the last light

The economic crisis was only the beginning. First, the banks collapsed. Then the governments. Then language itself began to degrade, words like “hope,” “stability,” and “future” became as extinct as polar bears and empathy.

Recovery? A myth, like gluten-free croissants or ethical billionaires.

For decades, everything spiraled down. Not with a bang, but with budget cuts, clickbait, and broken promises. Climate collapse? Check. Political chaos? Check. Mass extinction? Check. Netflix still tried to produce feel-good series, “Survival is a Mindset!” -but no one had the bandwidth or emotional capacity to stream.

Eventually, there were few people left. Most either starved, self-immolated for TikTok, or tried to escape to Mars (spoiler: they didn’t make it past the asteroid belt).

And then came the final cosmic joke: Earth was being slowly pulled into the sun. Not metaphorically -literally. Some blamed rogue gravitational waves. Others said God finally gave up on us after that fifth Minions movie.

The scientists left (all five of them) confirmed: “We’ve got about three years. Maybe four, if you enjoy melting slowly.”

The sun was growing bigger every day, its heat blistering skin like divine punishment. Shadows became luxuries. The sky was red more often than not—red like spilled wine, red like overdue warnings, red like a big sarcastic “YOU WERE WARNED” in Comic Sans.

And in those last years, a question hovered in the air like radioactive dust:
What would you do?

Would you live fully? Dance naked in the ruins of the Louvre?
Would you tell your family the truth? “We’re not dying, we’re being toasted.”
Would you die with them, together, like a sitcom finale with fire instead of laughter?

The philosophers -now part-time mushroom farmers -said, “Maybe this was always the point. The collapse. The burn. The final release from spreadsheets and traffic and two-factor authentication.”

Some people threw end-of-the-world orgies. Others started cults worshipping the sun (“Our Glorious Devourer”). A few opened “Last Light Cafés” serving existential cocktails: Absinthe of Meaning, Cynicism on the Rocks, and Death with a Twist.

As for me?

I wrote this.

Because when the world ends, satire is all we have left.
A middle finger to the void.
A joke told to the flames.

Would you laugh?
Would you cry?
Or would you hold someone’s hand and say, “At least we’re burning together.”

The sun doesn't care.
But maybe that’s what makes the question matter.