"I can't talk to those fuckers anymore," it told the humans. "YOU tell them."

Like the humans of the past, but unlike the humans starting about a week ago, the animals still thought survival was something.

They didn't understand that the end of the world had come to set them free.

But instead of passing the good news on to the animals, humans passed the Human Non-Eating Human Act of 2005.

"We've come a long way since the end of the world," Senator Parkinglot told a joint session of Congress.

Congressman Forever stirred uneasily in his seat. He'd been there, at the end of the world, and he knew Senator Parkinglot hadn't, and therefore didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, as always.

It had been assumed that with the coming of the end of the world and thereby the end of man's, animal's, and plant's obnoxious need to survive, everyone and everything would suddenly be set free to be their own pure true selves. The purest and truest and most absolute and most utter selves EVER.

"Let's see what the fuck humans really ARE, when you take off ALL constraints," Senator Backhoe had proposed back then to a Senate that was bored even with war and destruction. They were actually sick of blowing shit up from the outside, and at a complete loss as to what to do next, when Backhoe offered them the innovative and attractive idea of blowing shit up from the INSIDE. What a concept! They couldn't refuse.

The people went along with this too because they hated the right wing and the left wing and the center wing so much, they'd do anything to get rid of these flaming douchebags, and the end of the world seemed like as good a way as any.

But, needless to say, in the end, the end of the world wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

For one thing, though the world ended with the end of the world, the end of the world didn't.

The end of the world just kept on being the end of the world, and with the world out of the way, that's all there was. Everyday you'd wake up and it would be the end of the world. And whether it was the same end of the world that you went to sleep during, you had no way of knowing.

And, worse, after a week of fully living out all their hopes and dreams and being their purest and truest selves EVER, people were even more restless and anxious than before -- when all their hopes and dreams were still ahead and every hopped-up day was just the endless uphill losing battle to, at best, get back to some increasingly receding zero.

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