There is something wrong with the sky.
It’s not an obvious thing, not a burning sun or a bruised and swollen moon. The sky is still blue in the day, black at night, but something about the way it stretches overhead, the way it presses down, feels too immense, too much like a vastness that was never there before. It’s as though the sky has grown too large for the world, or perhaps the world has shrunk so small it can no longer support it.
People don’t talk about it. Not really. They glance up, then look away, swallowing their unease like bitter medicine. Conversations drift toward the mundane—sports scores, office gossip, the price of eggs—but beneath every exchange, beneath every polite nod and weary smile, there’s a hunger for reassurance that no one can give.
Because the world is not right, and everyone knows it.
News reports speak in circumspect tones. “Unprecedented shifts” in climate. “Unusual economic trends.” “Temporary disturbances” in global communication networks. Every statement is a ghost of what it should be, lacking weight, avoiding definitive conclusions. Scientists on television smile too much, as if reassurance is a currency they are paid to dispense. Political leaders stand at podiums, speaking for hours without ever saying anything at all.
And yet, life continues. People go to work. They pay their bills. They take their children to school, and try to ignore the way the air feels heavier, the way the world seems stretched too thin, as if it might split at the seams at any moment.
It is not fear. Not yet. It is something slower, something more insidious. A creeping unease that tightens around the ribs but never quite crushes. A gnawing awareness that every plan made for the future is built on sand. But no one stops planning. To stop planning would be to acknowledge the unthinkable, and so weddings are booked, degrees are pursued, retirement funds are bolstered, and families still gather around dinner tables, talking about what they will do next summer, next year, next decade.
Governments remain silent. The news broadcasts talk about stock market fluctuations, minor political scandals, celebrity divorces. The distractions grow more frequent, more desperate. The unease mutates into something sharper, something that lives at the base of the spine—a primal fear unmoored from logic.
The final act of human civilization is a whisper, not a scream. It is the quiet, collective realization that something has already begun unraveling the world, thread by thread. That whatever is happening is not an event, but a process, and the process is nearly complete.