Entry #25

The Seventh Bowl
by Wills Mullen


Quakes registered off the scales, a rumbling so consistent it was impossible to measure them separately. On every coastline, the land began breaking off into the ocean. With the impending tsunami, it was clear that Japan would go the way of Atlantis. The world keeled, horrified and impotent.

Kaito reached for the nuclear reactor as though he could pull it back and save the world. In the ironic futility of this desperate attempt, salt water fills his mouth and abrades his nostrils. Air gurgles from his lungs, and it occurs to him that he is drowning, along with millions of others. He is crossing over. He is becoming omniscient.

“Gesu no atojie.” The first necessity of life was oxygen; the second, water. The solar flares had scorched the planet, and now the water would turn toxic, as one-by-one, most of the reactors of the world would sink into the seas during the Great Earth Crumble.

Finally, when the planet left the galactic center, it would implode with a deep breath, then shoot outward like a wet sneeze. Magnetic scraps would be attracted by gravity to other places. An undamaged pyramid would spin to the belts of Saturn. The Eiffel Tower, flipping end over end, would plunge into the dark side of Uranus. The Large Hadron Collider would be appropriated by an intelligent species inhabiting a planet far, far away.

“Sho ga nai. Shikata ga nai." He does not look back. It cannot be helped.