Again and again we hear the broadcast - ‘The sky isn’t falling.’ Why would they say that?
It’s the first indicator that we’re not dealing with something that doesn’t think like a human. Bunkered deep below the earth in whatever crumbling infrastructure we had before the sunburst, people cling onto the hope that this might all blow over. The broadcasts might tempt the most desperate to go outside again. But those of us who hold onto the memory of what happened to the people outside when it happened can’t bring themselves to so much as look out a window.
Weeks pass. Food and water run in short supply, then the power dies. But the broadcasts continue. Through dead radios, broken screens, we hear the assurance. ‘The sky isn’t falling.’
Paddy Dobson
10th February 2023