The year is 2013 or so; clocks having stopped working. There is much confusion in the world, as power grids are no longer stable in parts of the world where there were power grids. The damned Dutch and their windmills, happiest people on Earth. Our calendars have no meaning. Every day might as well be Monday.
I may be the sole survivor of The United Christian Lunar Church, after posing as a fellow believer traveling the world as a missionary with several of my now-obliterated brethren. I was working undercover for the now defunct NCIS and DEA since the UCLC was suspected of being a front for cocaine and heroin smuggling to the moon colony. Tranquility City, my foot.
I also had to keep an eye on Jews for Jesus, who tried as well to land on the moon, playing the "We're the chosen ones," card. No luck, except they had the sense to turn back, not quite ready for The Promised Land.
The Methodist-Episcopal offshoot of the UCLC tried the more practical approach to haven in TC. They brought casseroles and homemade pies, vats of real coffee. Sadly, their ship malfunctioned on take-off as they sang, "Here I am Lord".
I was left behind on the original ill-fated journey deliberately, which as I see it now, can only be described as Divine Intervention.
I wasn't always religious, not born into any religion nor born again. During conscription into the Mandatory Military of the USA on Earth, during basic training, you became a believer in whatever they wanted you to believe.
Astonished now that I once espoused reincarnation, in particular a past life in Pompeii (my Pompeiian body still encased in lava in some museum), one past life in Siberia and one in West Germany before The Wall "fell". I have dishes and art from that life but they're kept under lock and key, along with Hitler's diary.
Considered a Baby Boomer at some point after World War II ended and there became so many of us, the planet got confused and broken, overcrowded, even though China and lesser advertized countries began limiting families to One Child. Little did any of them know that the attempt would one day come back to haunt them, as most of their populations died during the worst nuclear winter ever. No bombs, no reactor meltdowns, no official explanation. Just unheard of cold everywhere, crop failures and frozen people in frozen houses. (If you find this writing alongside a frozen corpse, that will be me, just trying to preserve history for future generations, if there will be any.)
Of course, China as well as most of Europe had abolished the internet by then. Those who thought America's golden shores would offer opportunity died out as well. Autopsies had been proven Hazardous to Your Health, abolished as well, along with all artificial sweeteners. The FDA had a new, rather cavalier slogan: "Let them eat sugar." That, obviously caused various problems except for dentists, who became part of the elite one percent.
With the all-out banning of autopsies, many in the medical profession became jobless. Except for the ever helpful Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders who had been unknowingly supplied by Iraq (and possibly Iran) with sterilization chips that could be hidden under a freckle. These were inserted for free under the guise of swine flu immunization, of all things. Free, people lined up for months and months. Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, the preferred locations.
Peace was achieved in the Middle East, talk of some thirty year old nomad who reportedly performed odd miracles, but by this time, most citizens of the world didn't care how it was accomplished, just so long as it lessened bad news on television. There still was television, but back to black and white. Several radical but wealthy NGOs paid off out-of-work doctors to fudge some long term studies about "color television being cancerous" and Mothers Across The World united. It became known as the fastest legislation to be unanimously voted on by those in power, everywhere, even Canada. Some minor politicians committed suicide en masse at the staggering simplicity of it. Jesus and millions of mothers. That's when I became a true believer, although we were called The Judeo-Christian Society for Spreading the Word Beyond the Edge of Earth.
That is also when "desperate times called for desperate measures" and many religious leaders began to barter with NASA, and basically anyone with an acronym who would listen, to appeal to the moon colony. To be historically inclusive, there were still large factions who claimed ALL moon landings to be elaborate hoaxes, so you can imagine their thoughts on a "Moon Colony". In the final analysis, the Russians should really be given some credit for their efforts. Although, unbeknownst to many, the moon colony turned out to be another Australia situation, as in who they sent there. All death row inmates and their offspring.
Prisons became a thing of the past on Earth, at least in America. The death penalty debate was off the table, so to speak. Orange-garbed "astronauts" were only too happy to leave their pasts behind. But those in the know, well, we hoped for change. We were rooting for The Third Coming, but instead of The Son of God; we got The Sun, as in exploding.
Most of the remaining people on Earth turned black, which was blamed on global warming. On a positive note, the issues of racial profiling and discrimination were solved. The NAACP disbanded after confiscating all cell phones, which weren't working too well anyhow. Teenagers were affected most by this, the lack of texting leaving a huge void for more real life drama as well as actual talking and writing.
Meanwhile, this unstable, experimental website which had started out at some university, kept chugging away. They called themselves Everything2, and with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they displaced Wikipedia, instituted a caste system, which many found as bizarre as their voting system. But by some miracle of science or math, they all got along after throwing Democracy out the window.
What happened next wasn't apocalyptic in the spectacular sense, more of a whimper and loss of power, as in The World Wide Web ceased to exist except through word of mouth and oral history events perpetuated by members of The Church of Everything2. They had to declare themselves non-profit, after demolishing The Cathedral of Wikipedia, The Great Synagogue of Google, and The Mosque of Everything Else. Millions joined TCE2, only to find themselves without means of communion or confession.
Fortunately, there were at least two or three disciples or archivists, coders even, who had painstakingly over the years archived everything and had the foresight to print and bind the original writings. Actual authors were difficult to ascribe to particular writings, but that turned out to be a minor detail. At least it was paper, albeit an enormous book, so large it required a double-wide, oversized house trailer and four backhoes to transport it to The Library of Congress, one of two real life book depositories still extant.
The other Library was at The Vatican in Rome, where the new Pope John Paul II The Resurrected was extremely generous in allowing any and all book readers to come for sanctuary and everlasting reading. Finally, the Roman Catholic Church was forgiven by the naysayers, critics, and atheists as people became hungry for the written word, on paper, in books. All was right with the world, temporarily.