The world's end was silent.
No explosions. No gods descended from the skies. It was just silence.
It was on one evening that there was a blinding flash illuminating the sky. It shone more intensely than anything human science had so far achieved. It propagated faster than thought. All circuits, all engines, all artificial heartbeats ground to halt. The neon cities, the drones floating in clouds, the chrome and glass skyscrapers, the whole bit, all stopped functioning simultaneously.
Robots froze, metal and anguish statues. Vehicles crashed to the ground. The hum of power cables died down until the world seemed to hold its breath.
After the light disappeared, silence remained. A being declared,
"I, the Crown Warghost, has unleashed the apocalypse. Mortals run for your life. The One is waiting for the end."
---
Aaron blinked at darkness. He momentarily thought his optic implants had deceived him once more. But he remembered implants were a relic of the past, like all else.
It was dark, but he could see. Not much, but enough to cast shadows on objects: the outline of his bed, the broken screen on his wall terminal, dust motes floating in the air. His pupils contained a lighter overcoat of gray, metallic-sheened.
He reached out and touched his face. "Still no power… uh. Guess they finally croaked."
There was no response from his AI Assistant. Not even the soft hum of the air recycler as if his house is a mausoleum.
He slowly sat up, the sheet cold against his skin. The desperation of the world was the last he remembered being in bed.
The words that were spoken on every one of the broadcasts, every one of the networks, every one of the minds.
He had not thought so. A man of machines, son of a world that worshiped metal and information. Supernatural? For legend, for lost faiths interred beneath skyscrapers.
---
But now, in darkness, in quiet, and the stench of stagnant air in death-breath; unbelief was harder to keep.
He stood, his naked feet scrabbling against the cold floor. He came to the door, paused. The frame was vacant. The grid was dark, and the laser lock was gone. A corridor fell away into darkness behind it.
Part of him couldn't help but laugh. "Well… guess the 'smart door' wasn't so smart after all."
He ventured outside of his room. The air was denser here, as if the world were waterlogged with static.
Something breathed on the threshold of hearing. Soft, childish laughter.
He froze, stock-still, "Hello?"
Nothing. Just the creak of metal unspooling somewhere above.
He inched forward cautiously, his hand tracing along the wall. Something is wrong. Why is it colder, smoother and nearly moist? His fingers slicked with some whitely glinting material, like blue mist that vanished when he blinked, when he pulled his hand back.
There was a murmur in his ear.
"Play with me…"
Aaron spun around. No one is there.
He gulped, his heart thudding so hard it ached. "Right, hallucinations. A very normal post-apocalypse condition."
He turned around again and the girl was standing there.
Little ghostly girl, eight or nine, eyes blank and white. Her head tilted too far to the side, crevice along her neck where skin curved around moving light.
He was desperate for air. Then his body's instincts took control and he backed away, stumbled over debris, and dropped down on the ground.
The ghost smiled. "You can see me."
She glided across the room toward him, her feet up in mid-air just above the ground. Her face fluctuated between human and sculpted in ice as if reality couldn't decide which to maintain.
Aaron sprinted up and toward the stairs. But the ghost moved faster. In an instant, she was behind him. In the next, in front of him.
The air grew cold, ice spreading up the walls. The laughter again, warped like a flawed sound clip.
And then she struck.
Her fingers traveled through his chest or should have. Instead, he was shocked, as if the very first time he had touched a live electricity wire. Agony ripped through his body.
He clutched her throat involuntarily.
And the world was altered.
The ghost shrieked, voice ripping into a dozen frequencies. His fingers buried in her flesh. She was hard, and cold. She struggled to be free, but he couldn't let her go. Stripes of light slid up his arms, hungry on her substance.
He did not have any idea that he was doing it or how. He only knew it was happening. Energy blazed, searing and ice-cold simultaneously. The body of the ghost writhed, then burst into white vapor that filled his body.
The world fell silent again.
Aaron dropped to his knees, gagging. Icy flames burned in his veins as his body twisted and convulsed. For a fraction of an instant, he was perceiving everything: the world in dreamlike hues, moving figures where there shouldn't be any, hundreds of bodiless specters drifting through walls.
Ghosts. Souls. Whatever they were, they filled up all space in this world.
He slapped a hand against the floor, attempting to balance. His eyes in a piece of shattered glass glowed pale blue.
"Did I?" He coughed. "Eat her?"
There was nothing at all. Just the pounding of his heart in darkness.
He knelt there for what seemed like an eternity, listening to the wind scream outside. Far, far below, someone was screaming. Or perhaps another ghost.
Aaron stood up slowly and gazed out through the broken window of his house. Outside was a city dead. bony spires extending out of shadow. Quiet spheres of light floating between them, dozens of lost people floating in void.
He placed a hand across his chest. Hunger still lingered there, far away but sure. Some corner of him knew you are no longer something human.
"If this is the new world…", he snarled.
"Then I guess I'm not human anymore."
A soft breeze carried a soft response. A burst of static that died just this side of laughter.