Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 1:45 P.M. HAST} The Abomination Spurs a Cataclysm

If we compare the ancient codices recorded by scholars since Solon, we see almost identical depictions of the end times. The so-called global Doomsday mythos depicts a beautiful thing-child leading a procession of disciples up the slopes of a gleaming mountain. The mountain rises at the center of the Pacific Ocean, and this ceremony takes place in the waning sunlight of the shortest day of the year.

For the first time, Persephone will not return. Dawn will come, but no one will be alive to witness the next sunrise.

In place of plastics, now the she-child is borne along by a retinue of human beings. Instead of dry-cleaning bags and soda bottles, serving as attendants are earthly potentates and rich chieftains, everyone dressed in costly crimson raiment. This vast throng parades upward across the barren architecture of artificial clouds. Their steps follow winding switchback trails. This procession mounts ever higher, swinging censers of sweet incense and bearing lit candles.

Around the horizon in every direction, great plumes of black smoke rise like tornadoes into the afternoon sky. Underfoot, the ground shakes. This mountain they scale is the tallest in the land. Its towering peak is level, a plateau, and waiting at the highest point is a massive shining temple. This bright palace appears as a pastiche of Gothic and baroque and attic shapes, of domes and spires and colonnades, the caryatids and cartouches rendered from glistening fluoropolymers. This part-cathedral, part-skyscraper crowns the summit.

It’s in this glorious sterile sanctuary, overlooking the entire world, where two millennia of scholars vow that human history will end.