It was Michael's turn today to put up the forecast for tomorrow. Not rain or sun or snow, but doom, always doom. The end of the world. And it always had to be specific. The CPFA - the Centre for the Perpetual Forestalling of Armageddon - had that very important task of making sure that every day as it came up was predicted to be the end of the world.
And Michael had nothing to go on. The possible addition errors in the Mayan calendar had run out, and it wasn't the new year yet, so none of the 2013 predictions could be used, either. He was stuck, alone, just between two possible doomsdays, and if he couldn't get his job done by midnight, there would be disaster in more ways than one. He'd be fired, of course, but that would be the least of his worries at that point.
The theory went like this: if human beings think they have predicted the exact end of the world, then it definitely won't happen. Every single doomsday prediction in the history of mankind had been proven wrong so far. The CPFA just institutionalised it. Whether God held back his wrath to avoid being out-thought by His mere creations or something else was at play, the philosophers/astrologers/numerologists/prophets at the CPFA worked hard to make sure doom was predicted, specifically to make sure it never happened.
He glanced at the clock again - 10:40pm - sipped his coffee, long gone cold, and ran his fingers through his frazzled, greasy hair in a frustrated motion. The star charts said nothing useful until Wednesday. The ancient religious texts were suspiciously quiet about the last few days of the year 2012, even accounting for genealogy uncertainties.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. He was so tired. Perhaps a few minutes of shut-eye would clear his mind and give him a fresh perspective. Michael laid his head down on his desk in the glow of the late evening news just to rest his eyes, just for a second.
When he awoke with a start almost an hour later, Michael was disoriented. Some paper had stuck to his cheek and as he pulled it off, he saw the clock and his blood ran cold. 11:53! He had seven minutes to come up with something. If he couldn't predict doom, then doom was certain. Maybe.
And then it hit him. Turning to the empty window on his computer, he began to type an entry to post to the CPFA website, just in time:
CPFA Fails to Predict Doomsday
The rest practically wrote itself.
Mokalus of Borg
PS - I realise this is related slightly to last week's story.
PPS - I just thought it was a fun topic.
No comments:
Post a Comment