Midnight. December the 31st, year 999. The mist caressed the ground in wisps adding to the stuffy atmosphere of the silent crowd as the priest's call for forgiveness spread out far into the night. The prayer was like the drumbeat before a hanging, rythmic and clear and rising into an awful creshendo. Some children started to cry, even some adults who burst into panicked fits of shame and called out to the world some of their disgusting sins, for forgiveness, if only they could have forgiveness Father! The preist raised his hands and bellowed into the heavens.

He was cut short by the doomful tolling of the church bells above them. The people fell to their knees. They joined their voices together in prayer, laced with the sound of screaming babies.

...*... Our father, who art in heaven,

...*... Hallowed be thy name.

...*... Thy kingdom come.

...*... Thy will be done

...*... In earth as it is in heaven.

...*... Give us this day

...*... Our daily bread.

...*... And forgive us our trespasses,

...*... As we forgive them

...*... That trespass against us.

...*... And lead us not into temptation.

...*... But deliver us from evil.

Amen.

...

It felt like the tingling calm that heralds the storm, even though because of the uncomprehending infants it was hardly that quiet. They waited, whispering prayers under their breath.

...

And then it happened.

Absolutely nothing.



Of course soon enough the priests would pick up the peices saying to thank God that he had taken it upon himself to leave their fate for another day, how they must live lives of purity now they understood the true gravity of Judgement. The people half-heartedly followed, but inside they felt, for the most part, that they had been made fools of.



Apocalypse scares aren't a new thing. Every new generation has asked, "what is going on with the world today?" Remember smog that gave people hacking coughs and coloured London's building's black? That's been improved for sure; the world has been for the most part getting better. Remember the millenium bug scare? And how it completely failed to bring about the collapse of western economy?

I'm not ruling out the possibility of some future collapse. But then, collapses have happened before haven't they? The human race is still here. Life will find a way. It's not so simple as global warming's here, okay let's all drop dead then. There may be hard times ahead: then again, maybe not;-- It's only natural that we will see the problem before the solution. In the second world war, it was thought that bombs would level every city to the ground. Then they worked out defenses and saw the shortcomings in bomb warfare; it was bad, but not the end of the world.

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