Living on the Edge of the World

People sometimes ask me why I choose to live at the edge of the world - but most people wouldn’t understand my answer. 

Three years ago, I was working a day job at a newspaper printing press. Not the most exciting job in the world, but it was something. The pay was good, the benefits were alright, and I didn’t have to work before eleven in the morning, so it was fine by me. 

One Friday morning, as I was throwing the first paper through the press, I got a phone call from a friend from college, Adam. Adam was frantic, and honestly the phone call was a bit confusing. He kept mumbling about the end of the world. He also said something along the lines of “your cat is a big idiot,” so I just wrote it off as him being drunk. Even so early in the day, that wasn’t a stretch for Adam. 

A couple of hours later, the sun was setting. That’s not right, I calculated the time in my head, I was only at work for 4 hours today. I squinted my eyes at the bright horizon and made my way to my car. By the time I hit the driver’s seat, the sky was dark. 

“Now I know this isn’t right,” I muttered to myself. 

I drove home, but I was finally starting to get a little nervous about everything that was happening. The day had gone from strange to stranger in a matter of a few hours. All I wanted to do was sleep, especially since it was getting so dark. 

When I approached my house, the sky was pitch black. Not a star or the moon in sight. It was 5:00pm. The exhaustion from the week had hit me, though, so I shrugged it off and went inside to eat dinner and go to bed.

At around 5:30, when I was making myself a peanut butter sandwich because I was too tired to deal with cooking, I heard a loud cracking noise from outside. It sounded like when a rockslide is about to start - but not how it sounds in real life. How it sounds on TV when they add extra effects to make it even louder and more dramatic. 

Concerned, I looked out my living room window. I could not believe my eyes when I saw what was happening. 

It appeared as though the Earth had split in half, and my living room window just happened to overlook the exact dividing line. Where the other side of the Earth should have been, there was only darkness and the vast abyss of space. Naturally, I freaked the fuck out. I knew I could not be dreaming. There was no way I would dream something that wild. 

I called Adam immediately. I could have tried my parents or my sister or something, but no, I called Adam. Because he told me this would happen. 

With all of the apocalypse narratives out there, you would have thought that when the world split in half, the technology would be unusable. But it wasn’t - at least not right away. So when I called Adam, he picked up before it even rang once.

“Holy shit, dude,” I half-yelled into the phone.

“I told you, Miles, I told you.” 

He hung up.

“What the fuck?” I whispered. I was so utterly confused, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I called my parents, my sister, and a couple of close friends - everyone was alright. Well, no one was alright, but they were alive, and that’s all I cared about. 

Once I had checked on everyone, I decided to go outside my house. I immediately regretted that decision, as the outside world - or half a world? - was very chaotic. People were shouting in the streets. Someone’s car had slammed into some kind of invisible force field at the edge of the Earth. I didn’t bother venturing further into society, because I knew it would be the same thing everywhere. 

I went back inside and stared at the chaos from the comfort of my own home. Then, two hours later, I went to bed.

---

When I awoke, the whole night had passed. It was six in the morning, but it was still pitch black outside. I looked out the window, and the crowd had mostly dispersed. There were a few stragglers, but not enough to cause any kind of ruckus. I decided to venture closer to the place that Earth had divided itself, just to check it out.

I changed out of the clothes I had fallen asleep in into some sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt, and eased my way outside. My front door was hardly 500 feet away from the Earth’s division. I cautiously approached the force field that the car had run into, and pressed my hand against it. A huge wave of energy moved through me - it felt like I was on the receiving end of a blanket’s static shock, but throughout my whole body. I was so surprised by it, I didn’t move immediately. I let the shock run through me, and I didn’t make a sound.

When it was over, I stepped away and blinked a couple of times to reorient myself. Something felt very wrong. My body didn’t feel like my own anymore. I felt like a part of me had left when I touched the border between Earth and space. 

I decided to call Adam again to get more information from him. If anyone could tell me what was going on, it was him. But when I tried to call him, my phone couldn’t get a signal. Then I tried to call my parents, and it wouldn’t connect for them either. I called my sister, and it finally went through. She hadn’t been able to reach our mom and dad either, so we both started to panic a bit. 

It was after I spoke with my sister that I realized they would have been on the other side of the divide. Communication was officially cut between the two sides of Earth.

---

Months went by without any contact from the other side of the planet. News stations set up broadcasts from our side to keep us all updated on any developments they knew about. Almost everyone in what the news was now deeming “Border Towns” had evacuated to cities further from the force field. Many citizens who remained at first ended up with “split sickness,” which was basically flu-like symptoms from close proximity to the border. Those citizens who had at first remained soon relocated to avoid further illness. 

Now, I am pretty much the only person to remain near the border. There are few willing to risk the close proximity, especially when we still have no idea what caused this. But I need to stay.

I tried to move after the first week. Nearly all of my neighbors had already left, and I wanted to be close to my sister, as she was the only one I cared about that hadn’t been separated from me in the “Great Divide” (as they now refer to it). But after about a week living with her, I started having nightmares. I’d dream about horrible things happening to the ones I loved if I didn’t return to the border. I would wake up in the middle of the night sweating, with the same feeling of energy flowing through me that happened when I first touched the divide. I would sometimes sleepwalk in the direction of my old home, only waking when my sister called me worried.

I couldn’t keep worrying my sister like that, so I moved back. And now, I spend day and night trying to figure out why this wall is calling to me. Staring into the abyss of space, the darkness at the edge of East Earth, waiting for it to answer my questions.

So, for everyone who asks why I live at the edge of the world: it’s because I have to. It’ll be worse if I don’t. And whoever did this: they chose me to solve it.