On That Last Gettin’-Up Mornin’

by Austine Osas

Service started with the normal songs of praise and worship.

The hall was packed full with worshipers, and when the preacher began speaking in tongues to the high heavens, her members followed suit. Her voice boomed from giant speakers placed strategically around the church building.

“The end of the world is at hand, my dear brothers and sisters, let’s pray to our eternally loving father, and let us implore him to forgive us our sins. Let’s thank him for the grace we have received, for the life we have been given, and the bounties we have been blessed with.”

The choir continued singing while the congregation prayed, their sonorous voices adding the needed spice to the beseeching words.

The preacher carried on with her praise, her voice torrid and piercing, unfolding as intended with the congregation shouting in unison, “Amen” as if it were going to change the outcome.

This was the last day. Humanity had been wiped out a century earlier but, prior to that, had transferred its consciousness to synthetic bodies.

A few minutes before the apocalyptic event, the preacher led the congregation out to see for one last time the beauty of the world they called home and the brightness of the rising sun before it incinerated to oblivion everything on earth.