None of the cults got it right in the end. The Lizard people fanatics dropped their protest signs when the Lizard people never shed their human skin. People wearing crystals for secret energy realized dinosaurs weren’t at the Earth’s core. The Illuminati turned out to just be a bunch of middle-aged white dudes taking time to post on boards during their kids piano lessons, and even the flying spaghetti monster people were honestly a little disappointed if not understanding.
In the end there was no cult or conspiracy, it was a good old fashioned biblical revelation. Heaven versus Hell. Fire and Brimstone ™. The Righteous set against the wicked.
All of this is to say that those flying horsemen and demons waging war against angels left quite the mess around the world. Try walking down to the corner market to pick up a gallon of milk while Michael is waving his sword of fire like it’s a damn lightsaber at a horde of slime demons mucking about the sidewalk. You can’t do it. It’s impossible. I tried. Cereal bowls around the globe went milkless.
Whatever great minds weren’t purged or whisked to heaven or succumbed to the temptations of hell went to Florida. When the pits of hell first opened and the lights from heaven cascaded down, communication quickly dropped off. First it was the internet. Network cables don’t fare well under intense heat of the damned. That got everyone’s attention quickly. Then ground satellite communication centers were considered an area of strategic interest by the minions of Satan, so those went off next.
That’s when I first heard the rumor of Florida being a relatively safe place, and it made a lot of sense. Another kind of cult started. The cult of Florida man. Turns out Hell mostly skipped that part of the world. They figured the flames of the wicked had already soured their souls. Long live Florida man, I suppose.
What else do you do when the world is at an end and you find yourself in the swampy ass of America? You go to Disney World, because of course it was still open.
And the house of mouse was packed. It was like Lucifer never used the Eifel Tower as a toothpick or that the daily rains of locust were completely normal. Because in Florida, it was just Tuesday. While I was spinning around on the teacup ride with a churro safely in hand, I saw a candle rising in the sky to the east with a trail of smoke underneath. I figured it was just another necromancer summoning a dark-whatever-from-wherever and finished up the churro.
Stepping off the magical spinning cup, I heard someone say, “Looks like NASA’s trying to get off this world.”
NASA. Who would’ve thought NASA would still be sending their little science missions into space? What use could that possible be now.
As the sun set, however, and the ushers kindly swept everyone out of Disney as the park closed for locust removal, I noticed the stars weren’t touched. They were still embedded in the sky. They hadn’t blown up. They weren’t blood red (at least the ones that weren’t already). They just sparkled and went about their business like the world didn’t matter at all.
NASA had discovered that the apocalypse was localized to Earth. The armies of the end times didn’t care about regolith on the Moon or the dunes of Mars. If the world was going to end, so what? There are billions of other worlds out there. Onto the next one!
For the next few weeks, NASA rockets were sent up three or four times a day. Each time leaving behind that trail of exhaust as a reminder to anyone looking that way that it’s possible to leave this hell (whether that was hell on earth or Florida).
I signed up just as soon as I found a waiting list.
That’s how I found myself strapped down in a capsule with 50 other people hundreds of yards above the ground with an untold thousands of pounds of fuel lurching and crying out beneath us. It sounded like another chasm of hell was crawling out from under the earth, but it was just super cooled hydrogen playing games with the metal of the rocket.
The best minds remaining all found their way to Florida by following rumors or byseeing a satellite in the sky, untouched by the wars of earth, and thought huh, that’s funny. I wonder if…
Earth was lost, but they sky is a Godless place that Hell couldn’t care less about.
That’s how the Ezekial colonies got started. That’s how science fiction became reality, not through the inevitable progress of humankind, but due to ages old biblical prophecies devouring the world. And knowing angels and demons are real, that an unmerciful devil really does exist, it’s made for some weird colonies. And I love it.
The New Martian 