Trembling With Fear 4-27-25

Jörmungandr, by Peter Bakumov

We all believed that a technologically sophisticated race’s invasion of Earth would bring about the end of the world. We pictured a tenacious resistance, a long-awaited victory, and a protracted interplanetary war that would finally put an end to the threat. And we created films and novels while imagining potential outcomes. But we were all mistaken.

The apocalypse struck without warning, and it had no physical manifestation. After the initial turmoil had dissipated, the scientists had convened and determined that an invisible wave traveling through space had caused the original disorder. Where the cataclysm came from and what it was like is still unknown, and that will probably always be the case. I hate to say it, but it is not humans who will make this important discovery.

On a day just like the others, the Wave came, bringing with it the Changes. There was a transformation in the atomic makeup of the entire planet which we could not have foreseen. Everything that had been inanimate woke up.

According to Schopenhauer, every living thing has a will—the will to survive, develop, and procreate, the will to eat. We lacked knowledge of the pattern of the Changes. Consequently, we could not foresee the actions of all the new species that developed around us so quickly that they eventually consumed our very existence.

The smaller an object was, the faster its process of animation. The household items congregated in groups to go on the hunt together. In the dark, cable snakes awoke and suffocated unwary hikers. Clothes quickly fell into disrepair as they ate away the skin. The gradual animation of communications rapidly put an end to our attempts to organize ourselves and find a solution at this point, and everyone had to focus on their own survival.

The animation of housing was the second phase of the apocalypse. Within an hour, the structures fell in spasmodic fits, engulfing about half of the planet’s people. Without shelter or any means of conveyance, a large proportion of the survivors were sent back in time to the Stone Age. However, even they fared better than those who attempted to take cover in the woods. A massive devouring organism had evolved from the megalithic pulsating structure of intertwined sprouts that had once served as trunks and branches. I noticed the wretched people stuck to trunks that radiated a bluish-flesh color.

Food? There was no problem with it if you had the guts to slaughter things with your bare hands and eat the uncooked flesh of indescribable creatures. I almost envy those who lost their minds before they could see how bad things got. Common sense plagued me.

In the third stage, the soil gained life. Each step a person took might have been their final one. Mother Earth is omnipresent, so you can’t escape her. Thousands of enormous holes will appear on the surface and consume all life if her skin’s outer layer is sufficiently inflamed and the signal reaches the structure that functions in place of her nervous system. She has a genuinely insatiable hunger. I believe that, eventually, it will consume everything organic on the planet and enter a state of slumber as it awaits any visitors from other worlds who have managed to avoid meeting our end.

If you ask me, I’ll tell you that if we have enough time, we could adapt. Give us a thousand years, and we could develop biological substitutes for the majority of things. We are victims of a Cosmos that has deceived us into thinking we have an endless future.

What might have occurred to the molten core continues to occupy my thoughts. Gravity hasn’t vanished; therefore, everything should be alright. And, if the core is okay, what’s keeping it from melting the mountain of flesh that has become Earth’s crust? The titanic creature must have landed somewhere between the nucleus and the surface. My mind conjures up a picture of a snake with hard, almost-armored scales. I imagine the Great Serpent wrapped around the planet’s red-hot core. 

Somewhere beneath my feet, I sense a shiver. Nothing I’ve heard previously can compare to it. Even the never-ending howls of the monsters that do not slumber are abruptly put to rest. I’m standing naked atop a shaking mound of flesh. The temperature is rising. Good. Nobody ought to perish from the cold.