The World as We Knew It

The luminous moon was at its full moon phase today, a gigantic pale disk in the sky so massive that it turned the sky purple, similar to the color of the horizon during dusk or dawn, casting a deep arcane hue across the vast ocean.

Taiga made sure that it would be the full moon. While billions across the globe were watching the moon currently on tiny screens deep under the ocean. Taiga could not miss this once in a… Actually, not even a timeframe could appropriately describe the significance of this event. What was about to happen would certainly never happen in human history ever again. In any case, Taiga was going to witness the moon today through his naked eyes with no concession.

To make sure he wasn’t going to be distracted by a mother trying to soothe her crying baby, or a group of rambunctious teens trying to imitate the audience cheer of sporting stadiums, or god forbid, the clappers. He made sure to find a lonely spot in the ocean where no other similar thrill seekers would be gathering at. If he squinted really hard he would be able to see the blurred outline of another submarine drifting on the surface of the ocean, likely with similar intentions as his, but Taiga eventually decided that it was just a fish bathing at the top of the ocean.

This moment was his, and his alone. Only shared by the gentle lapping of the ocean water, the slight salty breeze whistling past his ears, and the moon.

Taiga breathes in, feeling his chest rise and fall slowly.

His radio crackles. “Ten seconds.”

Eventually the sounds, smells, and sensations of the ocean ceases presence in Taiga’s mind. The only things that existed were the moon and him.

…

Taiga breathes out.

…

He breathes in.

…

Fuuuuuuuu

Bright blue cracks spread out from a central point, like beams of lasers spreading out through a room of mirrors, quickly covering the whole moon in something that resembled a web of spider silk.

Then.

The moon shatters.

The girl glances up briefly as cheers rouse from out of her room, signifying the end of an era in human history and the beginning of a new one. The radio begins playing. “The twenty-four hour time cycle has been discontinued indefinitely, please be patient as a new standard of time is calibrated as the Earth’s rotation stabilizes. The twenty-four hour time cycle has been discontinued indefinitely, please be patient as a new standard of time is calibrated as the Earth’s rotation stabilizes.”

To her this was the opportune moment to slip away, because at this moment, time didn’t exist.

All records were outdated, and all technology and systems were in disarray. Who would care, and more importantly, who would be able to track a missing girl during this purgatorial space of history?

She clicks her tongue, then turns the radio off before flinging her bag over her shoulder and leaving. Celebration rang in a buffer around her as she crammed through the streets. Not once did she look up at the many plasma screens broadcasting the major event, and even if it flickered across her vision, unavoidable as it was, she did not see it. Even now, during human history’s second largest upheaval, nothing could take her attention off that cavalier smile. A smile that was too powerful to fail, a smile that knew it was guilty, but got off too easily.

A smile that she knew would ruin her.