by Jeff Somers

You're not cool enough to see this on CNN in your lifetime.

THE United States of America, much like Western Civilization in general, has been in steady decline since about three years before its inception. This is fact.

Everything used to be better. Trust me. You might look around and think, well, literacy is up, and longevity is up, and crime is actually down overall, and they stopped making Amos n' Andy and we have a black President and all, but trust me: We are living in the shit-end of history. Everything was better back in The Day. Food tasted better. And while your odds of living past forty were very, very bad, death was better: Angels came and carried you gently away while you waved at your loved ones. This no longer happens, because we are living in the shit-end of history, which I could have sworn I'd already told you.

This kind of bullshit has always and will always be. People in the Roman Empire longed for the glorious days of the Republic before Ceasar came and fucked it all up. I am sure there was a caveman moment when all the cavemen thought, shit, things were better before that asshole invented fire and all our shit started burning down all the time and people started cooking steaks and having heart attacks.

The kissing-cousin to these sorts of imaginings is the assumption that this downward spiral of existence that has been going for, oh, five or six thousand years is leading to something. Call it the Rapture, or the Mayan Calendar apocalypse, or the Seattle Mariners winning the World Series, the idea is that all this terrible downward spiraling must mean something. There must be a termination point where we reach Terminal Shitstorm Velocity and the world ends.

FROZEN BRAIN FOR THE WIN!

There is, but of course it's either going to be when the Sun swells into a red giant and swallows the Earth in fire in a couple of billion years, or when the heat death of the universe makes the lights all go out, forever. Either way, we're probably not going to be here to witness it. Meaning you and me.

Well, I might be, as I fully intend to have my head frozen until future scientists cure death. So I might be here. You, though, it's almost certain you will not.

And yet, everyone thinks they will.

This, obviously, because you are all insanely arrogant. Me, I know my place: Insignificant. Even if I sell some novel that takes the world by storm and transforms Western culture into something new, something known as the Post-Somers Diaspora, check it: Even if that happens, I will someday be atoms floating in a dead universe, all my works burned up into atoms as well, forgotten and useless. So fuckit. I know where I'm heading.

The rest of you seem to think you're God's Chosen People.

You are not.

The human brain likes to make patterns out of things. Heck, I construct fifteen or twenty complex conspiracy theories a day, involving my pants, people giving me dirty looks on the street, the song Pumped Up Kicks that plays far too fucking often to be complete coincidence, and the fact that every newspaper story in the world can be made to spell my name with the proper application of Caesar Ciphers and imagination. It's easy to see how people can see hurricanes, earthquakes, epidemics, economic collapse, and the general misery of living in the slowly reducing world and decide that there's a reason they – not just anyone, but they – are experiencing these things.

After all, when you read stories, including those wonderful fables in The Bible, that's exactly what happens, right: People experience horrible things, over and over again, and then they survive and are celebrated and are heroes. So if you start noticing that terrible things are happening to you, it must be because you are in the middle of a heroic story and you are about to have your Close Up.

There are several billion people on the planet, right? So the idea that things are happening specifically to you is kind of fucking arrogant, right? Like, psychotically arrogant. Like, Fuck-You Arrogant. Then, take it to the next step: If you actually think we're approaching the end of the world or some such shit, you're not only saying that you're more important than everyone else in the world, you're also saying you're more important than everyone who has ever lived before you. Everyone.

I mean, like Katy Parry says: Damn. That's just fuck-you arrogant.

Katy Perry says: Damn.

The alternative is horrifying: All this suffering is fucking random, and your role in it is meaningless. Who wants to think that? That's depressing shit. Would I prefer to think that god or the cosmos has some special plan for me, even if it involves rains of fire and dried-up rivers, millions dead and no more Scotch? Sure, I would.

Yes, even if there was no more Scotch. Even under such horrifying circumstances, I would much prefer to be sober and kept alive like some sort of awful pet by a vengeful universe, yes.

But, and here, finally, gloriously, after all this suffering and wordswordswords is my point: We are not that special and important. You are not that special and important. The world won't end while you're around simply because to imagine that you are designated the witness to such events is just fucking ludicrous.

Of course, some small minds might argue that surely someone sometime will have to witness the end of the world, whether it's a slow death by contagion or a nuclear war or famine or incineration via space alien, but that's really not true. First of all, it presupposes you'll even be aware that the world is ending; consider for a moment that it takes a few minutes for the light from the sun to reach us, so as far as you know the world ended four minutes ago and you just don't know it yet.

Also consider how stupid we all are. Easily panicked, yet often clueless as to the true threats around us. If you can't imagine being totally gobsmacked by the fucking end of the world or similar sized event, you're just not paying attention.

The flip side to this is another reason people feel drawn to the idea of witnessing The End: The alternative is the usual, unexceptional existence we all get. Nothing special. Nothing amazing.

Waking up, drinking coffee, taking a dump, going to work, hating life, going home, eating dinner, watching TV. Or some variation. Maybe something more exciting, sure, but overall, when you smear everyone's experience together, you get a gray mush.

Your life will continue to suck.

It's kind of depressing, actually. This is why people fixate on dates when things happen and want to talk about where you were. If something tremendous happens near you, you take it on like a mantle and wear it around, proud of your brush with history. For the rest of your humdrum, miserable life you can at least imagine being part of something special and beyond you. In the past people talked about Pearl Harbor, or the Kennedy Assassination. These days it's usually 9/11 people want to talk about, breathlessly telling you they were a mile away from the actual event, but still coldcocked by it, still involved, just so you understand how fucking interesting they are, by dint of accidentally being near a disaster.

All lies. The world has probably already ended. As you read this, the sun has mysteriously snuffed out, going dark and cold. The last rays of life-giving warmth are still beaming towards you, so you sit there, three minutes away from The End and completely unaware. Three minutes away from The End, and End that will leave no trace of your existence for any other intelligence to discover, and you're wasting those moments with the fucking goddamn Inner Swine. That's the universe for you: Cold, and amused.