Ring….

And I woke up. And I shuffled a little bit in bed trying to pick up the phone. I had to answer it fast enough before the ringing woke up my wife or our 6-month-old daughter. The phone was on Annie’s side and I extended an arm to pick up the handset. And for a second, I had it in my hand when it suddenly slipped. The phone dropped along with a couple of books onto the floor. One of those books fell on top of our cat Suli and there was a shriek and she was suddenly running across the room, heading to her spot in the window sill. Obviously, at this time our daughter was already crying her head off. Annie, though, was just beginning to wake up with a “hey, honey, what’s going on? What’s with the racket?”

Things had seemed to calm for a bit and I had stood up and gone to the other side of the bed to pick up the phone when the cat must’ve knocked over a pot on the sill and it, well, fell to the street below. It wasn’t a particularly big pot— just four inches tall and it couldn’t have been that heavy. It didn’t even have any soil or anything in it, honest. Just one of those empty pots for gardening that, (quite frankly, I didn’t know why it was even on the window sill. We’re not usually that careless.) But, as I said, it fell on the sidewalk and though our apartment was only on the second floor, I had a bad, bad feeling about it. And then the cat fell, too.

All sleepiness gone from my head, I replaced the phone and books back on top of the drawer and picked up the baby. I walked over to the window to see how the cat was doing, I was sure it was okay. But somebody, by then, had already stepped on one of the broken pieces of ceramic pot shard. She was in her late teens, it seemed to me, and she was just standing there, groaning in pain as she tried to see how badly her bleeding foot was busted up. I didn’t see any trace of where my cat was, but I could still hear it shrieking along; it probably ran to one of the nearby alleys.

Everything… happened. A guy on the other side of the road wanted to help out, stepped out of his car and ran to her. I heard him say “I think I have some gauze here or something.” I guess he was just about to start his car when he saw the whole thing and he forgot to use his handbrakes because the car began rolling down the street, and I shouted “Hey! Guy! Your car! Behind you!” but it was too late and it kept on rolling faster and faster till it hit a fire hydrant. It was strange; there were two dogs—- one pinned underneath each front tire—- killed right at that point.

You know the drill. Things kept on… occurring. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. One thing led to another. By six in the morning, 4 people were dead. At noon, forty. And the buildings in our part of town were simply collapsing. Some restaurants exploded in LPG-based mishaps, and boilers just kept on taking in too much pressure until… and wherever that wave of misfortune crashed, unexplained disaster. Bones shattered, “things” fell. And the wave kept on moving, shifting locations and sometimes splitting into smaller, similar streams of malignant but paltry misfortune (a stubbed toe, a not-too-heavy bookcase crashing down on a healthy-enough person causing only slight injuries) before converging onto one spot once more to deliver unblemished disaster and death.

But I managed to save my wife and my daughter. We hid. We found a bunker where three other families were staying. But we soon ran out of food. Someone had to go out and look for food. I volunteered. (I felt guilty. I knew I started it all.)

And when I came back to that bunker two days later…

Annie, my wife…  and our beautiful baby…..

I will not speak of them again. They are in a better, kinder world than this.

The wave. It is not as potent now as it was during the early days, three years ago. So, make sure nothing accidentally falls to the floor. All walking areas must be maintained as non-slippery. For god’s sake, nobody make any sudden moves! You lot may still survive this.

Myself? I shall once more head out. I will not tell you where I will go. But perhaps I shall strangle that cat, if I ever find it. I cannot live a normal life, now. I have seen too many things. I have seen too many things.

In the future, there will no longer be hot water. That's simply how things are going to be in that post-apocalyptic world of 2041: environmental catastrophes, robotic overlords, no hot water. And that is why the one hundred thousand surviving members of the human species will find mixing their powdered coffee with their crappy room temperature water in order to prepare delicious caffeinated drinks a task near impossible. As everybody knows, powdered coffee in the future will require the prompting of sufficient heat to begin full interaction with water molecules. Without hot water, all hope for humanity not needing to vigorously stir and shake the contents of their coffee-h20 techno-organic canisters without forming those lumpy, floaty, bits of powdered coffee is lost. Such is the accepted way of life in the future. Until.... 43 Billion A.D!: an ingenious young coffee scientist/Olympic freestyle swimmer by the name of Vincent Coffeswimmer uncovers ancient text that points to long lost water-heating technology. Follow him as he goes on a quest, finds allies, battles enemies, uncovers mysterious conspiracies, all to find Shangri-la, the floating island country with a surface area of 3 square meters where all his questions (only those somewhat related to the heating of water) will be answered.