Hello, people! As promised, I give you the sequel. If you've read Eternal, this will follow from it. If you haven't (please do), I will do my best to have it make sense, but it will probably help in future chapters.
X
Blue light streamed down from the surface. On the tiled bottom, a blue ring rested. The goal.
Julie reached out her hand, snagged it, looked for more. A green stick. Some sort of dirt? It was an outdoor pool; maybe someone was digging nearby and dust blew in.
More dust, drifting down from above to settle on the bottom.
One good look around the pool, and confusion dawned. There had been at least four other people swimming- they couldn't have all gotten out at once, right?
Short on air and wondering if there had been a lightning strike or some such nearby, Julie surfaced. Piles of dirt lay around the pool, perhaps falling through the cracks of a beach chair or half-covered in a beach towel. It looked like half of the people had simply left, abandoning their belongings.
Two lifeguards were talking to each other in hushed voices, probably trying to figure out why their patrons were gone. They must have been watching; perhaps they knew what had happened.
"Hey."
They turned towards her.
"Where did everybody go?"
X
November 09860, flying as Aer Lingus flight 370, was on final approach to Newark airport. In the violently gusting crosswind, Captain Joseph Henderson struggled with the controls. Beside him, a young first officer named Emma Hops managed radio communications.
"Newark approach, Shamrock 370. Approach winds are consistent with reported gusts."
"Roger, Shamrock. Proceed as able."
"I got this." Joseph seemed to enjoy the challenge, or perhaps being able to hand-fly an airplane that relied heavily on automation. Laughing, Emma keyed the mic to respond.
Out of nowhere, the plane jolted violently. Joseph gasped, and disintegrated into brown dust as Emma watched in horrified fascination.
"What the-"
Without Joseph holding the controls against the wind, the plane dipped wildly, left wingtip scraping the ground. Emma grabbed her control column by instinct, easing it to the right and pulling the nose up.
"Shamrock 370 is going around."
"Roger go, Sha-"
The radio transmission cut out mid-sentence. Behind the flight deck door, the startled shouts from the passengers had devolved into hysterical screams. Emma could only guess Joseph wasn't the only one to vanish.
Please, whoever is doing this, don't take us both.
As the 737 climbed skyward, Emma realized two planes at around ten o'clock were far too close. She was about to radio a warning when the two collided, wing to nose. Burning pieces plunged from the sky.
Focus, focus...
Fortunately, the traffic pattern circled to the right. Emma coaxed her plane through two turns and headed back around. A pounding at the door reminded her she wasn't flying an entirely empty plane.
"I'm alright. Just sit down back there."
Exclamations of relief from a flight attendant or proactive passenger; Emma couldn't tell. She was too busy focusing on clearing the area for a turn to base. A Cessna, miles out. Above them, some sort of jet. Nothing too close. Perfect. Flaps down, gear down.
Not even bothering to ask for clearance, Emma steered the plane in. Finally, some luck; the crosswind had dropped. Keeping the right wing down until the last moment, she touched down gently, hit the brakes, and engaged the thrust reversers. At last, down and safe.
Whoever was left, that is.
X
The fertility clinic was as white and sterile as the dishes in which the newest of all humans commenced their lives. Seven technicians worked at various stations in the storage room, either filling a tank with liquid nitrogen, or updating computer logs, or for one of them, thawing a pair of embryos to be transferred into their mother later that day.
They wouldn't make it, and she would remain childless.
A drop in tank pressure was the first noted anomaly. The bulk of the mass of embryos inside was abruptly replaced by a pile of dust that scientists would quickly identify as carbon. Wonderfully complex creatures had been reduced to the fundamental building block of life.
Of course, the clinic workers scarcely had time to raise the alarm before five of them met the same fate. Panic set in, but they still tended to their charges, not knowing what else to do.
Between the "dusting" as it was soon called, and subsequent contamination of their storage tanks, only about ten percent of the embryos survived. Couples that had been desperate for children were left devastated. An entire generation had been all but obliterated.
X
John Edgerton was happily harvesting a field of corn when the destruction occurred. He would eventually be confirmed as the last casualty in the contiguous United States, falling to dust some six hours after the Snap heard round the world.
Not that he had any idea of his impending fame, inglorious as it was. For now, he was simply confused as every other cornstalk, with checkerboard precision, vanished in a shower of dust. Maybe that was what it felt like in the Dust Bowl, some eighty years previously, watching topsoil blow away and with it, any hope of livelihood.
He wouldn't live long enough to know that not only the plants but also the live bacteria in the soil had disintegrated. What corn he had harvested would be the only crop from that particular field for nearly five years, even bolstered by modern fertilizers. Less well-off farmers, including subsistence farmers around the world, never stood a chance.
John and his wife Sally were watching TV later that afternoon. News broadcasts had begun shortly after the destruction began, although the news agencies themselves had trouble with understaffing. A red banner flashed across the screen, reading things like "Millions missing", then "Billions missing", "President among those vanished, sources confirm; Vice President sworn in, to address nation tonight", "Countless civilians vanish, leaving only dust". Then someone had to ask, "When will it end?"
At that precise moment, John disintegrated. Sally's screams would go unheard.
X
The orchestra was in the middle of a piece called "Espania" when a commotion erupted from the audience. A sold-out theater suddenly had many empty seats. Then the music became far quieter, and the balance of instruments thrown off. For whatever reason, most of the string section had been spared, while the winds and the lone percussionist disappeared, leaving their instruments behind. Most would be dented or scratched from hitting the ground.
After long, tense minutes, an announcement was made that the concert was over.
X
When exactly it occurred to everyone that nineteen of the twenty-seven women working in the office had become pregnant at the same time, nobody ever knew. All they knew was what happened when they decided to take a group shot.
At the front of the line, Sabrina was only two months pregnant. She gasped and clutched her belly, as the barely-there swelling collapsed and dusty blood stained her black dress pants. The scene would be repeated three times in their group, with a nearly full-term baby, the oldest of them, inexplicably disappearing from his mother's womb.
Eight of the women completely vanished, taking their babies with them. By then, people had started to realize the pattern. Many gave each other a good look, wondering who would be the next to leave.
Of the remaining seven, four survived with their children, although Rachel lost one of her twins. Most of the pairs -husband and wife, siblings, or best friends- were simply cut in half.
Amanda, four months along, disintegrated around her child, leaving a squirming, bloodstained creature to fall to the ground. By pure instinct, Sabrina caught the little one, holding it gently until, inevitably, it died in her hand. The bereaved father and widower would at least have something to bury.
Kelsey's daughter, three months premature, hit the ground hard, but survived. Once she was transferred to a nearby hospital and placed in an incubator, she perked up and provided some hope to a devastated world.
That left a baby boy belonging to a woman named Betsy. She'd been planning on giving him up. Wrapping the dead one in a Kleenex, Sabrina decided to claim him. No one would ask too many questions in a chaos such as this.
X
Antarctica is, by all accounts, a barren wasteland.
The emperor penguins that breed there have nowhere else to call home. For months on end, of total darkness only occasionally broken by an aurora of green or red, the males of the species hunker down and wait, keeping their developing offspring warm in the hope of passing on their genes to a future generation.
A hope that would soon be dashed for so many.
The humans called it the Vanishing, the Dusting, the Snap, or the Decimation. That last term had often been used to describe a systematic reduction of a group, traditionally by killing one-tenth of its members. More recently, it had taken on the meaning of leaving only one tenth alive, if that.
Technically, the event was supposed to kill half of living creatures. But half of the developing eggs disintegrated before their startled fathers could even wake up from their strange doze. Half of the adults vanished likewise, leaving their eggs behind to freeze on the ice. A few bereaved parents would attempt to rescue an egg, but with only limited success. The freezing cold claimed the young ones within moments.
It wasn't supposed to be a place of conflict, only endurance and patience, waiting for their young to hatch and the mothers to return. Months of nothing, followed by the joy of reunion and finally, finally returning to the ocean to feed.
Even without eggs to care for, the males could not leave. Wandering towards the ocean -much farther away in the middle of winter than it would be in the spring and summer- would prove a death sentence shortly after one left the protective huddle. They could only endure a pointless winter, wondering which of the females would return to help raise the chicks.
In the best of years, many of the chicks would not survive. Perhaps their mother had been claimed by a predator, or by the cold, or by any number of diseases or accidents. Begging food from another mother rarely brought success, and a chick could not live with only one parent to feed it.
When the females did return, far fewer in number than when they'd left, the new generation collapsed in half again. Bereaved mothers would sometimes attempt to steal a chick, but they were unable to raise it on their own and almost universally abandoned their foster offspring. Ultimately, barely five percent of that year's chicks survived to adulthood, instead of the usual nineteen percent.
The birds, however, were unaware of the numbers involved. They didn't know about a string of battles fought on planets other than and including their own. They would never have any concept of what had gone wrong.
All they realized was that they had lost.
X
Jason and his wife Marie were finally ready to take their children home from the hospital. Twins Tim and Sam had been born at only 27 weeks, and had spent months in the NICU.
Bundled each in a blanket, the babies slept happily in their parents' arms. Jason had just stepped through the sliding door when something shifted in his arms. He looked down in confusion to realize Sam had vanished, leaving only dust in the blanket. No clothing or diaper, even. He turned to look at Marie, just in time to see Tim falling to the ground in a shower of brown dust.
Jason lunged to grab him. Too late. The child hit the ground with a horrible snapping sound. He lay absolutely motionless in the dust. His father collapsed to the ground, devastated.
His entire family was gone within moments.
X
Maisie felt like a complete idiot. Chopping onions in the kitchen was supposed to carry no more risk than causing one's eyes to water. And yet, she'd managed to lose control of a dull knife and slash open the tendons in her wrist. Blood streamed over the counter in the two seconds it took her to grab a towel and press it over the wound.
Head pounding from blood loss, she'd called for an ambulance. To her surprise, it arrived quickly. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe they could just get her stitched up and send her happily home.
Maybe not.
The paramedics introduced themselves as Sam and Diane. There was the obligatory exchange of "Good to meet you, sorry it had to be under these circumstances". Probably a five-times-a-day event for them.
Dozing off on the way to the nearest hospital, Maisie was aware of her two rescuers tending to her traumatized left arm, placing an oxygen mask on her face. Then all at once, there was only one of them. Even in her drowsy state, Maisie sat bolt upright and looked around furiously for Sam. Diane was equally in shock, yet retained enough sense to keep Maisie's arm elevated.
"Easy does it. I'm not sure what's going on, but we'll figure it-"
The ambulance screeched to a halt. Diane's first guess, that their driver had vanished also, proved incorrect. The road was blocked with abandoned vehicles and stranded drivers. People were everywhere, milling about in chaos. Already, a few had been crushed beneath or between cars that couldn't stop without a driver.
Overhead, a helicopter clipped one building, the rotor sound changing abruptly, before smashing into another. Fire erupted overhead.
Giving up on driving the three remaining blocks, Diane and driver Emily lifted the stretcher with their patient and simply legged it. Shouted orders to "Get out of the way!" were followed without question by people who wanted someone to tell them what was going on.
Finally, they were at the emergency room doors, where piles of dust marked the last location of half of the would-be patients. Alarms were sounding everywhere, as biomonitors flatlined at their patients' sudden departures.
Even once Maise was transferred to an operating room, she was not out of the woods. Doctors, nurses, technicians, and so on had vanished right along with everyone else. Of those that were left, many had gone out into the streets to render what assistance they could. Diane and Emily, their obligation to Maisie complete, decided to join them.
In theory, having half the usual number of patients meant more resources for the rest. But with only half the hands to tend to them, half the family members to serve as an advocate, a go-between, half the blood donors, even without the mass casualties from the many collisions, the hospital and many others were utterly overwhelmed.
Some called it mercy. They could only call it total destruction.
X
"What did you do?"
The Asgardian out for vengeance had found another eye somewhere, and a battle-axe to go along with it. He was strong. He would survive. Some of his friends would survive with him, but not many. Suffering and devastation rebounded around the world like a shockwave.
Thanos looked at his gauntlet, some part of him already hoping to reverse what it had done. But it was melted and smoking. It would never handle that much power again. Thanos raised it anyway, and the Space Stone lit up.
All that was left was to carry on as planned, and hope that the part of him that grieved for Gamora, that had wanted to be stopped before things got this far, would simply silence itself.
That would have been a mercy he did not deserve.