When the Big Snip hit, I was fifteen years old, living with my mom and dad, in rural Kauai. My parents grew tropical plants and flowers, that they sold to commercial florists worldwide. That afternoon, they were in town, shipping some plants and getting supplies. I had homework to do, so I stayed home.

I listening to the only radio station that I could get, at our home in the jungle. It was playing music, while I was doing homework of some kind.

Suddenly, the music stopped, and the female DJ said, “We are transferring over to national coverage of the unprecedented catastrophe that is hitting the world.”

What catastrophe? I thought. I had not had the TV on all day.

Apparently, over the past few hours, all the men in the world were dying. In an instant, they were going from perfectly fine to dead. It was affecting the whole world, large cities, isolated islands, even Antarctic research stations. All of had all males dropping dead. The only surviving men were ones in quarantined rooms, with no contact with the outside world.

I ran over and turned on our satellite TV in the living room. The first image I saw was a Japanese baseball player winding up to pitch. In mid-throw, he collapses, like he was a marionette, with his strings snipped.

“Dad!” I exclaimed to myself, and ran to my cellphone and dialed his number. The distance to the nearest cell tower made our connection spotty at best. I got lucky and managed to get my call to go through.

My mother answered.

“Mom? How’s Dad?”

“He feels just fine. But of course all the men said that, just seconds before they collapsed.

“We are in the hospital. But there is not anything the medical staff can do. None of them show any symptoms until they suddenly keel over dead.”

“At least he is still alive,” I said.

“Well, Hawaii seems to be one of the last places in the world to be affected.”

It was about that time, when our signal got cut off. We were used to that. I thought about calling her back, but I had said all I could think about saying, so I let it go.

I went back to the TV and watched more coverage of the ongoing disaster. Airplanes were falling out of the air. Some stewardesses were trying to land their flight, but were hindered by the lack of air traffic controllers. Trucks had careened out of control and caused carnage everywhere.

It made me glad I was in an area with low population density.

Suddenly, in the front yard, I heard a voice. “Hello! Anyone here?”

It was a man! With them falling left and right, this may be my last chance to actually see one.

I went out front and saw a tall lanky white man wearing a khaki shirt and shorts, knee-high socks and hiking boots. He had bushy gray hair and a bulbous nose. I thought he was in his sixties.