2010 Retrospective - Apocylapse

The wind howls across the desolate landscape, kicking up flurries of frozen ash. It flows around the stiff forms of thousands and thousands of corpses, dead of starvation or exposure. Nothing moves in the frigid wasteland that Earth has become, except for the continuous soft whispering of ash streaming from the tortured atmosphere. The world is bathed in the eerie twilight of noon, the sun hidden behind the ever-shifting film of smog that blankets the upper atmosphere. It is… a nuclear winter.

1 Month Earlier:

“Get down!” The complex shudders as another impact rocks the mountain above. Concrete dust sifts down out of the ceiling onto the carpet. Red lights flash continuously, in rhythm with the sounding of the klaxons. A hydraulic hiss as a silo door opens above, and the roar as another battery of missiles is launched. The doors begin to hiss shut. “Radar contacts! It’s another nuclear strike! ETA 2 minutes!” The doors are stopped by a dislodged shard of rock. A missile lances into this, the last hidden missile silo, through the open doors. The inhabitants are instantly vaporised.

All around the world, automated defence systems launch missile after missile around the world in retaliation, nothing changed by the fact that there is no-one left to visit vengeance upon.

1 Week Earlier:

The sprawling city is pristine. Sparkling white skyscrapers clutter the sky, winking in the afternoon sun, The streets are filled with the bustle of commerce. A piercing whine splits the air, turning heads up and down the street. High in the sky, a glint of steel, followed by a perfect contrail. It curves as people watch, expecting some message from a lovestruck suitor. But it does not turn again, just speeds into the city. Panicked screams ring out as people realise the truth. Suddenly, havoc reigns as they rush to escape, knowing full well deep down that it is already too late. A blinding flash, a shattering wave of sound. A wall of wind and heat rips through the city, shredding people and buildings alike. A mushroom shaped cloud is thrown into the air, a black standard of impending doom.

1 Day Earlier:

In an underground nuclear silo, the supercomputer network stutters. Lasting only a thousandth of a second, no human notices this glitch as a new code mechanism enters the mainframe. The firewall detects it, but lets it enter unmolested, recognising fragments of its own programming intermingled with that of high security clearance. The construct floats through the programming, stray bits of code intermingled to form programmed parameters.

An ICBM hisses quietly into a delivery tube, unnoticed by the humans. Coordinates are pasted from one of the many contingencies that have been absorbed into the construct from the automated defence programs. The doors open, and the rocket roars to life. The inhabitants of the silo try desperately to stop it, but the construct is made up of fragments of coding from all of the military programs, overriding them all. The nuclear missile exits the atmosphere, to re-enter in one day.

1 Hour Earlier:

Two computer technicians work in an underground missile repository, refurbishing the computer systems and coding in new targeting software. They work in silence, computer screens bathing their faces in white and blue. The younger sits back with a sigh, the final entry already integrating its code into the mainframe. The older walks over. He stares intently at the screen, noticing a stray bit of extraneous code. The younger brushes it off. “Jeez Mal, so I forgot to trim the code. Give me a break. You don’t actually believe that stuff about stray code bunching up and causing glitches, do you? It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

Apocylapse: (noun) The one tiny error, the singular tiny lapse in judgement, that heralds the end of the world.