The Hum (A prompt exercise)

This is a prompt exercise between myself and Playing in Traffic. The words for the prompt are: Athena, Ghetto, Narcolepsy

When every person on the face of the Earth involuntarily cat naps at any given moment throughout the course of a day, public transportation comes to a grinding halt. It could be worse; I could have been on duty, driving a city bus when the phenomenon first began about a month ago. Anything which requires one to be in a constant waking state to perform their job duties has been temporarily curbed until scientists can at least figure out how to solve humanities newest crisis. Even the anchors on the primetime news can't get through a half hour time slot before they slouch and drool like a wino at two A.M. in the bowels of Central Park.

 

Most everyone now knows the cause for the mass malady, the "Large Hadron Collider". The LHC is the world's largest particle accelerator deep underground in Switzerland. Scientists there had been searching for what they called the Higgs Boson, or, "The God Particle"; a theoretical particle which some physicists believe holds the fabric of reality together behind the cloak of dark matter. They smashed two lead particles together at near speeds of light, and hoped the Universe didn't fold into a black hole as a result. They arrogantly thumbed their noses at Zeus, shrugging off his lightning, calling it dated weaponry, while the rest of the world micro-waved our dinners after a hard day of dry humping our collective habitat.

 

Civilization and the LHC are currently offline. Thank you for your participation, and patience...   

 

They smashed, and nothing happened. They smashed several more times, and nothing happened. The smashing continued for close to a year, and then one day, something happened. The Hum.

 

The Hum didn't travel in a linear fashion across the globe; it just manifested simultaneously, like it came from the Earth's core and traveled outward. Within a half hour of its introduction, people began nodding off. Planes fell from the sky, cars indiscriminately mowed down pedestrians, mothers dropped their babies, etc...

 

 Everyone had their own specific collapse schedule and rate, so no system could be worked around the chaos of unconsciousness. One scientist claimed markers in one's DNA were responsible for the algorithm of their particular narcoleptic flavor. One thing became certain among the elite brains of the planet, no one had escaped the narcoleptic hell on Earth; everyone had fallen pray.

 

The ghettos were the hardest hit as society began to crumble. Groceries emptied out within a week. Rumors of cannibalism circulated within two weeks. Most of my route had been through lower income neighborhoods. I imagined Mrs. Parker, a frail eighty something bag lady type, being grilled on a spit in an alley full of hungry, cannibalistic gang bangers cracking jokes like, "If you snooze, you lose, sucka."

 

Sometimes, your imagination can be your worst enemy, but it can also be your best motivator. I hit the road on foot. With no family to care for, no friends except for the regulars on my route, I was free to scavenge the countryside, napping, and humming, all the way.

 

In a way, I'm thankful for the foolishness of science; I never liked my life, anyway....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

    

 

 

Author's Note

This is a prompt exercise between myself and Playing in Traffic. The words for the prompt are: Athena, Ghetto, Narcolepsy

Reviews

[Mortricia]

"...mothers dropped their babies, etc.." tsk tsk....

This is....stimulating. I think that is the right word. I have to say that I read the first line over and over again. It was such a profound statement that it didn't pass through my brain correctly.

This is a very creative but somewhat brow-tensing result. I can't help but to read this as if it were a newspaper article, as the flow suggests it could be.

It is good for a redo and an hour of work. Bravissimo.