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I don't know where it went wrong. I'm telling you how things happened, I'm not making the judgement myself. I can't be blamed myself for what happened. I suppose I'm partly to blame, me and everyone else. I blamed others back then though, that's why it happened. It began two hundred years ago, I'm not even involved in the beginning, the men were, men in top hats and long black coats, factory owners and inventors. They brought smoke and coal to the world, long rows of chimneys pouring out the dark smog that caused it, cars, ships, planes and trains tearing across the globe, eating the resources.
Twenty years ago I remember the start, the start of the end, I don't know exactly when I realised there was no hope. I laugh as I think of life back then, how stupid we were, still thinking things would go on forever, each generation problems ignored and dumped on the next. Ours was the one though. I'm young, cynical and extremely hopeful, I'm a student at Manchester Uni. I live for the moment; partying, drinking and doing stupid things to impress girls. Things are going to happen to me, I'm going to get a job, a house, a family. I'll be well off, I'll have a car, a TV, I'll go on holiday each year to somewhere exotic. Only one of my dreams has come true, and then only briefly.
I sit in a small room on a threadbare bed taking up most of the space, a grubby window is on the wall behind me, it provides no light through its ancient panes of glass. The walls are bare concrete, not much to look at and the illumination comes from a flickering bulb suspended from the ceiling, it's old and has little power left. Through the door are three rooms, the extent of civilisation as I know it. I'm old and tired, I want it to end, I lost hope years ago. I live to survive; getting food however I still can, spending days doing backbreaking work just to endure, I fall asleep each night so tired I don't have time to change. Not that I have any other clothes any more.
I bet it would have looked insignificant from space, if I'd been one of those astronauts, like God they watch the world through their pearly scopes and glowing screens. Watching as the event took place, watching me. But if you're far away anything looks insignificant. They could have watched the film roll out, the end, eating space food and laughing as it takes place. If they'd watched me they would have seen just another student, a nineteen year old, filled with fresh ideas ready to take on the world. Then they would have seen the big players in the destiny that was to come. I say destiny, fate, that's just my way of dealing with it, removing the blame from myself. I'm just a minor participant though, insignificant really, there are probably hundreds like me, all telling the same tales and placing themselves in the limelight. I wasn't in charge of anything, I didn't make things happen, I just had them happen to me. I'm biased towards my views, my guilt.
But I am avoiding the event, hiding from it. Is it fear that holds my tongue? Fear that I might be held responsible once my song is sung. An irrational fear then, we are all responsible. Is it fear of the telling itself? Fear of recalling the events, to replay the horror and the tragedy. No, I have told my tale to the others, I can now tell it with dry eyes and a hardened heart. Still I skirt it, running it's circumference but never crossing. I will begin then, I will tell of the catastrophe, the doom, the destruction. I will tell you my tale, at the end of the world.