VIP: the End of the World

               The day the world ended was nothing like the movies. There was no chaos in the streets, no panic on the news, no zombies, no war, and no slow starvation. It was a perfectly planned operation, and it was executed without a hitch. No one saw it coming, at least none of the regular people saw it coming. We woke up and went to work like normal. Kids went to school, people were at the gym, and the mall, others stayed home watching TV. And then, as simple as flipping a light switch, it was all over.

               I graduated from the top of my class in college, wanting to be an engineer. Not because I was passionate about it but because you always hear about how engineers were well off. I may have been smart, but I was a lazy person, through and through. It seemed like too much pressure to become a surgeon, too stressful to become a lawyer, and too far-fetched to become a movie star. So, I settled on engineering, although my family and teachers tried to convince me I could do something more challenging. I just found it odd to willingly commit to something challenging for the rest of my life. Truthfully, I was hoping to invent something when I graduated and then live off that forever.

               I finished school at 20, becoming a Doctor of Engineering just twelve days before I tasted my first beer. Ironically, I had my first beer on the way here, on the private Jet they sent for me. It was ok, not as tasty as everyone made it look. The day after my graduation, I received an email from a company called Astatine Infrastructure Solutions, inviting me to be a part of some project to solve the world water crisis. Apparently, they were having some big conference in New York City. After going full steam ahead in my studies since I was 18 months old, I wasn’t interested. Then they started calling me, offering a private jet, 5-star hotel accommodation, and unlimited meal budget, the bells and whistles. This was starting to sound more like a vacation than a seminar.

               I did my research, learning that AIS was a massive multibillion dollar company that worked with pretty much all the private companies in space, owning thousands of their own satellites and vessels. They even worked closely with the wealthy one-percenters, the rich people that made celebrities in Hollywood look poor. So, I accepted, testing my luck and requesting a luxury rental car for the duration of the trip. The man on the phone informed me that it was already part of the package and he’d just forgotten to mention it. I forgave his carelessness immediately.

               From the time I had been picked up from my little apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, to my arrival at the hotel in the big city, I was treated like royalty. The hotel was flooded with other young people who would be attending the conference the next day. Even the little kids I ran into were going, child prodigies who had completed their schooling at historically young ages. Because the nature of the conference was so confidential, those kids were chaperoned by security guards, I guess their parents were not included in the invitation.

               The night before the event, I helped myself to the most expensive dinner I could find, gladly getting stuck in traffic in my silver Bentley Continental. I willingly overindulged on the tiny portion sizes until I was full, drinking anything on the menu that caught my eye. I started to question what I would have to invent to continue living this way, suddenly more ambitious than I had ever felt before. Around 3 am, I began stumbling back to the hotel, deciding to abandon the loner car with the restaurant’s valet in fear of cashing it. Even drunk for the first time, I was still too big of a nerd to ignore the consequences of a bad decision.

               The next morning, I forced myself to get ready and attend the event, fearing that they would make me pay them back if I didn’t attend like I’d promised. The AIS building was a massive skyscraper only a few blocks over, I shielded my eyes, feeling nauseous at the sight of its swaying some 200 stories up in the air. I took deep breaths, deciding that If I pretended the hangover wasn’t there, it would go away on its own. The first 20 or 30 stories were some kind of marble, the rest of the way up was mirrored glass, giving the structure a unique look compared to its neighbors.

               In the lobby, there were armed guards everywhere, guiding people to check-in tables with smiles and warm welcomes. I walked through multiple types of metal detectors, having to place my phone, keys, pen, belt and watch in a secured lock box that I could only access after the event. They had several dogs sniff me as I passed, even requiring me to provide an eye scan and fingerprints. I became eager to learn what was so important about this project that they needed so many security measures on the way in. Finally, I was given a name tag with a photo of myself bordered in a yellow box. Everyone in my section had the same yellow indicator on their name tags, I did notice a few other colors sorted from our section and guided to other areas.

               The auditorium was packed to capacity by 9:00 am sharp, there had to be 40,000 people in the massive room sealed behind guarded doors. We waited eagerly; pop music played over the speakers as visuals and AIM marketing materials flashed on all the screens. At 9:05 am sharp, the lights went down, and the crowd erupted in excited claps and cheers. Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one that was feeling a little anxious for this thing to start.

               A man in a suit appeared on the screens, welcoming us and thanking us for coming. He proceeded to explain why we were each selected to be a part of this project. “Look around this room everybody. You are surrounded by the greatest young minds in the world, all of them. Not one person declined our invitation. You may wonder why it was so necessary for all our members to be young. Simple, because the younger you are, the longer you can work.” The crowd chuckled, thinking it was some kind of work-till-you-die retirement joke. “Outside of these doors, the world is not as it was 5 minutes ago, it will never be the same again. Everyone you know and all the people in the world you didn’t know, apart from the people in this building, are dead.” The auditorium fell silent.

I suddenly became aware of the guards, now armed with assault style rifles, lined between the rows, along the walls and in front of the stage, no longer friendly and smiling as they had been in the lobby. “Outside of this building, there is virtually no more living things. Any organism with a bioelectric heart, no longer exists.” Plants, fungi, jellyfish? That’s it? I struggled to think of anything else that didn’t have electricity in its heart, or a heart for that matter. In disbelief, we hoped for the punchline to arrive, but it never did. The man detailed the ways they used satellites in space and around the world to overload the electricity in the air and stop everyone’s hearts, to kill everything instantly. My mind reeled, unable to grasp the amount of death that equated. The end of so many species that had evolved for millions of years, just gone. Then I realized among the casualties were everyone I knew, my friends and family. My parents. My mom was probably working in her garden at home around this time, why didn’t I call her before I came in. The mental image of my mom face-down in her prized lilies of the valley, wearing her beat up overalls and a big hat, caused my skin to go cold.

Without giving us much time to process, the man proceeded to explain why they did this, his tone was as casual as if he were reading his shopping list. All the reasons were obvious: global warming, overconsumption, overpopulation, the water crisis, not enough resources, war, and so on. Basically, the end of the world was closer than anyone was aware, so they had to be proactive to give it the best chance to regenerate and start over. In an analytical sense, I understood and agreed with his logic, but the horror of it all made it difficult to get on board with.

Apparently, the planning committee for this project was not only the wealthiest, but smartest people in the world. The whole thing had been in the works for the last hundred years and luckily for me, it was ready during my lifetime. We were what AIS considered to be the most elite living human beings, both intellectually and genetically. Under normal circumstances, this would have given me a huge head. My friends would have been so sick of hearing about my elite genes. This thought made me smirk but was immediately followed by a lump in my throat, wondering what my friends were doing when this secret society flipped the switch.

The man stressed multiple times, “this is not some evil cult trying to take over the world. Just a group of people from our collective global community who have decided to save our planet. In our numbers we have people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all corners of the earth. No one is better than anyone here. There are no monarchs, no popes, no a-list and b-list, no president. Hell! There’s no longer such thing as money, anymore.” The crowd was no longer silent; a hushed roar fell over it as heads turned and people began to wake up from the shock. Some people cried, others appeared angry, it was a beehive of emotions as the reality sunk in for each of us differently.

“We’re going to rebuild the world, everybody. I know this is a lot to take in. And to be totally transparent it’s going to require work, we won’t finish in my lifetime or yours, or your children’s. Everyone in this building is going to have to work together. Being rich or being smart wasn’t enough to get an invitation for this project. Everyone. Is. Going. To. Contribute.” The screen changed to a smaller auditorium with only a few thousand people in its rows. Panning slowly over the crowd, I could immediately identify celebrities, politicians, world renowned scientists, and other very well-known people. “There were very strict requirements, both physically and intellectually, everyone in this building had to pass to be invited. You will notice, no one is older than 35 and a half years old here. No one has anyone within 2 generations of their ancestry who has had any genetic disorders diagnosed. No one here was born with any type of physical disability. No one here has ever had so much as a parking ticket. You all are truly as good as it gets and together, we should be able to live peacefully as equals and find happiness in our pursuit of happiness for the greater-good.”

The people in the other auditorium clapped and smiled, waving at the camera as it passed them like an award show. Our auditorium erupted in panic, causing the guards to raise their weapons at us. Throughout the crowd, I could hear the occasional gun go off, causing people to scream and attempt to escape. Once order was restored, they began filing people out by color. It was several minutes before my row was ordered to leave. One by one in a single file line, we walked through a maze of hallways and stair wells. Everything was clean and sterile, like an operating room. We passed offices, large open recreation rooms, a grand library, a room that appeared to have grass and tress growing inside of it, pools, and gyms. Tons of common areas, laboratories, and workspaces. On room large windows exposed a massive mechanic bay, filled with vehicles, tools and equipment.

Finally, my group of about two or three hundred, were led into a tilled room where we were asked to remove our clothes for sterilization. The guards left the room, leaving us alone in our naked shame. Slots in the ceiling opened and a concoction of different colored liquids poured out over us, followed by hot water, more liquids, and more hot water for several cycles. By the time it was complete, every inch of our bodies was hairless and stripped of at least 3 or 4 layers of skin. In the fog and steam, I hadn’t even noticed my hair being washed away. As we exited the tiled room, our eyes were scanned and we were given an I dentification bracelet and clean set of clothes, black scrubs with comfortable, but ugly foam shoes. The outfit was very prison like, I highly doubted that the celebrities in the other rooms will be bald and incarcerated by the end of the day also.

Now, clean and dressed, we stepped into an elevator big enough to carry all of us at once. After a few floors, once we were past the marble fortress part of the building, the window appeared, and we all took our first look outside. There were no cars moving, no birds flying, and bodies scattered along the sidewalks. None of the street signs flashed, although I couldn’t hear through the thick window, the silence of the city was apparent. The city that never slept was finally asleep. The world below became smaller with each passing floor as we ascended, making it harder to notice anything was wrong. I took comfort in this, willing to live in blissful ignorance.

When the elevator stopped, it opened into a massive communal area surrounded by rows of beds, each separated by a desk and chest of drawers. It wasn’t bootcamp style, bare and empty, it was surprisingly comfortable given the circumstance. Lord knows these people have, or had, the money to make sure we were at least a little happy. There was plenty of space and enough privacy between each set up. The common area had couches and TV’s, rugs and lamps. Through an arched doorway, I noticed a large kitchen with tons of tables and chairs. Through another arched doorway, there were bathrooms and changing areas. Once the entire group was off the elevator, a young woman at the front of the group informed us that we each had a cubicle. Our bracelets were used to unlock things and use the elevator. Simply put, if we had permission to access or use something, our bracelets would activate it. “We’re not prisoners here everybody, we’re going to find ways to be fulfilled with our new lives. If you need anything just put in a request and we’ll do what we can to make everyone comfortable. If you have a complaint, let us know, and we’ll do our best to accommodate it. Let’s keep our space clean and be courteous so we can all coexist as well as possible for the rest of our lives. Ok?” No one responded, though I’m sure we all had plenty of requests and complaints.

I found my bed at the far end of the room, nestled between a kid who could be no older than 10 and a girl around my age. The drawers of my dresser were stocked with more black clothing in my size, pants, shorts, sweaters, short sleeved shirts, long sleeve shirts, etc. I also had a few choices for footwear and a bathing suit. The desk had a computer, and various types of stationery and office supplies in the drawers.

Beneath the bed I found a trunk and dragged it out to inspect its contents. Inside there were personal belongings from my house. There were pictures of my friends and family, a few of my favorite comic books, a watch my grandpa had gifted me before he died, a knitted throw blanket my mom made for the couch in the living room, my dads favorite coffee mug, and other things that could only be found in my house. It was an eerie feeling, knowing that someone had been in our home and I wondered when these items went missing. There were thousands of us kidnapped for this project, did they take the time to do this for everyone? I appreciated the sentiment but still felt somewhat violated at how they knew what items were most important to me. I rummaged through the contents and inspected each item, grateful to have them.

It's been nearly 3 weeks since I boarded the private jet to the end of the world. The first few days were orientations, getting vaccines and taking tours. Everyone in the yellow group was an engineer. Other colors stood for other professions and there were hundreds of colors. For example, medical doctors (red), Biologists (green), Chemists (blue), Farmers and Agriculture experts (purple) even laborers like contractors, electricians and plumbers made the cut (grey). I ran into people I recognized from the TV and was pleased to see they too were bald and unimportant. Each day I go to work, making plans for the tear down of the old world and the reconstruction of the new one. Then afterwards, my free time is mine. The end of humanity ended up being ok, all things considered. For a lazy guy like me, it took a lot of complication out of the existence I was dreading and it’s not so bad after all. Call me crazy, but surviving the end of the world was not the most challenging thing I’ve ever had to do.