Chapter 13
The Day the Sky Fell
Far below us, millions of Kits and Kats simultaneously stop working, playing, trawling, pointing, giggling, deriding and window-shopping and raise their eyes to the heavens as twenty minute fiery roses of red and orange blossom suddenly across the sky. It's all rather surreal, sort of like the day the twin towers collapsed a lifetime ago - there's no sound at all - no thunderous explosions, no terrified screams, just a notable absence of sound that's becoming steadily louder by the minute.
Spidery black lines begin to fan out from the fading fires hanging in the sky with frightening rapidity, lengthening and widening as we watch slack-jawed and open-mouthed - no mere hollywood computer-generated effect is this. This is Real.
The sky goes out.
It doesn't flicker into night as if some celestial light switch has been flipped - the sky, quite literally dies into an absolute and suffocating black. Except for the still enlarging cracks, which now flare starkly against the darkness. It's as if the sky itself is being cleaved by ten - twelve - now twenty - blades of balefire wielded by some crazed, many-handed god.
Pieces of darkness begin to flake away, tumbling downwards in huge wedges of black towards us...
... and still they stand rooted to the spot gawping in shock and awe - as men are wont to do watching an exotic stripper gradually revealing more and more of her naked beauty - so too do these voyueristic Kits and Kats gaze in hungry adoration at the naked beauty of the world itself, rapidly showing itself to them through the holes in the black canvas high above.
The sky above the sky is the clearest, purest shade of blue they have ever seen. There are clouds too, not the thick, sluggish clouds that daily made their appearance within the forcedome at 5pm sharp, but thin, wispy clouds so high up as to be almost invisible, looking for all the world like wisps of cotton candy floating in a sea of liquid sapphire.
There are other things up there too at unimaginable altitude, large, sleek creatures skirting the boundaries of space marked US AIR FORCE and VIRGIN SPACETECH but nobody has more than a split second to notice before the explosions begin.
Concrete wedges the size of cities explode against the flanks of spacescrapers, snapping them like twigs underfoot. Smaller boulder-sized chunks of former-sky shower past the buildings onto the street below, impacting with insane fury with the earth. Thousands of Kits and Kats are crushed into bloodied pulps instantaneously. Amongst the survivors mouths yaw open suddenly in terrified Os and faces distort with fear as the people begin screaming, and running. Those exposed to the sky in the street pelt for shelter indoors, and those in stricken buildings flee for exits and the promise of open air. There's sound now, a brain-pulverising roar of countless buildings being torn asunder and hurling each other down like giant concrete sumo-wrestlers, punctuated by ear-shattering blasts of gargantuan man-made meteors impacting on... every and anything.
An eternity of carnage passes, each passing second a lifetime in the making, and in the ending. Hundreds of thousands of people perish, fleeing, making a stand, or trying to give shelter to their loved ones.
And then at last, the sound and fury tail off, fading into a gentle murmur and then into silence once more. Dust lies thick in the air, rising in a lethal, choking column through the broken centre of the once-forcedome, high into the true sky, and fanning out into a mushroom cloud high above.
We stagger around, perched precariously atop the miraculously still-standing artificial knoll of office furniture and stationary, surviving post apocalyptic kings of the hill surveying the ragged remains of our lands.
Kit and Jean still stand dazedly atop the mound staring at the swathe of clear blue sky high above them.
People below us begin to rise from the ground, other less fortunate souls are starting to cry and sob in pain, preferring to stay lying on the ground. Still others will never need worry about pain again.
Softly and hesitantly at first, then with mounting confidence and intensity, people begin to chant a word embodying a spirit long-forgotten in the annals of Singalandic history, but so deeply impatterned into their... genes? Or perhaps their souls? that centuries of "education" have failed to erase it.
"Mer...de...ka. Merdeka..."
A cool breeze begins to build.
*****
Hiss... purr... hiss...
Somewhere far beneath the surface of the earth in an underground bunker, a quaking deputy Patrician cowers before the desk of his Lord and Master.
"The rebels remain alive."
"y..yes my lord."
"... our drizzletroopers?"
"defected... my lord."
"What of our airforce?"
"s...sabotaged my lord. An unknown pilot has breached the dome, on the bright side he lost his life in the process..."
long silence.
"My lord, do you hear it?"
"What, you mumbling oaf? HEAR WHAT?"
"singing."
"Singing? Don't be stupid, we're twenty thousand feet underground."
"No, honestly. Do you hear the people sing?"
"You're insane!"
"Singing a song of angry men..."
"HARRrg!"
The dread lord moves with blinding speed.
*PIAK!*
there's a wet thud as the former deputy patrician quite literally loses his head, which flies across the room and... thuds into a wall. There's another thud as his body decides to lie down suddenly for a nice long nap.
Hiss... purr. Hiss.
The emperor remains seated and immobile at his desk, fingers steepled thoughtfully before him for a long, long time.
Eventually, his right hand drifts down to a hidden panel on his desk top and slides it open. It reveals a large red button with black-and-yellow-striped tape around it - the sort of button you must never, ever press should you encounter one. Ever. Remember that. It is important.
He presses it.
*****
Kit feels Jean's hand slide into his, and he turns his head towards her. She's still looking at the sky.
"It's so beautiful, Kit."
This is a life of new possibilities, of fresh starts. Together, these proto humans will go forth and start anew. Kit feels it in his bones - this has been his destiny all along. He knows now that this is the woman he will spend the rest of his life beside.
"Jean."
She turns and looks him in the eyes, her eyes blazing with what he feels must be the same realisation. They understand each other, at last.
We hold our breath as they incline their necks and close their eyes, tilting their heads for the first ki...
*****
...Ten thousand nuclear warheads (made in Singaland) rain down across various parts of the world, launched by a madly laughing figure in an imposing black suit, far beneath the world.
The world evaporates in a blinding flash of light.
