Darkness Descending

Chapter 1: Careless Whisper

October 16,  2028

What do you want?

As she stood in her galley kitchen, her favorite coffee mug in shattered pieces around her bare feet, Eve choked back tears of frustration, tears of fury, tears for the wet blanket of depression that, she was certain, wasn't hers to carry.

Snagging a half-spent roll of paper towels from the counter, she dropped to her knees, her faded sweatpants soaking up Coffee Mate, sugar, and the remains of a perfectly brewed Italian dark roast. Brightly colored ceramic shards punctured the tips of her shaking fingers as her clinched teeth ground together and an oppressive sense of misplaced sorrow threatened to swallow her whole.

"This isn't mine," she whispered fiercely to herself. "This isn't mine, it isn't mine, it's not mine..."

Lack of sleep had frayed her typically dulled nerves.

Everything, for the past two weeks, was a fight -- from finding the remote to opening her box of Cinnamon Life to making a fucking cup of morning coffee. Little things, routine things she normally executed with her eyes half-closed, suddenly required a Herculean effort.

She was one stubbed toe away from completely losing her shit, and she knew it.

She just didn't know why, and that made her nervous.

She started again: One Keurig cup of Illy, one fresh mug, one more shot at a not-so-shitty day.

"And why shouldn't your day be a good one?" Eve asked herself in that internal headmaster's voice she reserved for times when she disappointed herself. "What exactly do you have to bitch about?"

What do you want? What do you need? What is wrong with you?

The answer, she knew as she sunk into her front porch recliner and squinted at the sun, was nothing.

She had all she needed. Everyone did.

After the dust settled on the '26 special elections and that bastard was dragged out of the White House -- after the wars ended and the supply lines were re-established and people finally just accepted that "normal" was an ever-evolving concept -- ensuring that humanity's basic needs were met became a global mission.

A tactical nuke will do that to folks -- regardless of their race, gender, faith (or, lack thereof), sexual predilections, political affiliations, or passionately held opinions of Taylor Swift.

From the ashes that still define a sliver of the Middle East rose a cornucopia of sustainable opportunities based on a newly defined hierarchy of needs, and, one by one, they were gifted to a PTSD-saturated population.

The last of the tin-foil hat brigade packed away their paranoia as cities began to sparkle and crime was met with swift and soul-shocking justice.

It was like Western civilization let loose with a collective primal scream and hugged it out over ice cream.

Yes, prices were paid.

There are things that are no longer said, questions that shouldn't be asked, and truths that must never be spoken. Frankly, if you hadn't lived it yourself, you wouldn't know to mention those truths to begin with. The desire for a memory hole ran deep.

Somewhere in the shuffle of NGOs, global governance meetings, and exorbitant legal settlements, the online historical slate was cleaned, and as much as many hated to admit it, no one really, truly gave a damn.

It seemed better to forget and look forward.

Even Eve had to admit, it felt better.

After a nonstop stream of yelling, screaming, sobbing, ranting, wailing, and insulting, the universe at last felt quiet. The noise was gone.

Until about four weeks ago.

It was so subtle at first, Eve allowed herself to believe she was imagining it.

An op-ed in Truthful News accused the Denver Hub of shorting District 8's wheat supply, which shouldn't even be possible given the algorithms. The article was later scrubbed, but not before Eve printed it out and tucked it into her scrapbook.

She later felt stupid for doing it. "Old habits," she told herself.

But, the next day, some lady slapped the shit out of a teacher in front of the entire school board. Why she did it, Eve didn't know, but the fact that the local news reported it caught her attention.

Then, two weeks ago, a video went viral on Twitter (formerly X).

Two Texans slammed on their brakes in the middle of an Austin rush hour. One of the guys slid over the roof of his car Bo Duke-style and power-punched the other guy square in the jaw. Horns blared. People in the carpool lane cried.

Before the drones could get there, the second guy spat out a tooth, crawled back into his car, and ran the other guy over as he strolled away.

He ran him over three times.

Then he stepped out of his car, flipped off the surveillance cameras, and was in the middle of lighting a cigar when a drone hit him with a taze.

It took a random hacker less than twelve minutes to snatch the footage and spew it across social media. The son-of-a-bitch Rick Rolled the nation with it. For 17 hours, you couldn't click a link without seeing that cowboy's head explode.

Whispers rolled across timelines.

Careless whispers. The kind you just didn't hear anymore.

And the hair on Eve's arms stood on end for the first time in years.

The next morning, she woke up teetering on the edge of a familiar crash.

She turned on the t.v., but couldn't decide what to watch. Normally, it was the news, but that morning, every story sounded to her like it was being read by Charlie Brown's teacher. After an hour of surfing through favorite old sci-fi episodes, the morning talk shows, and funny pet reels, she turned to Twitter, where every word of every tweet annoyed her.

That morning, they all smacked of insincerity.

That morning, they were all meaningless.

The day before, Eve was delighted by her old dog's smile when she scratched his tummy. That morning, the same goofy grin filled her with the grief of his advancing age.

How alone she would feel when that dreaded, inevitable day came. How alone she was now.

It all seemed so pointless, not on an emotional level, but as a simple statement of fact...

With a gasp, Eve shook her flapper-length, home-cut hair and slammed her palms on the arms of her chair.

"Awww, hell, no," she growled, startling her dozing dog. "This is some bullshit!"

In her head, David Bowie cleared his throat and broke into "Fantastic Voyage": We're learning to live with somebody's depression; And I don't want to live with somebody's depression...

That morning, Eve began burning sage.