Story 35. Written by Jim Waitlord

The Vesuvius erupted, Pompeii was destroyed. Two thousand years have passed, but that moment remained. The scorching ash and lava preserved the last movements of the people, as if it were a paused film frame. Archaeologists dug them up, and now they stand frozen, holding the tools of their daily routines. Time stopped, their history was captured.

But what if other civilizations also sensed their doom and acted in time?

The dinosaurs detect a massive comet approaching. They know their world is coming to an end. But since they are more intelligent and advanced than Homo sapiens—not technologically, but intellectually—they are capable of shifting dimensions or time-jumping. Thus, most of them survive the cataclysm. In fact, evolution may have even created organisms that, living symbiotically, transformed into organic spaceships and escaped the Earth through wormholes. Who knows? Maybe right now, somewhere on the edge of the galaxy, a Tyrannosaurus Rex is smoking a cigar, watching humanity suffer, and simply saying, "Well, I told you so."

Meanwhile, Homo sapiens… Well, he doesn't perish because of a comet. No, no. He takes care of his own destruction. Humanity is so foolish that it brings about the end of its own world. The planet will be destroyed by one big fart. The polar ice caps melt, releasing billions of cubic meters of methane, which forms a massive cloud drifting south. A single spark—even a poorly extinguished cigarette butt—is enough to ignite entire continents.

And then there’s the question of creation. God created the world in six days, and on the seventh, He lit a cigarette and leaned back with a drink. He thought it was time to rest. Then came a massive fart. He figured that since it happened, he might as well entertain the others. He pulled down his pants, held a lighter to the gas escaping from his rear, and a giant fireball erupted. Everyone laughed—until an accident happened: a huge hole burned through his pants.

God got furious. "Damn it! That was my best pair of pants! Now I’ll have to walk till my legs are sore to find another one like it."

And the planet will become uninhabitable for tens of thousands, perhaps even millions of years for advanced life forms. And the question arises: why does Homo sapiens even bother having offspring? Why work, why accumulate wealth? Everyone knows the end is inevitable, and no one is doing anything about it. This will happen in the middle of this century.

But in the meantime, here’s some advice for Homo sapiens on how to make the most of the remaining time:

1. Don't work. What’s the point? Everything is ending anyway.

2. Descend into anarchy. Laws will soon be meaningless.

3. Complete your bucket list. It’s now or never.

4. Forget the Ten Commandments. If you followed them even occasionally, now there's truly no reason to.

5. Live for today, not for the Hawaiian summer. (Because by the time you get there, it might just be water.)

6. Take out a loan. You won’t have to pay it back.

8. Try every kind of food. There may be no burgers or chocolate ice cream in the future.

9. Do everything you were afraid to try. Bungee jumping? Base jumping? Filing your taxes on time?

10. Don’t fear the consequences. Because there won’t be any.

Enjoy humanity’s final decades!

Armageddon