[spoiler]It was twenty years, five months, eight days, twelve minutes and fifty-two seconds ago that the world as I knew it came to an end.
I didn't know that before. But now, looking back on it, I can remember clearly that that's when it happened. Right down to the second. That's when it happened. But back then, I was like everybody else: blind, deaf and lame. Just like everyone else, I had no idea it had even happened.
Nobody understood what happened, how or why, and nobody knows when. Nobody except me. Even back then, I could still remember bits and pieces from the day - images burned into my mind, flashing and leering into the back of my eyes when I closed them.
Frames of panicked masses running and screaming; old men in greasy coats screaming about the end being nigh; the ground shuddering and cracking like an eggshell; crude black veins etching themselves across the sickly-blue sky; pieces of land and artifices, trees and office blocks, grass and roads, melting into empty holes in their space.
What I remembered most was the sight of one man losing his balance, watching his lifeless body slump to the floor, followed by another man. Then a woman. Then more and more. One by one, and soon in dozens, hundreds, thousands, the frenzied denizens hit the floor, no life in them, like someone just hit the off switch for a mass human consciousness. It was a hideous and haunting sight, the image of a mangled city block littered with lifeless human bodies. The next - the last - thing I remember is a bright green light flooding my vision, drowning me in a sea of neon green.
And that was it.
When I finally woke up, I was an empty shell. I couldn't sense anything at all. Once my sight came back I found out I was in a small room, kind of a grey-white colour, lieing upwards on a metal bed with a lamp above me playing hell with my retinas. But that came later. Right then and there, everything was dark, silent, hollow and empty.
No real memories of who I was, where I came from. All I felt, all that was in me - besides the mother of all migraines - were those images. I could see them, and they gnawed at the recesses of my mind ever since. I couldn't remember my own name, let alone anything else about myself, except those images.
It took a while before I was able to do anything, even move my arms and legs at all. My senses came back first; slowly but surely, I could make out sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings. Next my speech returned, though it was initially slurred and stuttering, and I had to physically force the words out most of the time. Pretty soon I was able to lift my arms and legs, then not long after I could support my own body on two feet. Eventually I managed to walk - albeit limply - and regain my main motor functions.
I don't know how long it took. Could have been days, weeks, months. Could even have been a year or two. When at last I returned to as close to my old self as I could get, they ran some tests to make sure I was alright, and then they finally let me go. Back out I went to the real world, with only a mumbling inkling that there would be nothing left for me.
Well, let me tell you, I couldn't have been more wrong on that one.
The first thing I noticed when I got out of that place was how bright the outside world was. I had forgotten about the sun and what real light was like after being in that place for so long. And then, fresh air. I can't tell you how good it felt to finally breathe it in. It was like a newborn baby taking their first breath.
Immediately after that I saw the world - the real world - for what it was really like. The trees, the sky, the grass, the clouds, the flowers. People wandered by and sat in the park, talking amongst themselves, playing, relaxing, enjoying life. How I envied their carefree nature. I wanted to be just like that.
I wondered if this was how the world looked before it ended. Still, the human mind works in mysterious ways. Even with those images scorched permanently into the backburner of my psyche, in my fascination with the world around me, it didn't take long before I completely forgot about the event at all.
Soon enough, things went back to normal. Somehow, my subconcious mind managed to keep the memories of that day at bay, and I never questioned it again. I settled down in a new house, got a job, made some friends. I started a whole new life, completely forgetting that, at some point in time, I used to be somebody else. I used to have a different life. I used to live in a different world. Somehow I forgot all that.
Somehow, I forgot what it was to exist.
It was a very strange time.
***
>> RUN_PROGRAM: GOD.EXE
>> INITIALISING
>> RUNNING_PROGRAM: GOD.EXE
HELLO.
IN THE COURSE OF YOUR MORTAL LIFE, YOU WILL BREATHE ON AVERAGE ROUGHLY 672,48,000 TIMES. EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE IS A NEW EXPERIENCE. YOU WILL EXPERIENCE NEW SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS, TOUCHES AND TASTES, MANY OF WHICH YOU WILL BE COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF. YOU WILL MEET NEW PEOPLE. YOU WILL GROW OLD. PERHAPS YOU WILL MARRY AND PRO-CREATE AS HUMANS ARE KNOWN TO DO. YOU MAY FEEL HAPPY, ANGRY, SAD, PENSIVE, MELANCHOLIC, ENVIOUS, ENAMOURED, EMBITTERED, SCORNFUL, ECSTATIC, CONFUSED OR MAY LACK A FEELING OF EMOTION ALTOGETHER.
NONE OF THIS IS IMPORTANT.
YOU ARE HUMAN.
WELCOME TO YOUR NEW LIFE.
ENJOY YOURSELF.
>> CLOSE_PROGRAM: GOD.EXE
>> PROGRAM_CLOSED
***
People are rarely surprised when they learn I am physically female. Personally, it doesn't make a difference to me. I am neither an effeminate, elegant and graceful woman, nor am I a stubborn, brash, masculine tomboy. As far as I'm concerned, gender is an arbitrary and illusionary distinction based solely on one's physical appearance. My gender is unimportant to me. I am neither a man nor a woman, male nor female, despite what my body might say: I am a human, and that is all.
I say this because something I very quickly learned about my new life was the insistence of certain men to impose their biological obligations upon me. These men, whom I will refrain from assigning a name to, seem irreparably convinced that it is their God-given duty to pro-create and increase the human population, regardless of what their evolutionary mate thinks.
In other words, I have horny guys flirting with me a lot and it's getting very tiring, very quickly.
Let me just say that I'm not the best-looking girl in the world. Shoulder-length blonde hair, hazel eyes, average figure. Nothing special. Apparently, though, these aformentioned men take that as an invitation to come on over and hit on me as they please.
Maybe they think I'm "easy". Maybe they do it with every girl they meet.
Human nature is something I have yet to fully grasp.
***
>> RUN_PROGRAM: GOD.EXE
>> INITIALISING
>> RUNNING_PROGRAM: GOD.EXE
STOP.
CONSIDER.
ALWAYS BE WATCHING. ALWAYS BE AWARE.
STRIP AWAY THE LEVELS OF AWARENESS AND FIND THE CORE OF THE APPLE.
DELICIOUS.
>> CLOSE_PROGRAM: GOD.EXE
>> PROGRAM_CLOSED[/spoiler]