The Contest

The sun beat down on the dusty red-brown track illuminating and igniting it to a hot spectacle. The heat waves rising off the ground were only offset by a dismal breeze and the wind created by the packed stands of cheering fans. The racers, meanwhile, were desperately trying to get their last stretches in before they could prove their speed. Sean Morgroth looked over the other competition with a healthy balance of worry and arrogance. He had trained extensively for six straight months for this date, and he knew he had the leg power to pull it out today. Still, he began to sweat with a mixture of nervous anticipation and heat exposure when he was called into the blocks. Instinctively, he licked his lips and his hands lightly pushed on the ground in front of him, so that he could go in less than a moment’s notice.

He stared down at his goal, shimmering in the air 100 meters away. The call was set and he raised himself and steadied his nerves. He waited for the one sound that would set him free, the one sound that would send him hurtling towards that glorious goal ahead of the pack. He waited and the seconds seemed like hours. He licked his chops again and sweat poured down his forehead making rivers out of his cheeks and creating pools on the ground. His legs were coiled, ready to leap from the blocks, as the referee’s gun was raised high, but it would never fire. The next thing heard was an eerie silence punctuated by a horrible noise. The screams of the fans turned from excitement to terror as a giant fireball crashed to the Earth igniting the stadium and condemning all to a horrible, painful death. Sean Morgroth would have no victory for he was burnt into atomic dust by his searing proximity to the calamity.

Meanwhile, 5765.3 miles away in an unnamed portion of an uninhabitable hot expanse of desert, two armies clashed, each in a vain attempt to prove its point over the other. The outpouring of limbs, blood, and bullets would be halted, however, due to the unexpected arrival of a third party which had no viewpoint in the matter of the skirmish, but which nonetheless settled the dispute. This third party was a large asteroid that not only crushed both armies out of existence, but also conveniently buried them 5 miles under the ground. The force of the impact raised a giant dust storm that began to spread over the globe and also caused the planet’s orbit to become slightly more eccentric.

These two articles of interest were only known by a small group of intellectuals who were overwhelmed by odd reports, which to their limited sense of perception, closely resembled the Apocalypse. The reports continued to come in: New York razed to the ground by giant fireballs, London flattened by a meteor, South America suffering from worst brushfire ever, the San Andreas Fault ruptured from constant bombardment by asteroids. The reports became grimmer by the second and many of the intellectuals slumped in their chairs and cried. Others rushed around trying to find something that they could do to keep them from slumping in their chairs and crying. One of the intellectuals found that fermented fruits and grains solved many of the problems of the other intellectuals.

Overall the situation grew darker as the agitation spawned larger and more final cataclysms, and reports came from fewer and fewer areas. The reports got worse as fewer and fewer intellectuals retained enough sense to hear them. Fireballs in Nepal that had earlier caused massive flash flooding preceded by avalanches began to awaken long dormant volcanoes to try and drain the liquid magma deep underground. Meanwhile, comets crashing into the Atlantic Ocean that had already long ago vaporized all the fish began to drain the oceans and send the remainder to the coastlines, summarily flooding them. These reports caused the last remaining intellectuals who were sane to finally lose it.

These miserable souls may have been slightly relieved to know that they had received their last upsetting report. After those reports, a steady stream of giant fireballs began a desperate flurry pounding through the center of intellectuals and boring a hole deep underground. The stream of asteroids and fireballs continued to pummel the Earth, searching for weak spots to exploit as all life on Earth was purged from existence. The pummeling continued unabated until a fireball hit the right nerve spot of the pock-marked rock to which the Earth had been reduced, shattering it to fragments that spiraled off into the empty void of space as one last comet rocketed through the newly created hole.

The bombardment finally ceased; there was nothing left to destroy. The remaining particles of Earth were spiraling off into the void, free from the tyrannical serfdom under gravity. A horrid silence descended on the area that used to contain Earth, as all settled into an evil sort of peace reserved for those items of space that no longer exist. There was no more Earth, no more Earthlings, no more humans, no more wars, no more peace, no more track races, no more Sean Morgroth, no more anything.

However, there was some reaction to the unfortunate passing of Earth from reality and it came from hundreds of miles above the void. There, two figures lay on an ethereal couch watching ethereal TV. One of these figures, known to his friends as Kalendorth, god of meteors, turned to his friend on the couch with a mixture of excitement and frustration. His friend, Pyrovius, god of fire, glanced at him with a mixture of excitement and anticipation and extended his palm in an arrogant desire for his spoils.

“Lucky shot, dude,” Kalendorth said in a beautifully indignant manner, “but you did win, so you get control of the TV remote today.”

“Alright, man! Finally,” cried a jubilant Pyrovius as he switched the channel to his favorite show and the two gods watched and laughed.