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The Great Pause

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When the apocalypse comes we’ll still be on a conference call.

Across town, someone will be in the middle of writing a guest post about living your best life.

Across the world, hundreds of collective arguments will happen about who’s gonna do the dishes.

And after we’re all gone, it will be well-documented that Zoom stock was at an all time high (although we likely won’t acknowledge that the stock ticker is actually ZM, not ZOOM, which is another company entirely and the one that everyone mistakenly bought).

And it will be at some point — long after we’re gone — that the aliens will find it safe enough to land.

Or!  Maybe a band of survivors will emerge from obscure pockets; the ones who smartly invested in underground bunkers while the rest of us just as thoughtfully contemplated dinner options on GrubHub.

Some will call this period in history the Extended Pause. A parody blog will surface called The Extended Paws. It will get more traffic than the original site.

“It smells like campfire!” someone will comment as California burns to the ground.

A teen in cut-off Levi’s will chug a twenty-dollar White Claw as a dog walker pauses to scan the headlines about bank bailouts and regular families circling the drain as the gang of canines squat.

And it will go on, and on — new strains of the virus will emerge until a ragtag band of responsible adults (burners?) will at last establish successful working policies.

When the next apocalypse happens a woman will be rolling down the boardwalk on pink roller-skates taking a selfie.

And we’ll still be on a sales call.