Dawn

January 5, 2026

The word "extirpate" is approximately defined as "to destroy something that is unwanted." 

A fitting term, I think.

The extirpations began 6 months ago, almost to the day: random, sudden disappearances of things. At first, the objects that disappeared were utterly mundane: coins from a purse, or a smartphone from a pocket. But these trinkets were just the beginning. 

At first, the news coverage was minimal. A local story about a missing doorknob was one of the more interesting cases: devious, tricky and introducing inconvenience, but utterly useless, as targets go. It was considered by some, though, myself among them, to be an application of choice to the target of an extirpation. 

Then, she started appearing on TV. Irina. She was as striking as ever, but with as little understanding of social grace as she'd had when I met her. Thinking about it makes me smile, even now.

I happened to be watching when she made her first appearance as an expert guest on our regional news channel. She coined the term "extirpation" for this phenomenon on that broadcast. I remember her exact words...

"Dr. Alexandrova, these disappearances... should we be worried?"

"…No."

A painful silence, just as those she inflicted on me, once upon a time. 

"No? Could you give a little more insight?" the reporter responded.

Irina nodded, but a shadow of annoyance flitted across her face. Perhaps only I caught it. 

"These... extirpations are completely uncorrelated events. You do not need to worry."

"Well that's a relief, but... how can you be sure?"

"My research leads me to this conclusion. Certainly."

"And... extirpations? I'm afraid I don't know the term."

"The act of destroying, completely, something that is unwanted."

The rest of the conversation has faded, but...

But the next day... the first death by extirpation occurred, as though to spit in Irina's face. 

A chunk of the brake line of a passenger vehicle vanished while moving. Naturally, the driver crashed, killing him on impact and injuring 2 others. 

After that, few extirpations happened for a time. People almost forgot about it. There were some indistinct reports of rodents and dogs and so forth vanishing in western Asia, but none confirmed. 

A month or so after the brake line incident, an American man claimed to have had his daughter extirpated. Everyone dismissed him as insane: confirmed incidents, especially in the West, had been way down. But nonetheless, he shouted to anyone who would listen about his daughter's disappearance, and about the impending existential danger of the extirpations.

His shouting was heard by few. Many dismissed it out of hand, including Irina. I did not. I could not.

The man's fate revealed the true nature of the disappearances, and in my mind, it proved him correct. 

During one of his tirades to the news, his feed cut mid-sentence. He had called in via video conference to do the show, and so he was at home. What he was saying on the broadcast quickly fell out of the public consciousness. 

What took its place was that his entire house had been extirpated, as though to silence him. 

It sickens me to think that there may be agency underlying this phenomenon. 

I write this simply to set my thoughts straight. I know that the extirpations are dangerous. I know that Irina was wrong. 

But I am afraid to prove it.

A familiar dinging tune hitting his ears, Ken snapped back to reality, lifting his head from his journal as a new window popped up on his laptop. Its title read, "Simulation Complete."

He sat forward in his chair, the sound of his heartbeat pounding a faster and faster rhythm, throbbing against the inside of his skull. "Let's see..." he muttered, clicking on the new window. 

Its results flashed across his screen.

His heart, for the briefest moment, stopped beating in his chest. The air was ripped from his lungs with a low, choked gasp as he stared at the graph his program had produced. 

"I... This has to be a mistake..." he muttered.

The graph on the screen showed three curves, each extrapolating a model of the past occurrences of extirpation. 

And they all converged on one point. One day. A single moment. 

An extirpation of such magnitude that it could consume everything. The entire world. 

The date in question was labeled clearly at the foot of the graph: January 1, 2027.

He tapped his fingertips on the surface of the table, his mind flashing pictures of his children before his eyes. His two beautiful girls: May and Alice. 

I have to keep going, for them, he thought. With a sharp breath in, he sat forward, brow furrowing as he changed windows to the command terminal. With a few quick commands, he had the simulation environment built and crunching the numbers again. 

"Hopefully some cosmic ray changed the outcome..." he muttered, standing up. He began to pace around his office, his occupied mind dragging his glazed-over eyes past the utter desolation that was his work station. 

He pressed bases of his palms into his eyes. Thoughts of all kinds raced through his mind: What if my program was right? What if that outcome... that ending... is unstoppable?

What do I tell my children?

It was an impossible question.

 A sensation against his leg yanked him back to reality, clearing his mind: his phone was buzzing in his pocket. It was a familiar vibration: texts from his older daughter, May. 

May > Hey dad coming home from school
May > I grabbed Alice and we're walking back now

A smile touched the corners of his mouth as he read. He took a shaky deep breath in, letting the air come to a rest in his lungs before exhaling again. 

Me > Ok. Be safe. Love you.

But their arrival at home meant he had to make a choice: tell them about his findings, or let them find out from some heartless stranger down the line that came to the same conclusion. 

As he thought it, the laptop dinged again. The smile faded from his face as he shuffled back over to it and sat down. Please, he thought.

He opened it gingerly, as if doing so with vigor might change the outcome. His stomach dropped. He tried to swallow, but his mouth dried up as he looked at the outputs.

The same outcome. 

The projections, all in different colors, once again converged on the same date. That same date as last time: January 1, 2027. 

"Damn it!" He slammed the laptop shut, pushing away from his desk. He leaned forward, placing his hand against his furrowed brow and closing his eyes. "If this is real, what am I supposed to tell them?"

The phone vibrated in his left hand. Once again, his daughter saved him from his thoughts.

May > Love you
May > Also my teacher mentioned something about the news
May > You should turn it on
May > Could be more of those disappearances mom was researching

He stared at the messages. The news? he thought. He stood up. 

Me > I'll take a look. Thanks.

Shutting the office door behind him, he walked over to the living room and sat down across from the TV, legs crossed beneath him. The remote clicked faintly as he pressed the power button. 

Irina stared back at him. He flipped a couple channels. She was on all of them. 

She stood at a podium, papers in hand, that familiar deadpan expression plastered over her natural beauty. Her blond hair looked frizzy, as always, hanging down all over the tattered white lab coat she wore. Her tired eyes gazed at the reporters before her, unerring. 

In his heart, Ken knew what she was going to say. A grimace crept up his face as the realization dawned on him. She had always been there to relieve him of his indecision, and this would be no exception.

But he and the rest of the world found themselves unprepared for the bluntness of it.

She raised her hand, her signal she would start speaking whether they were ready or not. A hush fell over the crowd.

"In 360 days, the world..." she began, scanning the faces in the crowd before her. "...will cease to exist."