of it. I will hope however that there is a chance to save everyone, even if I have to switch over and go into the nothingness they went into to bring them back. I will wish that I could simply be offered clear and simple a choice between not existing and everyone being back or remaining in this world with everyone missing. I will make it to Portland, and there will be no one around, I'll find Oriana and Stacie's house, and if I have used cars to get there I may be able to save their cats and add mine to the mix. I will stop wandering for a while, I will sit and stew. Gardens will spring up and I'll learn how to make fire and sow seeds, how to raise plants and fish.
Year One: I will either be alive, living off the land, devastated at the state of things, going mad with every passing day, clinging to pictures of friends so I don't forget their faces, or I'll be dead. I'll probably be an alcoholic, or merely someone who has nothing better to do than drink because otherwise he must sit and contemplate the miserable state of his life. I will be unhinged, fencing with shadows, shouting soliloquies from rooftops and tending the cats. Every morning I'll wait for the sound of a door opening and everyone coming home and I'll scratch my beard and long hair wondering what became of me. Of course at some time earlier I may have died, via sickness or accident, so many things coil around us that when left completely on our own could finish us off. I will go on living, hoping that I die peacefully, but preferably before I have to remove my own teeth Castaway style, or set my own bones if I break them.
I will be in a waking nightmare, but the cats will be okay and I'll take solace in that. I will patiently await everyone's return, or death, whichever finds me on the couch first.
How awful this was, how completely depressing. Please everyone, go and watch something humorous starring Steve Martin or someone of his ilk, and don't assume that this extremely nihilistic narrative is indicative of my own moods. I'm usually rather chipper.
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