The End of the World
by Mat Twassel
Copyright© 2026 by Mat Twassel
Flash Story: College coeds wrestle with an "end of the world" problem.
Tags: Fiction
“Fuck!” Maya exclaimed. She was sitting at her dorm room desk, head slumped.
“Hey, what is it?” her roommate Tessa asked. “It can’t be that bad.”
After a long moment Maya looked up. “It is that bad. It’s the end of the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“This paper, this final paper,” Maya said. Her fist banged the desk. The laptop bounced. The screen blinked. “We have to write an essay on three scenarios. The situation is that someone has found a way to completely disable the internet. Worldwide, all at once.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Well, in one case it’s someone in Pennsylvania. And the government knows who it is and where he is.
“In another case it’s someone in some foreign country, and again our government knows who it is and where he is, but this country and ours are not on good terms.
“In the third case, it’s this unfriendly government. They’re going to kill the Internet unless we surrender to all their demands.”
“Yikes,” Tessa said.
“Yeah. So we have to write what our government’s response should be in each case. Obviously we could ‘take out’ the guy in Pennsylvania. But what about in the other two cases?”
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