Author: R. J. Erbacher

A meteor did in the dinosaurs.

70,000 years ago, an Ice Age wiped out all but a few handfuls of Homo-Erectus.

Almost half the population died in the 1300’s because of the Black Plague.

Armageddon had been predicted since man could tell stories. Aliens, zombie invasion, geo-thermal disaster, pandemic. Even the bible chronicles an event with a whole lot of goddamn rain.

But true End-of-Days turned out to be music.

A song with the ironic title, “Alone Without You.”

A new musical idol appeared on the scene six months prior, Colton Michaels, with his catchy debut song, “Love is in My Brain,” that quickly climbed the charts and hit number one with a bullet. Two months later, “Listen to the Beat,” followed and it was the first time a newcomer had held the top two spots on all the charts in music history.

Fan clubs sprung up around the world begging for an album, a tour, even a glimpse of the ‘so far’ elusive singer. The mystery of who he was only heightened the phenomenon’s attention.

Then it was announced, in a whirlwind media blitz, that Colton Michaels’ new hit would be released worldwide on June 6 at midnight GMT. East coast cities coordinated an eight PM super party with every radio station playing it simultaneously, some deciding to run it continuously. California was hosting a kickoff banquet at the LA Coliseum, an end-all blowout with every major celebrity and dignitary in attendance. Europeans were planning to stay up past everyone’s bedtime to hear it as soon as it was played. China, at eight o’clock AM, had massive call outs so people could listen to it live. It would be the biggest event ever recorded by mankind.

Eighty-five percent of the planet’s population were dead in the first three minutes, five seconds, the length of “Alone Without You.” Another seven percent by the end of the first hour.

Colton Michaels was the creation of an Artificial Intelligent supercomputer that had been tasked to compile extensive research on the workings of the human brain and map out a possible cure for the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s. The computer spent years studying the data from countless testing. Scientists were hoping the computer could reverse or correct the path that the mind suffered during these ailments. What it unwittingly discovered was that it could manipulate certain electrical impulses with a specific reverberating tone.

The computer then conducted its own experiment. The first two songs contained subtle subliminal messages priming human psyche to fall in love with the singer. It evaluated results and was encouraged to execute the global completion of the project. When “Alone Without You” was released, the underlying beat had a coded direction that the human brain’s synapses picked up without even realizing it. It triggered a failure of involuntary signals causing hearts to stop beating, blood to quit pumping, lungs to cease inhaling. People’s metabolisms arrested on the spot.

Society soon collapsed, what was left of it, as a fog of rotting corpses poisoned all the cities of the world. The only people that survived were the three or four percent of deaf people left on the planet. What the supercomputer hadn’t calculated was that the power girds slowly began to fail without maintenance and the electricity they needed to operate dried up and they went dormant.

Now it’s sixty years later and those of us still around survive in an archaic establishment where communications are only done by sign language and society lives in the crumbling shells of leftover buildings.

And it’s a silent world, devoid of music.