Structural Collapse

Prologue: The White Dot

            It was just another day at the market. All was going as it should, the merchants sold their wares, the children caused mischief for the vendors as their parents bought their groceries, even the elderly had left their seemingly perpetual solitude to partake in the day's gently glowing sun. Unsuspecting, calm, happy, normal - what one would suspect upon approaching a market as such. But today, something was different, a mother called out to her daughter. She rushed frantically from stall to stall, stopping at each to give a description of her missing child. With each the answer was the same, they had not seen any such girl amongst the faces who had passed. The mother searched still, but she felt something was wrong. 

           As the day drove on she couldn't recall her daughter's face. It was just a notion of a doubt at first, but it grew. She looked to the faces of others and realized she knew them not either. It was as if she had never seen any other human before, she had no memories. No, she had memories, but they were leaving her. Fear enveloped her as she lost more and more of the pieces of her past. Did she have a daughter? Did she even have a name? What was going on? No answer but one came to her: nothing. But she was not alone, like an invisible miasma this forgetfulness, this nothingness, soon overtook all in the market. When no one could even remember how to put one leg in front of the other, much less who they even were, the worst happened. Just as the horrid nothingness started small, so did the white. A small speck in the center of the town floated in the air. Most who passed simply considered it nothing more than a bit of sunlight in their eyes. But it grew, and it expanded, and it ate. Yes it ate whatever it touched, it pulled it away from the world into some unseen place. Those who touched it faded, screaming not in pain but fear of losing who they were. The now lost inhabitants of the market wandered aimlessly. With no understanding of who they were, or what they were even doing, all they could do was huddle around the constantly growing orb of white.

A day. Everything lost in a day. Where the market once stood was nothing. Where the people once made merriment amongst their peers was nothing. Engulfed, swallowed, or simply taken, it is hard to say which, but they were clearly gone. Not only the market, but the city it resided in, the country of the city, the world, the universe, all taken in a day. Nothing escaped the nothingness, nothing was left after it had stretched to the ends of it's world, but it still desired more. The once tiny speck still hungered, it still wanted to swallow up more. And it would let no thing, living or otherwise, come between it and it's next meal.