The Alignment
The world didn’t end in 1920. It ended earlier than anyone thought possible.
We were wrong — the world didn’t end in 1920.
It ended earlier than anyone thought possible.
It was the 13th of November, 1919, a month before the world ended for humankind. No one was prepared. No one was watching.
The world was still recovering from the catastrophes of the First World War. Some nations were celebrating their victory while others grieved their defeat. Economies were being rebuilt, debts were being paid off, and casualties were being mourned.
That was probably why no one was paying attention to nature — or to what we had already done to it.
Somewhere deep beneath our feet, the world was shifting. We were too preoccupied with rebuilding the human world to realise we had already destroyed the natural one.
Professor Porta — an Italian-born engineer, architect, and my mentor — was the only one still paying attention to the science of the earth. In his spare time, he studied astronomy, not as a profession but as something he was interested in. It was during these studies that he discovered a rare planetary alignment set to occur on the 17th of December.
The finding did not excite him. It frightened him. This was abnormal.
He did not speak of it at first. He checked his figures, recalculated, and checked them again. What troubled him was not the alignment itself, but the silence surrounding it — the absence of any serious attention from the scientific world.
Professor Porta, on July 7th, finally spoke up about his observations. He told my fellow mentees and me about his discovery, despite the fact that it wasn’t related to our course. Most of us didn’t really care for his learnings and went on with life as was.
In another time, he told us, such an anomaly would have sparked debate, letters, and late-night discussions across observatories. But in 1919, there were no such conversations. Everybody else was busy fixing our world, and no one looked out for potential dangers. Journals and newspapers were still filled with reports of reconstruction and recovery. Governments and locals were focused on restoring life to its pre-war ways.
We regret it now. Because Professor Porta was right. It wasn’t normal.
It’s the 13th of November, and things seem perfectly normal to most of us. We wake up to a cold, snowy day in New York City, get ready and go about our day as usual. I head to Central Park, sketchbook in hand. I take a seat on one of the park benches, getting comfortable. I look around for inspiration, flipping through the pages of my sketchbook aimlessly.
Just as I was about to begin sketching a tree, a Northern Harrier landed on the bench beside me. I watched it for a moment, confused. They were uncommon in cities like this.
Then another arrived.
And another.
Northern Harriers were solitary birds. They did not travel in groups. Yet within minutes, several dozen circled the park.
I lowered my pencil. Something was wrong.
By evening, the birds were no longer the only things behaving strangely. The air had grown heavy, unmoving, as if the wind itself had forgotten to blow. Leaves hung still on the trees, despite the cold pressing in from every direction. It didn’t feel like November anymore. Even the usual noise of the city — carts, voices, distant engines — felt muted, dulled, as though sound no longer travelled the way it should.
I walked home through streets that looked unchanged but felt unfamiliar, almost like I’d never walked these streets before. Dogs strained against their leashes, refusing to move forward. Horses stood rigid, eyes wide, breathing fast. At the river’s edge, the water no longer followed its steady course; it slowed, pooled, then slipped backwards against its own current before correcting itself again. No one else seemed to notice. Or perhaps they did, and simply chose to ignore it so they could maintain the tranquillity and post-war calm.
That night, I dreamed of the sky shifting — not violently, but deliberately, as if something vast were adjusting its weight. When I woke, the windows rattled once, gently, without wind or passing train to explain it. I thought of Professor Porta’s words, the way everyone was avoiding the obvious.
Two days later, Professor Porta did not arrive for class.
At first, none of us thought much of it. Absence had become common since the war — illness, exhaustion, grief were accepted explanations. By the afternoon, however, his office remained locked. His name had been removed from the lecture board, replaced with a temporary notice announcing a symposium on Progress and Reconstruction, led by visiting futurists from the capital.
They spoke brightly of steel and speed, of cities reborn stronger than before. Of a future that belonged to machines and men bold enough to command them. There was no mention of soil, of water, of the sky.
That evening, I went to Professor Porta’s rooms.
They were already empty.
His papers were gone. The charts he guarded so carefully had vanished, along with his notebooks and correspondence. Even his telescope had been removed from the window, leaving behind only a pale ring of dust where it once stood.
Get Isa Mathew’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The official explanation arrived the next morning.
Professor Porta, the notice read, had been taken in for questioning after spreading unverified claims likely to incite public unease. He had suffered a sudden medical collapse during transit. His passing, the statement assured us, was regrettable but unrelated to his work.
No further inquiries were encouraged.
We were told to look ahead. To rebuild. To trust those who promised certainty. None of us really understood what was going on, but, for some reason, we didn’t question it.
The world did not wait for the alignment.
Seven days before December was due to arrive, the ground began to fail.
It started without warning — no sirens, no announcements, no final headlines. The earth moved beneath cities that had stood for centuries, splitting streets open and folding buildings inward as if their foundations had always been useless. In the mountains, entire slopes gave way, burying roads, villages, and life in a single motion. Rivers tore themselves from their banks. Coastlines withdrew, then returned altered beyond recognition.
There was no single epicentre. The collapse was everywhere at once. By the end of the first day, most modern communication had fallen silent. Telegraph lines had snapped, and power stations had been overrun by vines. Messages were half-sent, never received. Governments issued statements that no one could hear.
Human architecture proved fragile against a planet that wanted to thrive again. What had taken decades to construct disappeared in hours. What had been called permanent did not survive the week.
By the time the shaking ceased, nearly three-quarters of the population was gone.
Nature had simply reclaimed what was once its own before humans became greedy. The ground was covered in soil, breaking cities down into materials it could use again. Trees pushed through cracked foundations, and Animals returned to places that no longer carried human noise. Even the waters reset their paths.
Only later did we understand that this was not revenge.
It was a response to all the suffering we humans had caused to the planet we called Earth. We had altered the planet too quickly, demanded too much from systems that required balance.
The war had scarred the earth as deeply as it had scarred us, and we had mistaken survival for permission to continue.
The alignment, when it finally came, changed everything.
I woke up that morning, barely having slept. I head out of the overgrown shed where I had managed to find temporary solace and head towards Central Park, which even now remains my sanctuary. I lay down in the now more than grassy lands, watching numerous birds fly around above me. A sense of calm washes over me.
Only about 2.7 billion people survived the apocalypse. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? No one realised it was an apocalypse, all because books and TV showed us that an apocalypse meant an alien invasion or a zombie attack. Never did we speculate that the reason all our creations would be torn down could be the very planet we live on.
It’s scary, sure. Yet, I’m glad that the earth is healing.
I know it’s the day of the alignment — because for the first time since the ground split open, I feel the weight of being alive.
Around me, survivors move quietly through the ruins of the city, careful not to disturb what has returned. We speak less now, only because words feel unnecessary in a world that has already said enough and done enough harm.
I press my palm into the soil, still warm despite the cold air. This land remembers everything. The wars. The blood. The machines. It remembers us even if it no longer needs us.
The sky shifts almost imperceptibly, and I realise with a hollow ache that the alignment is not an ending, but a reckoning.
The sky gets darker, but this time it wasn’t in a foreboding manner. It feels more natural, more systematic, like it’s inevitable. I didn’t move from my place on the ground; I wasn’t scared. I watch as all six planets move into place. As Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus line up, blocking the sun from view. It felt ethereal watching the heavens move in the way it was always meant to.
I believe that if this mass extinction of the human race had never happened, the world would always be in an imbalance. Some things, even if wild, crazy, or unthinkable, need to happen for the sake of progress and change. Man had to be sacrificed so that creation could flourish once again.
We were never meant to conquer the earth.
Only to belong to it. And I couldn’t be more grateful than I am to be a part of the last strand of mankind to remain.
The earth will grow still again. Not today, but at its own time.
What do you think an apocalypse would look like? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and follow for more stories like this.
