Jean-Luc was doom scrolling on his phone like most everyone else in America, the rest of the world being presumed dead. According to social media it was a ‘gray-goo scenario’. Some kind of nanotech had appeared out of no where, then promptly began multiplying by eating everything.

Jean sat in the living room of his apartment. He had been watching the news with his room mate, but Sam had left to make some calls. The TV was muted, but scenes of frenzy and destruction played out on every channel. In less than a day, swarms of nanobots swept across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Satellite imagery had continued to track the exponential growth and spread of the swarm. Jean figured it was only a matter of time before it crossed one of the oceans.

He sighed and leaned back into the couch “I don’t like that name.” Jean said, commenting a cry-laughing emoji to a post claiming this was all the rapture.

“What?” Sam asked from the other room.

“’Gray-Goo’, I don’t like that for the name of the apocalypse. For one, it’s neither gray nor goo. From the videos it looks more like a green-blue fog or dust cloud.

“Yeah, if the dust cloud was made of minuscule pirates” Sam commented.

Jean was caught off-guard by the imagery and snorted out a harsh laugh, having expected something else from his friend. “Pirates? I thought you were going to say piranha, then I was gonna say ‘Piranha, more like goats’… because it eats everything. Get it?”

“Yeah well, pirates break way more stuff than piranha… but maybe not goats.” Sam conceded as he walked back into the room.

“Anyway,” Jean said to bring the conversation back to his original point. “I don’t like the name. Some people are calling it “the swarm” but that just sounds like a bad b-move.”

“What would you call it?” Sam asked. Jean was sitting on the couch, but the living room was small and the doorway was more of a wide arch, so the couch stuck out. Sam sat on the back and spun around so his feet were on the cushions.

Jean puffed out a breath in uncertain thought. “I don’t know, maybe something like an ‘entropy cloud’?”.

“Boo, that’s a terrible name. Besides, it’s not entropy. “Sam said leaning down to get a better look at Jean’s screen. Things are being made more ordered, not less, well, locally anyway. What about ‘conversion swarm’?”

Jean shrugged unimpressed. “it’s not a very intimidating name for the end of the world. Look at all the trouble calling climate change ‘climate change’ caused. It sounds so normal people confused it with weather, they didn’t care and didn’t take it seriously.”

Sam smiled in realized triumph. “Yeah but, then again, climate change didn’t actually get the chance to end the world. The printer swarm’s beat it to the punch. I told you I could have gotten that Humvee.”

Jean rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah, what a loss. But this is exactly what I’m talking about. Just look at us. We’re sitting in our apartments reading news articles about ‘gray-goo’ and ‘printer swarms’ and still not really taking it seriously. As far as we know the other half of the world is completely gone. I just don’t know how to make it feel real.” Jean’s voice was uncertain and almost pleading at the end, not that Sam would poke at him for it.

“I mean, there’s not really much you and I can do about it right? Did you call your parents?” Sam asked.

“I tried, but they’re on that camping trip.” Jean hoped they had no idea what was going on. This was an ‘ignorance is bliss’ moment for sure. What was the point in knowing the end was coming, if you could only wait helplessly for it to come?

“It went straight to voice-mail. I wonder if we could get out to them? It’s probably safer out in the middle of no-where anyway.”

The swarms were spread out, but they seemed to move more deliberately near cities. The clouds circled like storms over cities, but in forested or rural areas the coverage was sparse. Besides, “They might drop nukes on these things and the cities that get attacked. Did you call anyone?” Jean knew Sam had gotten up to do that, but he hadn’t heard him talking. The guy probably sent a text.

Sam didn’t reply immediately. He was looking at his phone and swore softly.

“Damn.” His voice was hushed, a reverent whisper at the doom he was likely seeing on his screen.

“Sam?” Jean prodded him, worried things had become real for his friend. It would probably be good for them to admit the truth of things to themselves. If nothing else it would give them time to find and give closure. He still would have preferred the peace of ignorance, but it looked like he’d have to settle for the peace of nihilism instead.

Jean watched Sam visibly pulled himself together. “Hmm? Oh no. No idea what I’d say. Anyway, parents like to freak out over the stuff that’s not important, like skipping class, so they can pretend things are fine when everything’s really on fire. I think they’re happier that way.”

“You mean, sort of like we’re doing now?”Jean asked, the two smiling wryly at each other.

“Yeah I suppose. People are saying to stay indoors, so camping is probably out.”

Sam was probably right that it wouldn’t work. If nothing else, they were too far away. He had to admit, he was a little relieved he wouldn’t be breaking the bad news to them though. Still the reasoning was weak and Jean called it out.

“What will doors do?” he asked, “I saw a video of the Eiffel tower blown away in minutes, like it was made of dust. I don’t think doors are going to stop it.” Hiding in ignorance wasn’t an option. They both knew better, and they both hated willful ignorance. It was time to admit somethings to themselves.

“Well, who knows, maybe they just want people to stay in doors so the people in charge can get where they need to go easier.” Sam was reaching. The US may have the most bloated military in the world, but anything that could wipe out most of the cities and populations of the world in a day wasn’t going to be impressed.

“Sam. Seriously. We’ve both seen or read enough sci-fi to know that this” Jean gestured at the destruction playing out on their various screens, “is doomsday.”

“Pretty sure the super-villain ‘Doomsday’ -”

“Sam.” Jean pressed. Sam could be stubborn.

His roommate sighed. “Yeah. Okay. It’s doomsday.”

Jean smiled, having won. Well, all that was left to do was to get the utmost out of the end. “So. Shouldn’t we do something?”

“Got any weed?” Sam asked hopefully. Jean would have to disappoint, The two had decided to try going sober for a month to reduce their tolerances. So naturally they got blitzed out of their minds on what they had left. Sam had back slid already, but Jean had been doing well, so long as you considered a little alcoholism ‘doing well’. He had definitely been drinking more to compensate. On the one hand, these were not his best decisions, on the other hand, it didn’t look like it was going to matter. “Weed, really? We’d be paranoid about every breeze and speck of dust.” Sam smirked, “You’re out too, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some Irish whiskey though.” Jean smiled back. It really was the better choice for the end of the world.

****

Jean woke up to darkness with a start. There was a scrambling and crashing sound from down the hall. Jean heard muffled movement and Sam yelled. “Fucking shit!”

“What? What is it?” Jean wrestled himself from his drunken sprawl across his bed, and hurried to his door where fear made him hesitate. After a moment of indecision, he cracked opened the door to peer down the hall. To the left he could see through the entrance of the living-room, and Sam’s face. He was looking in fear at a glowing blue-green cloud, if clouds had flat surfaces and corners. The fear on Sam’s face became resigned, almost uncaring.

“Huh.” Sam said. “It sort of reminds me of Aero Gel.” And then the printer swarm jabbed a jagged tendril forward past Sam, hooking around to stab into the back of his neck, just at the base of his skull. Sam fell as the swarm engulfed him.

During the course of the night's farewell drinking, Jean had made himself a tinfoil hat. It was a joke. And it was the closest he could get to a reasoned response to an event so far outside his control. There were no reasonable responses for plebs like himself They just had to hope enough competent people were in power that anything might be salvaged. Between the two, Jean had more trust his tinfoil hat than he did his elected officials.

For better or worse, Jean ran, leaving behind a friend he couldn’t save.

Jean ran low and on tiptoes, fighting fear and lingering drunkenness, all the while hoping the swarm was distracted enough that he could slip out the front door.

From the corner of his eye Jean saw another tendril split off from the cloud surrounding Sam. It was fast, but fast like a baseball, not like a bullet. Jean tucked down his head and scrunched up his shoulders, as he cut through the open-floor kitchen. Feeling distinctly exposed, he clapped a hand over the back of his neck where the tendril had struck Sam. Panic made his breath ragged and his movements clumsy and loud, the swarm would be coming for him.

The front door was just a pile of dust, Jean lurched past it toward the stairwell. Just as he though he might be clear, pain tore through his hand and bit into his neck, the hit knocked him into a trip over empty space. Instinctively he dropped his hand from his neck to grab the rail, but his hand was slick with wet blood and slipped, sending him into a sprawl, uncontrolled fall down the flight.

He was up and running again, out the front door the moment he got his feet beneath him. There were screams nearby and the sounds of repeated gunfire. Jean could only think “idiot”, before remembering that his own futile effort had been to make a tinfoil hat. Of course, it seemed like his hat might have worked, somehow. The gun was still dumb. No way bullets were stopping this thing.

Here and there Jean saw hints of the swarm. He hadn’t noticed in the glow of the swarm in his apartment, but the power was out. Buildings were intact, but Jean could see the green-blue glow through empty doorways and opened windows. They weren’t moving as a great fog bank. Maybe they were spread too thin, maybe this was just a vanguard to them. He didn’t know. But he thought he had been proven right about doors not accomplishing a thing. It would probably take weeks on foot, but his only idea was to try to get to his family’s cabin up north, 300 miles away. He considered steeling a car, but it sort of defeated the goal of lying low. Not that there was any real hope.

Jean ran toward the edge of town until his lungs burned and he’d vomited, but eventually his exhaustion overcame his terror. It was oddly comforting to Jean that, even with death practically on his heals, his motivation refused to listen to reason. Turns out motivation really was a finite resource, and even the prospect of being eaten alive by minuscule goats can’t reignite it.

All the same, trying to push himself to keep motivated was a familiar internal battle, and Jean’s mental footing felt more stable because of it.

Sam was dead. But this wasn’t a great time to think about that. Lots of people were dead after all, and it really wasn’t a good time to think about that either.

Jean looked at his bloody hand, flexing it gingerly. He’d felt a sharp pain in his hand and his neck. Strangely, his hand wasn’t bleeding, there wasn’t even a mark.

That was probably bad, but Jean couldn’t really see how. Somehow, in all this, his tinfoil hat was still on his head, and for fuck-sake it made him feel embarrassed. He’d been running panicked through town wearing a tinfoil hat.

"I must have looked so stupid." he said to himself, knowing his perspective and priorities were seriously warped.

Jean took off the hat, and checked the back where he felt pain on his neck. Weirdly there was no dried blood staining the back of it. There were, however, little scorch marks on the foil right near the bottom, right where the tendril had struck.

*****

Jean had ran walked until he reached an edge of town. Well, mostly it had been walking, but it was urgent fearful walking. When he ran out of buildings and houses to hide behind, he began skirting the edge of town. He was looking for an area with more trees and less roads, hoping to avoid notice until he got away from people. The best chance he could see for surviving the near future was to isolate as much as possible. He would try to get to his family, then maybe try to get them to Alaska or something. Much to his surprise, when he saw the flickering light of a fire behind a burger shop at the edge of town, he found himself investigating.

Part of his curiosity was the smell. Clearly someone was cooking flame-broiled burgers over actual flames. As he got closer, he could see that someone had tried to block off the light from the cooking fire but hadn’t done the best job. Every bit of reason Jean had, told him to steer clear. This wasn’t a danger that could be overcome with numbers. And yet, he found himself sneaking closer. Before he knew it, he was sitting down to a burger with a man a his daughter. She looked to be about 11, and didn’t speak more than a few words the whole night. Well, it had been a hard day for everyone. Her father was barely any more talkative, but Jean felt wired and talked more than enough for all of them.

“Now I know what you’re thinking ‘That’s stupid, if the printer swarm can pierce a neck and hand, not to mention swallow the Eiffel tower, it can pierce or consume aluminum foil.’”

“Yup, pretty much what I’m thinking” the man sharing campfire looked to be in his late thirties, or early forties, and had a shotgun across his knees. His daughter had fallen asleep while Jean had talked.

“Yeah, I know, maybe aluminum is their one weakness, unlikely as that sounds?” Jean replied.

“Why?” the man asked.

“’Why’?” Jean asked back, unsure.

“Why would they have that weakness?” the man clarified. He’d shared his fire and food but not his name or his daughter’s. He also hadn’t asked for Jean's.

“Umm, a safety measure maybe?” Jean guessed.

“well lets think about our options. These things are either created or creatures. Not likely they’re creatures, since nothing like them has been seen on earth, and if they were from another planet they’d need a way to get here. We haven’t seen any ships. Much more likely they’re designed locally.”

“Right, that’s what most people think. They were probably created in some government lab or something.”

“And if they were designed locally” the man went on without acknowledging Jean had spoken “They’d either be designed for war-fare or utility.”

Sensing that the man wasn’t looking for input, and unsure where he was going with this anyway Jean just nodded.

“Now, if they’re designed for war-fare, it’d be stupid to give them a glaring weakness to aluminum. They could be stopped by anyone with a roll of foil and some tape. And in a pinch you could loose the tape.”

“Maybe, but it’s not like-” Jean said, trying to get a response in.

“If they’re designed for utility and just went hay-wire” The man continued, unconcerned with Jean’s input, “Then having an easy way to slow or stop them would make sense, but there’s one problem with that.”

Jean waited for a few seconds and the man just looked at him expectantly. Deciding this was the part where he was supposed to participate, Jean played along. “Okay, What problem?”

“If they built in weaknesses to aluminum, it means they’d have plans in place for just such an occasion. If nothing else, they’d spread the word that people could be kept safe by wallpapering a room, or car, in foil. Or more likely, they’d tell government officials to wallpaper auditoriums and such, and gather people together. But there’s been no word of that. In fact, as smart as you’d have to be to create something like this, you’d be stupid not to create multiple fail safes, but we’ve seen no sign of that either. That means that what’s happening is meant to happen by someone, or something local.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions. You’re trying to rule out aliens, but what about gods, or magic. What’s happening isn’t normal, isn’t easily explainable. Maybe it’s some extreme cosmic weather, or invaders from another dimension, or everything’s an ancestor simulation and this is some random input. This is uncharted territory that challenges our vary idea of normal. What’s possible and rational has changed.” Jean finally managed to argue.

“Kid, nothing’s changed. Which of us is really making more assumptions? I have seen that humanity is dumb and angry enough to intentionally destroy itself. There’s no doubt in my mind we brought this on ourselves. You, on the other hand, think your conspiracy hat stopped something that has wiped out most of the globe.

“Your tinfoil hat saved you by luck, a one in 7 billion chance. I wouldn’t hold out hope it’ll help you a second time.”

Jean shook his head. “Okay, but if it worked once, what would stop it from working again?”

“I worked in IT. I can tell you, every product has bugs. There’s always unique untested situations that create failure points. You said there were scorch marks on the foil? Well, aluminum powder is used in thermite. There may have been a small thermite-like reaction, from the iron in your blood and disintegrated aluminum mixing with whatever energy these things have. I think that was just one variable though, at best. Mostly, I think you just got lucky because the swarm in your apartment was too small to go after you and your friend. They tried to down you before you left, but they didn’t send enough to get the job done. Then between the mass of your hand, and a possible reaction with the aluminum, they failed. It was luck, plain and simple. Now maybe the foil helped, but mostly I think you weren’t a threat, weren’t a high priority. None of us are, individually. Otherwise the swarm would have abandoned your downed friend and consumed you whole.”

Jean had to admit the man had a point. They hadn’t chased him. There were still a bunch of potential reasons why that might be, but he had to admit, his hat probably didn’t save him.

That said, even though he’d been too embarrassed to wear the hat when he joined the man and his daughter, he hadn’t let it far from him. He doubted he would anytime soon.

“We’re done tho I think. My daughter’s asleep and peaceful for the moment. I don’t want to wake her up with more talking. There’s aluminum foil in the truck, take it if ya want. The truck too if you want, though on foot might be safer.” The man’s voice was low, and he was gazing sadly down at his daughter, softly stroking hair from her face.

Jean bit his lip. He didn’t want to take the truck, or to even leave their company, strangers tho they were. Even knowing it was likely safer on his own, he didn’t want to actually be alone. He was looking for the words to suggest they stick together when the man spoke again. Low and unyielding.

“You should go now, keys are in the truck.” He pointed and Jean reluctantly stood and gave the man a nod. He took a few steps into the darkness but paused when he heard the man speak again. A hitch in his voice. “I want her last moments to be restful. I don’t want her last hours to be filled with fear and uncertainty and despair. Love you Claire.”

Jean heard a rustle of movement as he turned back, fear racing reason to the logical conclusion. His eyes widened and he reached out as tho to try to stop what was coming. It happened too fast.

The man positioned the shotgun inches from his daughter’s sleeping head.

The sound of the gun buried Jean’s cry of protest before it was born.

He stumbled away shocked and sickened, confused and mostly numb as his mind and body tried to figure out what the best chemical to flood his brain with was.

His stumble made him trip backward and he vomited down his shirt as he hit the ground. Tears filled his eyes as another gun blast rang out and laughter broke wheezing from his lips. “He didn’t even try, he didn’t try!” Jean cried through hysterics.

Jean swore and scrambled to his feat as green-blue light swarmed in from the direction of the town, closing on the grizzly remains of the corpses. There was more of it than had been in Jean’s apartment. At least the jagged cloud seemed larger.

Jean was up and running full speed in moments. In a flash of reason he remembered he was holding the foil hat in his hand and pressed it against the back of his neck. It wouldn’t stop them from swarming him, but it might stop another tendril attack.

It didn’t. Jean died as he fled from a father who euthanized his own daughter to spare her this exact horror.