The end of the world shows people’s true colors as they post their last hashtag.
Bruce sat alone in his garage. The previous afternoon, he had lied to his friends to convince them he could play lead guitar as well as Dave Mustaine to get into their band. They told him to prove it at the next jam session. He practiced like mad but was too stoned to get the chords of his fret hand to sync up with his pick hand when he suddenly noticed an alert on the muted flatscreen on the wall in the form of a ticker across the bottom of the six-year-old LED TV. It read #WorldsEnd, and had an image of a giant meteor headed for earth flashed on screen.
Bruce panicked in his THC haze as he was gripped by a sense of impending doom. He needed to get one last hashtag out before the end was upon him. #PeaceSellsButWhosBuying sounded fitting. After all, he had been making feeble attempts at playing Megadeth songs on his guitar.
On the receiving end of Bruce’s text was Juan, who was in the middle of playing an intense session of a Pacific Rim video game. The text distracted him long enough to look out the window and see a massive trail of fire in the sky. He realized the text was meant to be a final message to the world, so Juan followed suit and sent his message, “If I weren’t piloting Jaegers while #DrunkOnJaegermeister I could #CancelTheApocalypse.”
Lulu, Juan’s 20-something younger sister, was LARPing in the backyard with some pals using their phones as magic wands when she noticed the trail of fire in the sky and texted, #WingardiumLevioShootDidYouSeeThatMeteor.
Meanwhile, on the patio of the local library the ground was shaking due to the number of bookworms’ phones vibrating from incoming hashtags that would evidently be the last in the world. They too gawked at the sky to see the descending flames of the inevitable.
Several readers began sending messages to friends and family. A George Orwell book was quickly replaced by a phone abused by texting thumbs that apologetically sent a math instructor #IShouldHaveSaid2Plus2Equals5, while an Aldous Huxley reader messaged her mother, #NowIDieInTheYearOfOurFord.
The bloodshot eyeballs of a Philip K. Dick reader heavily engaged in “A Scanner Darkly” adjusted their focus on a backlit touchscreen and added, #ForMyFriendsAtThanksgiving to the bottom of a quickly captured image of a blue flower from the library garden. One brainiac received #PoundSign and was placed into an inescapable neural maze of contemplation distracting her from her imminent demise.
In the dark, dank recesses of many a mother’s basements YouTubers began to receive hashtags on their computer screens. The race was on to make sure they had one final broadcast in hopes that some other-world lifeform would view it and find a way to #LifeHackMeBackToLife so they can carry on the most important work mankind has ever undertaken: discovering life hacks.
While feeling sympathetic to the dogs playing in the backyard, George and Gracie came to the simultaneous conclusion if dogs could send a final hashtag regarding a falling fireball that would destroy the planet it would be #Squirrel! Eventually, they decided to crank up the volume of Dethklok’s video of “Comet Song” to 11 on their Dolby 7.1 surround system complete with $12,000 JL Audio subwoofer. They reminisced about guitar battles over Krank amps in rainbow scenes of madness and sent a couple hashtags of their own, #EarthWasPrettyRad but now it’s time to #GoForthAndDie.
