When the pillars appeared all over the globe on the summer of 2038, nobody knew their origin and purpose, nor did anybody know, who or what had put them there. Understandably, people were unsettled by the sudden appearance of pillars in their living rooms. Many refused to enter their homes, fearing the strange objects. With a completely dark body, they did not appear to reflect or absorb any light, yet a strange inner light swirled on its surface. They emitted no sound, had no smell or taste, no texture, or anything that might resemble corporeal solidity.
After a few days of sleeping outdoors, people grew tired, eventually returned to their homes, and simply tried to ignore the pillars in their living rooms.
We tried all sorts of things to evade the ubiquitous structures. Some built new homes, but as soon as they moved into these new abodes, the pillar materialized in the middle of the living room. Some even tried to design houses with no living rooms, but the pillars still materialized in their meeting spaces. Others took to the road. If you don't have a home, they reasoned, then you don't have a living room, ergo... but wherever they roamed, a pillar would appear in their resting places.
Scientists and engineers could not make heads or tails of the pillars. The objects emitted no radiation or any form of energy. None of the scientific instruments could measure them or capture their image in a simple photograph. It was as if the pillars did not exist at all. Yet, almost everyone could clearly see them with their own eyes, and those who could not spoke of a void in the spaces where the pillars were located.
As the seasons turned, strange events began to occur. People talked of hearing haunting sounds coming from the objects, seeing the shadows of dead people on their dark bodies, and even smelling the scent of lavender or burnt steak. None of these events were ever corroborated with actual evidence, and each story got more outrageous than the last. Somebody claimed to have won the lottery because of the pillar, others had found love beside the pillar, and even the Virgin Mary is said to have made an appearance. They all sounded like tall tales, but that didn’t stop criminals, politicians, malcontents, ideologues, religious nuts, and others from trying to take advantage of the madness surrounding the pillars, which stood silent without divulging any of their secrets and having no measurable effect beyond the portion of space they occupied in living rooms across the world.
In a world that was already fractured from years of conflict, the pillars were the straws that broke the camel's back. Accusations of psychological warfare and quantum espionage were traded back and forth between the super powers. Tempers flared. The nuclear missiles were launched in the spring of 2041, and so, nearly three years after the appearance of the living pillars, civilization collapsed.
These past four years have been a complete hell. This journal is the only semblance of civilized behavior that I still possess. It’s my tenuous grasp on reality.
As far as the pillars go, they all began to disappear about a year ago. To this day, nobody knows whether they were natural phenomena or put there by design. Not that anybody cares at this point. We try not to talk about the damn pillars and just try to make it through another day.
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