The world ended on a Tuesday.

   It was cruel, the way it happened. The world had survived four world wars, three economic depressions, crippling pollution, heinous plagues, and an impressive variety of natural disasters. It was at the height of its advancements when it was destroyed. Self driving cars had been invented. Cancer had been cured. No wars had gone on since 4683, nearly half a century ago. The economy was great and pollution had been solved. The earth was a well-oiled machine.

    It was an era we were blessed to be in. A new golden age. And, like all golden ages, it was destined to end.

   The end did not come without warning. For years, NASA had been aware of a dangerously close black hole. We were shocked when it was initially discovered. Black holes were something we vaguely remembered hearing about in science, while we dozed in our seats and listened as our teacher assured us we wouldn’t come near one for another million years. When the papers told us we would encounter one in 20 years, we were terrified. It was all anyone could talk about. Some tried to prepare for the end. But how do you escape a black hole?
 
   The government, of course, tried to reassure us. For the first time in history, all nations worked together to find a solution to our imminent doom. They made huge leaps in science. We went from a world where humans had never traveled beyond Jupiter, to sending a human occupied spaceship as far as pluto. But no chance of life was found near pluto, and we had to face the facts; we couldn’t travel past our galaxy. They tried, but after the seventh spaceship exploded, and five years passed with no success, we lost hope.

    Eventually, we learned to ignore it. We had good years left, we wanted to enjoy life. The world fell into a chaotic utopia. Everyone had a personal bucket list. People went on vacations, quit their jobs, and got married. We tried to make the last years the best. And they were, but that couldn't go on forever.  As the new year of 4755 rolled around, the euphoria died and people hid. The rational part of us knew we couldn’t hide, but it made us feel better, calmed our fear. It made us seem like we had some say in our deaths. Some speculated the world's demise would come quickly, kill us instantaneously.

No such luck.

   As the black hole entered our solar system it’s gravitational pull caused vast earthquakes that collapsed whole cities. It almost wiped out the entire Tokyo population. Barely anything was left standing. Half of earth's humans were eliminated with only earthquakes. Loved ones cradled the dead in their arms, weeping over their limp forms. But they barely had time to grieve before the aftermath of the earthquakes began. Utter chaos ensued as tsunamis swallowed the earth and the volcanoes exploded. Where there wasn’t water, there was ash. Millions suffocated and the others drowned. No one mourned their loved ones this time. There was no one left to grieve.
   
   The ones that had survived were too shocked to mourn. Instead, we choose to  laugh. We laughed at the stupidity of the deceased. How stupid we were, thinking we could hide from the black hole. It was millions of miles away. It had barely tugged on our measly planet and look at us. We had survived plagues, natural disasters, world wars. To us, we were the invincible human race. In reality we were just a species to be wiped out. To be taken away.

   The religious ones prayed for savior, not for the earth or their lives, but for their souls, so they could go to heaven and see all those who had died only the day before.

    Others sat and waited. They waited for the ultimate nothingness, for the silence.

   It was Sunday, when the disasters happened.

   Monday went by much like Sunday, disasters, death, tears, prayers. No one new when the clock struck midnight and Tuesday’s dawn broke through the ash. No one kept time anymore. We didn’t know it was the last sunrise. We didn’t appreciate it.

   As the earth crept closer to the black hole it's gravitational pull strengthened and we were pulled in faster. What was once hundreds of years away, was now only minutes from us. The atmosphere was ripped from us as it spaghettified, pulled atom from atom and turned to a thin line in a sickly comical sort of way. 

    At this point we had died, our invincible species wiped out. Gone. Extinct. The earth was nothing but a rock in space. But the black hole wouldn’t stop until everything was gone. As the world, the only evidence left of our existence, recovered from spaghettification it entered into the heat. An inferno greeted earth as soon as it hit the center of the death machine. The earth incinerated, and the world ended. Nothing left. No more people, no more wars, no more pollution. No more laughter, no more dancing, no more us.

   Some found peace when the world ended. As we went to our afterlives. Heaven, Paradise, Reincarnation. Others found their awaited silence.

    The End.

    Except, there was something we didn’t know about black holes. As the earth was ripped apart piece by piece, atom by atom, our death machine acted as our computer, recording every atom, every particle, every structure. Everything memorized in an infinite gap of space.

   For years it stayed there along with thousands of other planets’ information. Untouched. Unreachable. Until one day, somehow, someone found our black hole and recovered our recorded information. They were species we had never encountered, on a planet we never saw.

   Beautiful plants lined the  ground. Astounding colors never imagined seemed to glow at every turn. And the species, multiple species with a shared language and unquantifiable intelligence, they found the black hole and pulled our information from it. From nothing but atom structures they built a new, earthlike life, modified to live on their world.

   Humans were not remade, we were gone. But our legacy lived on in the minds of our modified breed. On the surface of a breathtaking world.
 
    We were gone, but our past existence helped these aliens to advance their future. We live on in their history classes and advanced future. It is in this way that we live. 

    It is in this way, we are invincible.