When Everything Went Wrong

Introduction

This is a piece of fiction to purge a lot of negativity I have in myself at the moment. It's ironic that this story will be worrying and scary but will have a totally positive effect on my well-being. I am not sure what that says about me.

The music is "Bring 'Em Down" by Fairport Convention and I think it is an appropriate mystical ecological call for this piece.

This is similar in concept to a previous story of mine which you can read here:

When Everything Went Wrong

No one noticed it at first.

Everyone thought it was just wear and tear, things only had a limited shelf life, and sometimes stuff broke and needed repairing and sometimes you couldn't get the parts.

Windows got broken and needed replacing, the weather took its toll on rooves and slates and felt need replacing and waterproofing. This was just life.

Builders and repairmen were on twenty-four-hour call, and making a fortune. Insurance companies started to go under because they would either have to increase premiums so high that people would cancel, but the amount they were being forced to pay out was driving them to bankruptcy.

Then things started to worsen, bridges collapsed filled with rush hour traffic, and then houses and finally office and residential blocks just collapsed.

Emergency services could not cope and people were left trapped to die in the wreckage.

The world was collapsing, and no one knew why.

Military scientists were called in and they started investigating various sites that were now wreckage. The problem was transport was failing so they had to walk to the sites.

Computers were failing as well, so their findings and work had to be done on paper. Their investigations came to a shocking conclusion.

Everything built by humankind was being destroyed by a fungal virus. Where or how it originated now did not matter, and how you fight a virus that attacks inanimate things was a seemingly impossible task. You can't inject an antidote into a wall or a road.

Dams collapsed, flooding and drowning thousands, Churches and monuments fell. Trafalgar Square was dust, and Notre Dame, after being rebuilt was gone, The pyramids had survived thousands of years but now joined the sand and were no more.

Canvas was apparently ok so advice was sent out to set up tents away from houses, in gardens and parks. This came from the officials who stayed as the government had scarpered as soon as they saw their friends; investments coming crashing down, though wherever they went would be the same. Some said they should have stayed in Westminster and let it bury them.

The country adapted to the new lifestyle and almost all around the world governments disappeared and life carried on.

Certain plastics were found to be resistant to the virus and were used as building materials, though most of humanity that survived was still under canvas. Some metal and amazingly wood was not attacked by the virus, so structures could be built, though never rebuilt. People would never trust stone, concrete, and tarmacadam again even if the virus was eliminated.

Conspiracy theories exploded, it was an experiment gone wrong, it was the Russians, it was China, it was the government, it was punishment by God because of the existence of some group that the perpetrators hated. No one knew what had happened, not even the experts and scientists.

That was the reality.

Humanity, once again, adapted.

Humanity survived.

There would be no more tower blocks, no more churches (unless they were built of steel and wood), no more monuments in concrete and stone.

One oddity, it that the mountains still stood, untouched.

It was like the virus respected nature and just vented its wrath on humanity.

Humanit Survived.

For Now ....