Post Upturned Stinger

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The serene landscape, flawlessly white and still, stretched endlessly in all directions. For the first time since its birth, the earth was a perfect sphere. No mountains broke the surface, no oceans collected its waters.

Life had left the world. The humans had escaped to space, taking animals and plants and their technologies with them. Their absence would be temporary, a short reprieve, but for now, nothing remained to mar the orb’s featureless perfection. It had been a further eleven days since the previous days of hell and the planet was taking a well-deserved rest. No drama. No crises. No noise.

The winds had died, leaving ice particles floating in the still air, a globally spanning mist in no hurry to descend. Perhaps, in a few days, when the sun warmed enough of the equator, the air currents would resume, but for the first time in billions of years, the world was utterly silent.

Then, left behind and half buried in the snow, the screen of a battered, virtually powerless phone, flickered on to perform one last function, and the pristine stillness was broken by the Repeat Alarm.

The ice around it shifted, and the Earth groaned.