Count

Introduction

25th of March, 2063.
In an area its inhabitants merely call Downtown, Matthew woke with a start at the cutting beeps of his alarm. He missed it the first time, and merely hit the cat. The second time was a hit, and he got up grumbling rather more hostile than other days. He hated Mondays. Mondays never had anything good in store for anyone.

The Counter, a marvel of modern technology that counted and displayed the human population with pin-point accuracy and only a nanosecond of delay, was rising a tad less rapidly than the day before. He checked his watch, and noticed he had only five more minutes to get to work. He had just taken a sip of his coffee when an uneasy feeling seemed to burrow up from inside of himself. He did not know what made him do it, but he looked up to the Counter. His hand let go of his mug in shock, and it fell to the floor with a chattering crash. Hot coffee spilled over his feet, but Matthew did not seem to have noticed.

Nine and a half billion... eight billion... six... three... two... half a billion...

As suddenly as it had started, it had also stopped. A little less than nine billion people seemed to have disappeared in two minutes. At first, Matthew thought nuclear war had finally been unleashed, and that the shockwave would hit him every second. Yet, the counter had stopped and he, living in a big city, had stayed untouched. Might there have been a bug in the system? Perhaps it was a miscalculation or system crash of some sort. He really, really hoped so, as there was no way of knowing who might be gone, and who might not be.

Slowly, almost dreamily, he turned towards the doors. Time seemed to have slowed down as he made his way towards it, every heavy footstep echoing loudly. He reached out his hand, saw his fingers stretch out for the knob and grab it in a shaking, clumsy manner, and halted. As he waited there pondering whether or not he really wanted to know what might be out there, a crescendo of noise rushed towards him. He was thrown backwards, and everything went black.