Chapter None

And so it was that the world burned. We never saw it coming, although all the signs were there. Perhaps it had been the many signs that caused us to not know. Instead of accepting the evidence, we chose to block them out and refused the truth that our time was coming to an end.

On that day we also burned. Our bodies grew hotter and hotter as the planet did. Like in the town of Pompeii in earth-history, some of us turned instantly to stone under the lava of the world melting around us. Others suffocated from the smoke and ash of other burning bodies. Some of us caught fire from the flames around us and were burned to death before the rest of the havoc began. The lucky few were turned instantly to ash, swirling and falling in the sky.

Others tried to escape by boarding rockets bound for the space-void. It was a fruitless effort and the ones in those ships had it the worst. They had to watch the planet and people die before them before finally noticing the heat coming from the bottoms of the ships. The flames ignited there before any other place on our planet. So the bottom melted off; the material was made for icy void conditions, not for anything like the tragedy below. The breathing-gases escaped the ships and they died not from the heat, but because they lost could no longer breathe.

I say "we" while telling this story because I too, died that that day. Somehow I was "saved" from one of the safe-boxes in the core of the planet. It was designed for the core, so it did not melt completely, but inside I was almost baked alive. It seems I am now in a permanent care facility being kept "alive" by the machines I sense around me. Even this I cannot be sure, for I cannot hear, nor see, nor feel, nor smell, nor taste. I can only think. And so, trapped in my own mind, I look back on that day with envy of the ones who burned. I would rather be dead than have only my insanity for the rest of eternity.