I wish I could tell you I didn’t know how it started. I wish I could say it happened gradually and that nobody saw it coming. I wish I could tell you we all had ample warning, but none of it is true, and I am nothing if not true.
It was the most organized coup in the history of the world and entirely unbelievable. I suppose that’s why nobody believed me and the few Unbelievers that remained when we tried to explain it. There were a few times I wasn’t sure I believed myself. Have you ever doubted yourself like that? Have you ever known the truth, spoke the truth, knew the facts beyond any shadow of a doubt, yet for a moment felt like it was all a lie? I suppose when you’re that honest a person, you have to stop and wonder occasionally if you’re even human, and once you’re convinced that you are, you have to doubt even the truth, for no human can ever be perfectly truthful. All humans are capable of deceit.
The truth of this matter had never been more real. Once the bodies began to disappear,  the whole world had one collective thought: what kind of trick is this? Within minutes, however, live news casts and loud-mouthed preachers alike were sending out the call of Armageddon. Just like Revelations tells it, they cry, people are disappearing everywhere. Christians, followers of the one true God, are disappearing. Something like that anyway.
I didn’t hear the news right away because I was down in my lab. I never watch television there because it’s too distracting. When you work with the kinds of chemicals I do, you don’t want to be distracted even for a second.  The ironic thing about it was that I was holding the answer to the world’s problems in my hands, at least the prototype, but they would never know. By the time I’d finished that mixture on the day in question, the world had changed.
As soon as I resurfaced later that afternoon, I knew something was wrong. No, there were no panicked citizens crowding the streets; rather, it was dead silent. Understandable, since one sixth of the Earth’s population had vanished, but made worse by the fact that most people were crowding around their televisions at home, work, at school, and at whatever electronics store was in the vicinity.