2032 ~ The Fall of Mankind

Introduction

On the last day of 2031, eight billion people celebrated the dawning of a new year, full of bright futures and endless possibilities, and it had certainly seemed that was how it would be. Resolutions were made, kisses exchanged and statuses updated all over the world. The human race staggered onto January 1st with their heads held high, and everything had felt almost perfect.

Until, on the 21st of April 2032, mankind began falling, fast.

At first, the warning signs were barely noticeable; a few of the banks going bust, smaller businesses closing down – and then disappearing entirely, more and more people being left homeless and jobless. But then, it had gotten even worse.

Along with their wallets, people’s very souls began to be drained of resources, until the majority of mankind was just one giant, ever-functioning machine, which kept the world turning at the cost of its own sanity.

Economies spiralled. Empires hit rock-bottom.

But the technological market had always thrived. The whole population of earth was constantly upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, until – just four years earlier – the latest version of the iPhone had hit the shelves, and not a single one had sold.

Then the mainstream river of Facebook had dwindled down to a pitiful trickle, Twitter was now only used by forgotten, aging pop stars, and MySpace . . . Well, no one over the age of forty had even heard of that.

Investors had brushed all of this off at first. That was, until things had become more serious, and they'd finally realised what was happening.

People had become tired of technology.

But not only that, they had become tired of life in general. The human race had become tired. The technology they had already was no longer keeping them entertained, they wanted more, more, more. More than the companies could possibly provide. The wanted more than they could ever possibly get.

Slowly – all over the world – people began turning off their electronic appliances.

Just smaller things at first, Kindles, iPods, Mac Books . . . but, gradually, the iPads went too, then the Laptops, the Televisions, the iPhones . . .

Until, slowly, in every country and every state, in the very year that the popularity and prevalence of Technology had reached its height – it began to fall; further and faster than anything in the history of human existence.

But at first, no one noticed.

Until Microsoft went, (it was the first to go of course; Windows systems were far outdated) then the Apple franchise followed just a few weeks later. Bill Gates’ gargantuan empire crumbled overnight, and – as if by a doomed, irrepressible flick at a standing line of dominoes – this was the first in a chain reaction that left utterly no one untouched.

With technology – something that had been so enormous a part of everyone’s lives for so long – all but gone, people had no clue on how to spend their spare moments (which everyone found they had a lot of once social media had been brutally discarded).

And people drifted even deeper into their world-weariness.

Something had to be done, but no one knew what. The human race had slipped into a depressed lull of inactivity. Society almost ceased to be. The tweets of forgotten, aging pop stars fell on deaf ears and blind eyes.

A suffocating blanket of deathly stillness wrapped itself tighter and tighter around populated Earth, until it silenced even the iBirds.

Mankind had fallen more swiftly and silently than a ghostly leaf, in a pale, fading forest.

And no one had even realised, until it was too late.