The Last Civilization

The conference was almost over. Nobody cared about the Neuroscience Conference however - at least not the millions watching the live broadcast from their homes. They were waiting for the CICP's report - the Committee for the Investigation of the Conscious Paraphenomena. The committee had announced yesterday to the public that they had made an important discovery - too important to be kept secret from the public. The public had a right to know. The report was now going to be revealed in a matter of seconds and people were overexcited, fidgeting around nervously: It's not everyday that you hear such news!

And then the representative of the committee came up forth from where he was hiding, and went up for the stand. He cleared his throat, -ahem-, twice, -ahem-, gulped some water and then slowly began his speech:

"Hello everyone, as you may all know… (some boring stuff for ten minutes straight)... we have been looking all this time for the throne of the mythical beast - Consciousness. We don't know if our ancestors had it, or when this idea of consciousness pervaded the whole public area of discourse. We do not know, and can hardly guess. It became so attached to the whole body of communication like a virus would however, that it became almost pointless to say "I am" without attributing to ourselves some spectral entity that hovers over the air and becomes ourself - this entity would "redeem" ourselves from the material world so to speak ...

That moment his speech was interrupted by a woman scientist from the Committee:

"but as you all know, there is this song which states it so well:
We are living in a material world,
And I am a material girl.

As she was saying this, her hands were outstretched as to show the wedding ring on her finger - her pride and joy. The public didn't see her however. The representative laughed heartily, and then continued:

"Umm yeah, well that sums it up really. For almost a hundred years we have been looking all over the brain for this beast, and it seems to have fled. And actually, we proved that it is nowhere to be found. The statement "I am" is just a tautology really : "I am, I exist in the material plane." Banishing the ghosts of our past - that is what we do. It is stupendously inefficient for mankind to be conjuring up these evanescent entities, when we should rather be focusing on the more immediate question at hand:
What are we having for lunch?"

"Bon appetit, ladies and gentlemen."

With these final words, the representative of the CICP declined from the stand, and joined his fellow scientists for the lunch served at the hotel - beef stroganov, white wine and many many more yummy deliciousness.

He had apparently forgotten to say "Don't panic" to the crowd of attendees though, and the millions more that were watching the event from their homes had already had their lunchs.

Panic ensued. It spread forward like a virus, or more than a virus, say an H-bomb. The representative had detonated the atom bomb which would itself go on to detonate the deuterium liquid inside the bomB - and what then, what sorrow, what gasping for air, what incredulous mischief, what horrendous tragedy, what blinding darkness, what a spiraling doom doom doom a what what a doom !

Time spinning off of its axis, millions fleeing back to their inward eye and finding no consolation, the mind's eye all gone, the earthquake shattering all the last remnants of the last civilization. "I am?" became "I amn't!" and all the millions and millions were saying "We were. And yet we are nowhere to be found!

"This is damn too irreal!"

People went on for their last supper, and then shriveled and dried inside out.