“lol,” texted the billionaire, “i love it. fuck them.”

And so it was announced: in four years the world would be destroyed.

At first there was a flurry of editorials and think pieces.

On a wet fall morning a hundred student protesters broke through the outer chain link fencing surrounding an ICBM silo in Montana and were gunned down. That evening, with great fanfare, Philadelphia was nuked.

Aid workers were permitted to attend to hundreds of thousands of dying of burns and radiation poisoning in a network of tent cities surrounding the destruction because it would “give those bleeding hearts something to do.”

And, with that, the will to act was broken. When protesters dared to gather they were immediately set upon by bystanders, furious at them. Those willing to sacrifice to try to stop the scheduled missile launches were simply outnumbered by the self-interested, looking for a little bit more time and enraged by the self-righteousness of those still resisting.

A million futile think pieces were published in a haze of noise. A gaseous cloud of complexity, where every conceivable angle was discussed, and no traction made. Fatigue eclipsed all other emotions or thoughts.

One by one, most of the billionaires in their text group went on podcasts to brag. “Shouldn’t have said mean things about us.” “Should have been more respectful.” “This is what you get for breaking the social pact to obey us.” “You did this.” “Why should we care about our future selves? That’s empathy talk from those brainwashed by humanism.”

The dictator was slowly dying and didn’t care much one way or the other. He had been told that the planet would be turned into a mausoleum to his greatness and that seemed somewhat appropriate. After all, what was the point in letting anyone live after he died? Future generations might forget or erase or criticize his greatness. His advisors told him that the giant pyramid being built to his honor would last “forever” in the inky lifeless void to follow. He felt this was as good as any other policy proposal. No one bothered showing him any pictures of the barely fenced, empty plot of land where the pyramid was allegedly being built.

The economy, of course, was not doing well. Spiraling inflation and shockwaves of collapses battered everyone, even those who didn’t immediately cease showing up for work. This uncertainty and desperation enabled the billionaires to keep funding the cops and whatever other thugs they felt like. Promises of maybe getting to live as a slave in one of the bunkers that might survive kept a fringe motivated, but for a great many people the joy was simply getting to rape, torture, and kill in an authorized way, openly and alongside others who had your back. Finally the world was back to making sense.

They’d been arresting public figures, politicians and journalists one at a time for a few months–earlier mass raids of anarchists and their disappearances from custody went without comment–but then one day there was a flurry of arrests and almost the entire internet seemed inaccessible. Signal’s servers were gone. VPNs and Tor were blocked. Most of what was accessible were just websites and services that had been whitelisted after groveling.

The major social media platforms continued trucking along, forming the only place for communication but were completely hostile and reach was limited.

Some major tentpole publications continued, folks going through the motions of maintaining the prestige they’d dedicated their lives to, so folks were able to see the fawning coverage of the arrests and shuttering of newspapers as they proceeded.

Throughout it all, liberals encouraged everyone to disbelieve in what was happening in front of their eyes, because believing it would make it more real. Surely, when the time came, those obliged to turn the keys and input the firing codes would choose not to. Our make believe might somehow reach out and affect them.

But crews of kids went out to the silos and the submarines came into dock one at a time, getting retrofitted with automation, and no one did anything. It didn’t seem to be the right moment. And then everyone started to agree that too much had been automated, it was truly a done deal.

As the economy dissolved starvation, immediate needs started to overwhelm thought of anything else. As death squads got their daily jollies going door-to-door killing the bleeding hearts, the stress drove those few still working on resistance into conflict with one another. As the day of death marched closer, it became less painful to retreat to nostalgia and fantasy.

We woke up that morning to gunfire down the road and didn’t bother getting in the bathtub. The power was out, naturally. The wood fencing had long been burned for fuel, but we boiled tea with the remains of a blanket. What to do on this last day? Everyone was too depressed to even think of sex. Could go drive towards the nearest ICBM silo and shoot it up in one last–hopefully collective–dash? Honestly though, that just felt like a variation on the cops executing people for fun down the road. Just an act of expression into the void. And maybe, someone said, the billionaires were just joking. Maybe they were just trolling us. We started arguing.

Long drawn out howls, trying to find the skeleton key of thought that could unlock the trap we were stuck in. When the blinding light of the detonation came, my only thought was, well, at least I was right all along.