Part 1.

  Year 2025.

  I never imagined I’d see this year. I’d heard stories about it, envisioned what it might be like—but nothing quite prepared me for the reality.

  I wonder about 2025 not because I was born before it—quite the opposite, actually. I was born in a year that looks back at 2025 the way you look at the Stone Age.

  You guessed it—I’m a time traveller. Or at least that’s the term you’d recognize. Technically, I’m what we call a time surfer. The difference? I don’t go back in time. I surf into a timeline that resonates with the one I’m aiming for. It’s not about rewinding a tape—it’s about tuning a frequency.

  Einstein once proposed a theory—one that didn’t get much attention in your time. The idea that the linearity of time is an illusion. Again, I’m no scientist, but the gist is this:

  Everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen… is happening right now.

  Time isn’t a line—it’s a tangled thread, a cluster of moments all buzzing simultaneously. Think string theory, only less proven. Well, not proven yet. Not in 2025.

  This is where the whole “time paradox” thing kicks in. If you travel back to change something significant, and succeed, you create a paradox: either you ripple through time, changing everything (cue the butterfly effect), or you punch a hole in existence.

  Like a black hole. But worse.

  Much, much worse.

  Anyway, I’m not here to give a TED Talk on time mechanics.

  Here’s what matters:

  The time I came from is dying.

  Not completely dead… but close enough.

  One word: Apocalypse.

  No, not fire and brimstone. No aliens.

  Definitely no zombies.

  (Okay… maybe scratch that last one. “Zombies” might actually be a fair term.)

  The apocalypse wasn’t some external threat.

  Part 2 – Year 2027

  In the year 2027, a new pandemic began—greater than any the world had ever seen.

  At first, scientists dismissed it as some kind of psychosomatic disorder. The symptoms were emotional, mental—unquantifiable. No fever, no coughing, no rash. Just… despair. Deep, suffocating despair. Even 15-year-olds were showing signs. Then it spread—fast. Borderless. Global.

  But no one panicked. After all, it hadn’t killed anyone. Not yet.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  That changed when the first death was recorded.

  Cause: suicide.

  That’s when the world woke up—to its first worldwide mass suicide event.

  Worse than anything in recorded history.

  Worse than Masada—where 960 Jewish rebels chose death over surrender.

  This?

  This was a slow, quiet war of the mind.

  And no one had a weapon.

  For us—my people, my timeline—it marked the beginning of the end.

  There was no cure. No definitive case study. No vaccine.

  Because no one lasted more than a month after infection. They all took their lives. Peacefully. Willingly. Almost ritualistically.

  Then someone—some genius, some monster—offered a "solution."

  Not a cure.

  A vaccine from hell.

  They traced the origin of the condition to one place:

  The amygdala.

  That small almond-shaped part of the brain—the one responsible for fear, emotional regulation, and self-preservation. The part that makes you hesitate before you jump, scream when you’re cornered, run when your life’s in danger.

  The part that makes you human.

  So the solution?

  Surgical removal of the amygdala in everyone between the ages of 13 and 70.

  Like cutting off breasts to prevent breast cancer.

  I’m sure it made sense at the time.

  Remove the source, remove the problem.

  No fear. No pain. No suicide.

  But here’s the thing.

  Have you met humans?

  Even with their fear and caution intact, they managed to write a history drenched in blood, war, and destruction.

  Fear was the one leash that held them back.

  The last barrier between madness and restraint.

  And now…?

  No amygdala. No fear. No self-preservation.

  No restraint.

  Imagine what comes

  Part 3 – Order

  If I could use only one word to describe 2025, it would be:

  Order.

  I know—laughable, right?

  To you, 2025 probably seems chaotic, unstable… insane even.

  But that’s only because you haven’t seen the real crazy.

  You see, the apocalypse wasn’t swift.

  It didn’t come in a flash of light or a mushroom cloud.

  It was slow.

  Silent.

  Systemic.

  At first, humanity rejoiced.

  They believed they’d conquered their greatest threat yet.

  And for a brief moment, they had.

  Because nothing unites humans more than mutual grief… and shared victory.

  Life returned to what they called normal.

  In fact, there was peace. Real peace.

  No fear meant no need for suspicion. No preemptive violence.

  No irrational hatred of your neighbor because you feared they might harm you.

  But if there’s one force that drives humans—even more than fear—it’s greed.

  And for centuries, greed had been caged by fear and self-preservation.

  Without that cage?

  Nothing stopped it.

  I wish I could point to a country and say, “It started there.”

  But I’d be lying.

  It didn’t begin with nations.

  It began with individuals.

  A banker siphoning money from the vault he was trusted to protect.

  A police officer extorting civilians under the threat of a weapon.

  A doctor prescribing poison for profit.

  At first, it was subtle.

  A small rise in theft.

  Then bribery.

  Then murder.

  Then organized, coordinated, large-scale corruption.

  And the worst part?

  No one was afraid.

  Not of being caught. Not of dying. Not even of moral consequence.

  Because fear—the thing that made consequ

  Part 4 – Evolution

  They say necessity is the mother of invention.

  But what they don’t say is that fear was the father of restraint.

  Once fear was gone, invention no longer had limits.

  Not moral. Not legal. Not biological.

  With the amygdala surgically removed from nearly every human alive, it wasn’t long before something else happened—something far more permanent.

  See, Darwin proposed a theory of evolution based on natural selection: traits that help a species survive get passed down, while those that don’t… fade away.

  But before Darwin, there was Lamarck.

  He had a different idea—one ridiculed in his time, but maybe not so crazy after all.

  He believed that traits acquired during life could be passed on to offspring.

  Use and disuse.

  Grow a muscle, your child might be born stronger.

  Stop using a limb, and future generations might lose it entirely.

  Now imagine an entire generation surgically removing their amygdalas…

  Imagine them raising children in a world where fear no longer existed…

  Where the instinct for self-preservation was a myth told in bedtime stories.

  Eventually, children were born with no amygdala at all.

  Not removed.

  Missing.

  It wasn’t evolution by nature.

  It was evolution by intention.

  But here's the real kicker:

  Without fear holding them back, knowledge exploded.

  Humans became… brilliant.

  Fearless. Curious. Obsessed.

  The line between ethical and unethical vanished.

  No more hesitating before launching a risky experiment.

  No more self-doubt before dissecting something alive.

  No more sleep lost over casualties in the name of "progress."

  Science no longer asked, “Should we?”

  It only asked, “Can we?”

  And the answer was always:

  Yes.

  Even if

  it meant tearing the world apart atom by atom.

  ences matter—was gone.

  And from there…

  It spiraled.

  next.

  Because I can sum it up in one word:

  Apocalypse.

  It

  was just…

  humans being humans.