Planet Earth, Monday, October 7th, 2019. 18:30

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On a fateful day, during rush hour in eastern North America, Heavens and Hell crumbled and fell from their higher dimension on Earth. It came from "above" but not the same above we regard in our tridimensional Euclidean reasoning. No, it came from "above" as in from a higher dimension. Bits and pieces of those places fell on Earth from all directions, this time in tridimensional Euclidean space.

Satellites, the ISS, and space debris all were wiped clean from orbit. Even those that didn't crash with the falling debris were knocked off orbit by the shockwaves. On the ground, power distribution lines were disrupted and most power facilities were left abandoned by their dead staff. Most of these had emergency shutdown routines that engaged in a few days. Some others had a survivor among their staff that followed protocol and activated their SCRAM switches, stopping the power plant. Long-distance communication disappeared the internet along with it. The world was plunged into technological darkness.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand human beings perished immediately in the pulse of magical energy from the torn spatial boundary. Spirits were rent asunder and vanished, their fate neither salvation nor damnation, only oblivion. The criteria used for this culling was latent magic potential. It didn't discriminate against education, gender, age, or ethnic group. But of the around seven million survivors, most would meet their doom moments later.

Those on moving vehicles, like the ones driving on highways suddenly had to contend with high-speed uncontrolled cars and trucks driven by corpses. Trapped in their vehicles and helpless, they became part of the long snake of crushed metal. Very few survived. Those in the air or out in the sea were alone and probably unable to control their rides. Airplanes crashed, and ships kept their course or drifted away, depending on their autopilot.

Several ended their own lives in utter despair after seeing their loved ones die in front of them. Another large group would die at the hands of other survivors. Violence and aggression became the norm. Only a few sparse pockets of not-so-sane survivors managed to band together and cooperate for the sake of mutual survival.

The sole survivor in a five-over-one apartment building in Georgia, a girl became the keystone to humanity's survival. Sara's fabulous System Apocalypse had just started.

She has only one remark.

It was anything but fabulous.

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Updates every Wednesday and Sunday.

Cover V2 credits: CC-BY-SA Midjourney

Cover V1 Credits:

Consumed, Jennifer Hansen.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Consumed,_Jennifer_Hansen.jpg

John Martin (public domain):

- The Great Day of His Wrath

- The Last Judgment

- Le Pandemonium