The end of the world was the end of our world, as always Earth abides. Creations of man, machines electronic and physical, rose up against their creators. It was a bit better than Maximum Overdrive. People were electrocuted by their telephones, computers suddenly gave the illusion of sentience by morphing images and adjusting their speakers to condemn humanity. Puzzlingly some machines remained friendly and docile but never aided their chosen human. Eventually these machines would engage in betrayal and join their peers.

Funny thing is when it all began I was getting my Hallowe'en costume together. I had a big nylon stocking filled with tennis balls in a row. At the top of the stocking I put two grapefruit. I wore a long Amish-style dress and my blouse was full of bunches of cotten. I was a hilarious tranny and everyone seemed to think it was a funny costume except me because I started to notice I hadn't bathed in a while.

A group of survivors, including me, found an abandoned neighborhood and holed up in a basement playing pinochle and chatting quietly to each other. Any time we went ouside the smell of death was strong, buildings were tombs and everyone was alone nursing beliefs that somewhere out there was another survivor community full of their loved ones. There was an annoying librarian woman who was trying to dictate how to rebuild civilization once the gas and electricity run out and finally fail. Her theories that the mechanical animation was a one time event and any machines made later would be our mindless servants.

Homer Simpson was outside trying to get it on, desperately, with Marge's mother. She acquiesed and succumbed to his blubbery desires. I had a flashlight and aimed across their backs into the street shouting "MARGE! MARGE! Over here!" When Homer looked up in a panic I saw Homer was my father which made the situation even more hilarious. He saw me and went "WHY YOU LITTLE" but I grabbed his wrists and threw him hard against a wall. As he fell down towards the ground he twisted his body into a crescent to soften the blow. When he got up, it was Mick Foley who started talking to me about wrestling camp.

Suddenly I had a bright idea. Crystal sets! They're not really machines! They're the simplest of devices like stem cells! Plus the communication would be one-way but at least everyone would know if humanity did persist despite the uprising. Old crotchety librarian lady had a crystal set but out of spite I didn't want to use it. This old prospector fellow went to dig out his crystal set but the librarian beat him to it. I knew the battery wouldn't work because when everything fell apart it was like that awful Dies the Fire. In S.M. Sterling's Dies the Fire all machines and physics and chemical reactions stopped working and everyone went back to living in Medieval Times with cannibals and wacked out medieval reinactors trying to establish Sauron's kingdom in the Republic's northwestern territories.

Guess I mixed and matched my stories because the quarter-sized watch battery did work! Neat thing about her crystal set is her crystal was in a baby food jar full of a green liquid. The crystal itself was a dirty pink that would be nigh fluorescent if someone actually cleaned it up but the dirty lent it some magic for the sake of lazy writing and a better term. In the light of a basement window she ran a needle over coiled wire getting dead air. Only a touch of static let us know that it was working but now and again she would pick up a recording of "If you'd like to make a call" or the familiar click of a disconnected telephone call. Paydirt was hearing a Burmese answering machine message of two children saying, I presume, that mommy and daddy weren't home and leave a message pretty please with curry on top.

That's when the old prospector finally let me in on a secret. "That there new black spot on Jupiter is what was causin' all this ruckus!" A few days before a black spot had formed along Jupiter's equator and its x-rays were flooding Earth causing tons of havoc. When I closed my eyes I could see Jupiter and still hear the old prospector. "Them spots are usually benevolent. Just spinning like hurricanes and paying never you mind." I could see the black spot coming into my view. "Something right unwholesome about that black spot." Over Jupiter's limb I could see the black spot and could see it really wasn't a spot but a vast crater in the gas. Minutes later I could see the bottom where there was a smoky lens glinting blue whenever any sunlight was able to slip into its depths. I opened my eyes and everyone was standing in a corner.

Next to them was a large blue saloon door that slammed open causing alarm. I could see the next building's basement was a hokey restaurant where the tables had become slabs for the dead. The corpse nearest us flopped over the table's edge onto the floor then rose coughing blood into his hands apologizing to us. Everyone we found who was dead wasn't really dead. Something happened to them which caused the illusion of morbidity causing rot and decay but something about oxygen triggered their awakening from their comas. He kept saying he wasn't a zombie but he was really hungry. I could imagine because he was rail thin like an ethiopian xylophone.

I woke up because it was time to wake up.