The internet was a thousand times louder than usual today. Not because of some political scandal. Not because of another celebrity meltdown. Not even because of the massacre of corrupt firm executives in an African country that was already fading from the headlines.
No.
This was different.
At exactly 10:30 AM, 1.2 billion people vanished from the face of the earth.
Not a single one of them screamed.
Not a single warning or cause.
Just a mere second, they were all over the place, and suddenly in the very next instant, they were all gone. Of course at first it wasn't even noticeable, which weirdo would know such a horrific future would happen...unless they were mentally insane.
Which most earthlings already were.
Diana was somewhere in the world driving down a busy road. The significant age gap between her and her younger sibling was explained by the fact that her father had remarried. On this lovely morning, Diana was singing along to the morning radio songs while driving her younger brother to elementary school.
She was very late, but who could blame her, she had better things to do and being in this position was not in her schedule for today.
Her face was expressionless as she had both hands on the steering wheel. Playing with a small toy robot, her younger brother sat in the backseat, completely unaware of the outside world, swinging his plump little legs and grinning sweetly.
Then—
Diana vanished.
Now without a pilot, the small vehicle immediately veered sharply into the adjacent lane where aother driver drove his own truck. Before the truck driver could even register what was happening and halt his truck, the small vehicle had completely veered out of control and directly into his path.
The explosion happened instantly all at once. The highway was engulfed in a flaming bloom of steel and smoke so heavy one wouldn't even be able to breathe, and cars nearby were showered with hot shrapnels.
Other drivers instantly veered of as well, unfortunately crashing into one another like a set of dominoes. Horns blared loudly as tires screeched, and while it was happening more people across the globe were screaming and dying.
But Diana's little brother? Somehow, he managed to survive miraculously. He sat firmly in the backseat, while his sister's seat belt was still in place…but now empty.
Miles away in New Delhi, a young Indian construction worker operated an overhead crane to expertly unload a stack of heavy metal rods onto the scaffolding below. He carefully held the levers with his gaze partially fixed on the men controlling the burden underneath him.
And then—
He was gone.
The machine, now unmanned, lurched forward. The massive bundle of rods slipped loose, tumbling straight down.
The first spear-like rod tore through a supervisor's shoulder, pinning him to the cement. Another impaled a worker in the chest before he could yell. The remainder of them smashed into the scaffolding, bringing men crashing down, their frail bones shattering on the streets below.
The construction manager, furious at the sudden accident, stormed toward the machine box.
He ripped open the door, ready to curse the incompetent fool inside...
Nothing.
The seat was empty.
Far away across the world, in an American institution, a young student called Michael stood in front of a packed lecture hall. He was explaining what he understood about the lecturer's topic…
"…and that's why quantum mechanics suggests that—"
He stopped mid-sentence…why?
Even though he had only just finished speaking, the answer was clear to all of the students in that lecture hall—he was no longer there!
Michael had disappeared.
The heavy microphone Michael had been holding clattered to the floor, and a loud, annoying screech sounded through the speakers. The professor didn't realize it at first; he thought the student he called out had just dropped the microphone as he turned away. However, no one paid attention to that; how could they when 90% of the hall disappeared in unison as well? but the professor was still oblivious and didn't instantly notice, in his mind the student he called out just dropped the microphone while he was looking away.
'such mockery!'
So the annoyed professor grimaced and turned to face him with the intention to berate him and even potentially suspend him if the boy acted to arrogantly, he was already used to gen z temperment in his hall.
But when he turned around, nobody stood where Michael previously once was.
"Michael?" he stammered, as he then turned to face the now eerily silent classroom, if it was any other day he would have appreciated the silence but this time, his body shuddered with cold dread.
Within a few more seconds of silence before his very eyes, five more students in the room vanished simultaneously, their seats left eerily empty.
Gasps filled the hall as the professor's stomach twisted in dread, now he knew something was definetely wrong.
Because soon enough, there was no one left.
What started as a few disappearances soon turned into a global catastrophe. Planes dropped from the skies as young pilots disappeared while in mid-flight, their elderly co-pilots struggling to take control of the unmanned aircrafts.
Hospitals descended into chaos as both patients and young physicians vanished leaving a huge amount of chaos behind.
Governments went silent as youths connected to world leaders, military commanders, and entire security teams simply ceased to exist.
Within an hour, the world was on fire.
Riots soon erupted in major cities. The internet drowned in panic; social media flooded with frantic messages:
"My sister just vanished while making breakfast."
"Please tell me someone knows what's happening! My brother was just playing basketball with me when he suddenly disappeared"
"Is this the Rapture? Am I next???"
"HELP!!!"
Conspiracy theories exploded online. The end of the world? Alien abduction? A secret government experiment gone wrong. Only one thing was certain: humanity was going to be altered forever.
Nobody knew if that was even a good or bad thing. And nobody knew who would come next.
It was unparalleled. A tragedy unlike any in human history. Following the global disappearances, the entire world sought answers. Governments, scientists, intelligence agencies, and religious leaders are all desperate to explain the impossible.
But who was to blame for something so mysterious?
'God?', If so, how then could people complain when they never believed in him in the first place.
The immediate consequences were catastrophic. Millions died in the hours following the disappearances—crashes, explosions, medical failures, structural collapses, and blind panic.
passengers vanished mid-flight, causing chaos and sending airliners plummeting into cities.
Student doctors and nurses disappeared during critical internship surgeries, leaving their patients to bleed out.
Factory workers vanished, causing machinery to malfunction, and igniting fires that consumed entire buildings.
Trains, ships, nuclear power plants— every system suffered from the sudden loss of its young operators.
Governments were already overwhelmed when statisticians and analysts pulled the first charts.
Within hours, it was revealed to the public.
'1.2 billion people were missing.'
'Every single person who had vanished was between the ages of twenty and thirty. The prime of humanity was gone in seconds.'
'Not a year older than thirty and not a year younger than twenty'.Every single individual born in 2004 was also included, they were simply gone.
'They were meant to turn twenty-one next year', a mother cried of her twin boys.
Now, they never would. Out of 8.4 billion humans, every twenty-year-old till exactly thirty years old was simply erased from existence.