Gaia reset

What is harder to keep up with besides the lights going out is everyone going out and throwing themselves in the dark.

The first day that the lights went out, really went out. At first I thought, like everyone else that it was another grid failure, another storm, another grand mess by someone who was paid too much to mess up. We all were going about our ways buying supplies for a few days, looking at the phones and wondering how much longer we would have them until they wore out.

But it was baba, our adopted grandmother, who made us all pause. "The new beginning is almost here, we can't be here."

"What are you saying?"

"The world of iron is gone child. It'll rust away to make way for the new world...run children so you don't rust."

She was not our grandmother, but she was an old lady that lived a few blocks away who we got her groceries for. She was a stubborn old thing that refused to learn computers and phones even though she got the newest models every time. To hear her say this made me freeze, this wasn't the ramblings of a crazy old lady. It was the voice of the city talking through her. We always listened to our elders when they said stuff like this, it had helped us more times than we could count.

"H-how soon is everything rusting baba?"

"Its happening now." She stated, staring off in an direction that was neither here nor there.

I felt it, the telltale feeling of panic that bloomed in my chest as my breathing grew shorter and shorter. "T-t-then I...we have to get a car out of the city...wait here, we'll find a way to get you too..."

"Don't worry about me."

Looking back at her, another notch bloomed in me. "Did you already call for someone...baba? You called for someone to come get you right?"

She only smiled and patted my cheek, whispering her message again as I took off.

The second day was us using whatever we could before the generators and the internet shut off itself. Maxing out cards at places that held IOUs that would never be fulfilled we gathered all we could in the caravan of cars as we all drove out of the city, praying that gas stations lasted long enough to get us away.

Third to fifth day was driving. Those who we all called to come was wondering where we were going while others were wondering if the elders of our communites were picked up or was safe where ever they holed up. Tempers were raised as there was more than one instance of traffic that used up precious gas. No sleep in a bed, pissing on the side of the road, and eating barely anything. It was needed though.

It was the sixth day that we reached the destination, whichw as good as we were all running out of gas. Seeing the high mountians we all looked at each other, we began the long walk leaving behind the phones and games behind. They had long lost power, and we wouldn't need them now.

It had to be a the third week that news reached us. We had been tending to the seeds we had planted as a few out us were trying to find a way around to building a green house. It was horrible, the cities had turned into hellpits. If it wasn't the heat, it was the people, if it wasn't the people, it was the unsanitized water, and if it wasn't that it was the lack of good food and access to medicine. And finally if it wasn't any of that, it was the stench of death from all the unburied and rotten bodies.

Looking at each other, there was a moment where we all knew we were still going downwards.

It was two months when they began to fall from the sky. Seeing them like shooting stars were beautiful until they heard the crashes that made us run to tell the others. They didn't even need to go and see the chunck of metal that was once was a satilite that connect the world. "So...how much longer before the winter sets in?"

"...About two more months or so? Weren't you supposed to keep track of the calender?"

Baba told us, the world of iron was at an end. It is odd to see the world "rust" but here we can watch and write it all down. Maybe someday, when we figure out how not to piss off mother nature with out greed our decendants might get the lights back on, but then the world would have probably reset and we would not cling to the light so much. Until then, I will hope that the idiots will stop throwing themselves in the dark. Its amazing that you can hear people all the way up here.