Sam was watching the world end on TV, it’s surreal execution embarrassingly familiar.

“It’s like we didn’t even try” he said, looking down at his phone. He’d taken it out planning to call… and that was the first hiccup. Who did he call? The list seemed endless, people he’d want to make sure knew he cared and was thinking of them. Who didn’t he call? People with others they need to worry about, who could take or leave Sam’s earnest feelings. He hated this kind of thing, he was so bad at knowing where he was wanted. He stared at his phone.

“I don’t like the name.” He heard his oldest friend say from back in their living room.

“What?” Sam asked, smiling despite himself.

“’Gray goo’ I don’t like the name. It’s neither gray nor goo. People are taking video and it’s like a green-blue dust cloud.” Jean called back.

“Yeah, if the dust cloud were made of minuscule pirates.” Sam muttered, as he started an end-of-the-world group-chat and invited liberally.

hey all, end of the world am I right? I’ve got no words, but if anyone needs anything, even just to vent, hit me up. I love you all

That was good, right? No one could be upset at him for not reaching out. There were definitely people in the group that he’d never said he loved before, hopefully they wouldn’t care. They’d probably just think he meant it for a few or something. It was fine

“Pirates? I thought you were gonna say piranha. And then I was gonna say ‘piranha, more like goats.’ It eats everything.” “Yeah well, pirates break way more stuff than piranha… but maybe not goats.” Sam conceded as he walked back into the room, putting his phone away for now. He made sure his volume was turned up just in case.

“Anyway, I don’t like the name. Some people are calling it ‘the swarm’” but that just sounds like a bad b-movie.”

“what would you call it?” He asked Jean.

Jean puffed out a breath the way he did when he was thinking. “I don’t know, maybe something like an ‘entropy cloud’.”

“Boo, that's a terrible name. Besides, it’s not entropy,” Sam mocked his friend, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at Jean’s screen. “things are being made more ordered, not less, well, locally anyway. What about ‘conversion swarm’?” Sam really hoped Jean didn’t challenge him on the physics knowledge. He liked what he learned, but his understanding was still closer to art than science. He told people he was a physics faithful. He believed in it, trusted that the scientists and mathematicians knew what they were doing, but to him it was mostly magic.

“It’s not a very intimidating a name for the end of the world.” Jean objected. “Look at all the trouble calling climate change, ‘climate change’ caused. It sounds so normal nobody cared or took it seriously.”

“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 definitely could have got that HUM V.” It was an old inside joke. Not funny, but old, rooted all the way back in their tween years. It was comfortable, familiar.

“Yeah, that’s a loss. But this is exactly what I mean. just look at us, we’re sitting in our apartment reading news articles about ‘gray goo’ and ‘printer swarms’ and still not really taking it seriously.”

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

“I tried, but they’re on that camping trip, 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, they might have to drop nukes on these things. You call anyone?”

Sam checked his phone, “Damn.” People had already left the chat, not even a word in response. It was people he was least surprised by, the edge cases, but still. It was the end of the world, throw a guy a “good luck” or something to know you cared even a little.

“Sam?”

“Hmm, oh no. No idea what I’d say.” Sam shrugged a feigned nonchalance in complete opposition to his raging anxiety. He couldn’t just say that he couldn’t bring himself to call, and that he didn’t know why. It was either too terrible or too pitiful and he wasn’t sure which, it’s familiarity not withstanding.

Sam took a breath, he was getting too in his head. He relaxed his shoulders and made himself smile wryly. “Anyway, parents always like to freak out over the stuff that’s not important, like skipping class, so they can pretend things are fine when everything’s on fire. They’re happier that way.”

“You mean, sort of like what we’re doing now?” Jean said, smiling back.

Sam’s phone beeped, it was his step dad saying to stay safe and stay indoors and not to count the US army out yet. That guy. “Yeah, I suppose. People are saying to stay indoors, so camping is probably out.” “What will doors do?” Jean gestured with his phone at the TV. “I saw a video of the Eiffel tower blown away in minutes, like it was made of dust. I don’t think doors are gonna stop it.”

“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, seriously. We’ve both seen or read enough sci-fi to know this is doomsday.”

“Pretty sure the super-villain-” Sam started to quip.

“Sam.” Jean was not gonna let Sam pretend like he could ignore this.

Sam sighs “Yeah. Okay. It’s doomsday.” He would have to call his family. Even maybe some who didn’t care whether or not he cared. He really didn’t want to.

“So. Shouldn’t we do something?” Sam’s friend asked him, somehow ignorant of his own actions. He really would like to be high at this moment, but he was out.

“Got any weed?” he asked, knowing that there was a decent chance Jean did.

“Weed? Really? We’d be paranoid about every breeze and spec of dust.”

Sam smirked, “You’re out too huh?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some Irish Whiskey though.”

Lowered inhibitions helped Sam make those calls. And now he was grateful his phone had no signal, because he was so embarrassed he could die.

He lay in bed wishing Jean had had more alcohol. Jean was a lightweight and was out. Sam had gotten drunk enough to have fun for a bit, but he was sobering up and wasn’t tired. Sighing, he got up and walked out to the living room. At some point he’d turned down the volume on his phone. The group chat caught on. He facilitated some farewells and got some of his own. It had been good, but not enough. He was glad to have talked with his family at least. In the end he didn’t chat long. Jean never got through to his parents, he called a few people, but pretty quick he was alone. So Sam didn’t linger too much. Of course, as the alcohol kept flowing he may have confessed undying love to his middle school crush. Not Jean, Jean knew and Jean was straight and Sam knew, and that was fine. It was weird sometimes but fine. Jean had kissed him. End of the world best friend kind of thing. but it was more funny than romantic, and not really embarrassing, at least not past the moment. The number of people he confessed undying love to, on the other hand, that would haunt him well past his death he was sure.

Sam walked out into the living room, the TV was muted but they were still showing clouds of nanobots converging on skyscrapers, engulfing them completely. Cities were turned to Dust in hours, and the cloud of nanobots just kept growing and multiplying. North and South America hadn’t been hit until well after Asia and Europe. Sam knew Africa was hit, and Australia too, but most of that was from satellite footage picking up the swarm like they were a giant weather front.

In America, it looked like the swarms had thinned out and followed highways to cities. But he could already seeing a swarm from had formed on the east coast, and was pressing west, especially in the south. Washington was gone.

Sam could literally hear humanities hourglass running out. Which was weird, because that’s not how metaphors work. Sam looked around and glanced at the doorway, where there was no longer a door. A greenish cloud of energy floated silently into the room.

“Fucking shit!” Sam swore, stumbling back over the furniture, deeper into the living room. There was only one door into the apartment. He was trapped, what was he supposed to do. He spent to whole day feeling like he was too small to do anything but wait for the end, and now here the end was and he still couldn’t do anything but wait.

He heard Jean shout something from his room, but was transfixed by what he was watching. The cloud slid into the room, and it was like the sides were sheered clean off as it came in. But the same was happening on all sides of the cloud, like it was a 3 dimensional kaleidoscope shape, shifting symmetrically to fit through the door.

“Huh.” Sam said. “It sort of reminds me of Aero Gel”

The Cloud didn’t tense. It didn’t shift. A tendril grew, shooting out in a streak past Sam’s ear, narrowly m-

***

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