Some called it the Day the Earth Stood Still, others called it the Silence. Lots said the End of the World. Some of the more devout even tried to call it the Rapture, though most backed away from that once the implications had begun to set in. But mostly, those that remained settled on The Big Empty, as in “When the Big Empty came…” You could hear the capital letters in their voices, too.
The world didn’t end with a bang. There wasn’t a nuclear exchange or plague, which is what most people probably imagine when they hear the term “The End of the World.” It wasn’t the sun going supernova or an asteroid hitting the planet or an alien invasion, or any of a million Hollywood endings
The world ended quietly, when almost six billion people simply vanished. On the 8th of May the world was emptied, and nobody knows why.
Nobody knows why the ones that didn’t vanish were left behind, either.