My alarm went off like normal at 5:30. I'd already laid out my clothes for school on my dresser. My parents had already left for work. We'd been able to save so much money on gas since Dad started taking the bus to work and Mom only has to walk a block. I'd debated taking the car to school today, but I was too lazy and just went to the bus stop after having breakfast. Every day, it'd get here at 6:40 and I'd get to school at 7. Not today, though. I waited until 6:45, thinking maybe the icy roads were making it a bit harder to drive. I just decided to take the car to school, so I grabbed the spare key and started it up. The day had only seemed slightly odd until I got onto the main road off my street. Not a car in sight. The lights at the local deli and grocery store were all on, but I didn't see anyone inside through the windows and there were no parked cars.
"What the..." I said out loud. I kept driving, still no cars. Nobody at school either.
"Maybe school was cancelled today? Maybe a road got closed and people are taking a detour that I didn't know about?" I tried to justify, but I knew. Everyone was gone. I pulled out my phone, four bars.
"Everything's running, but there's no one to run it. How?" Checked the school website, no updates. I called 911... Voicemail? 911 has a voicemail? I went onto reddit, hoping there was something going in a national or state news subreddit. The only new post, with 867,000 upvotes and two million comments was an AskReddit thread with the title "Where is everyone?"
I opened it quickly, and browsed the top comments. Everyone was in the same situation. Nobody can see anyone and everyone's alone. I went back to the front page to see a BestOf link to a comment in that same thread, posted 30 seconds ago and with 20,000 upvotes.
It was a chain that started with one user saying, "I don't know what's going on, but I may have found a lead. At coordinates I found a random shed that wasn't there yesterday. It has windows but I can't see inside. There's a door with some weird colored light coming from underneath. I'm going to check it."
Following comments had the same response with coordinates in their hometown. Many from New York found the center of Times Square to be the location of this "Shed". I Ctrl-F'ed my State and found that there were several, the nearest of which was thirty minutes. I got there in twelve. At least the one plus side of this hell is there's no traffic. I found the shed just where the comment said it was, and made one last comment, "I'm going in."
As soon as I opened it, I was engulfed in a bright light and felt weightless. I was in a void of nothingness, being carried somewhere by nothing. Out of nowhere, I was on a cloud, surrounded by others. People were appearing every second, looking as shocked as I was. I conversed with a few who appeared. All our stories were the same. Some ate a ton of food, drove like a madman or went crazy and broke things before finding the shed, but we all got here. After about an hour, a cloud in the distance rose above us. Standing on it were all of the world's leaders. Presidents, Premieres, Kings, Queens. In the middle of all of them was one I didn't recognize, though. An old man with a white beard.
"Is it- No, that's imposs-" I thought to myself, before suddenly yelling,
"Are we dead?!"
Hundreds of people screamed upon this realization. The man in the middle waited for it to end before speaking.
"Hello, and welcome to my kingdom. Yes, you have all passed. It is not the fault of any of you, this was all pre-destined and unavoidable."
A premiere of an Eastern-European country spoke up, "Yes, we've reached the conclusion a science group based in Northern Europe had discovered a new particle. This new particle travels extremely fast, but was detected while attempting to break down a radioactive isotope into sub-atomic particles and-"
The President of America chimed in, "The point is, they got all excited and tested it in a bunch of ways before reporting it. They managed to go faster than light and in a few days time and developed an engine."
Queen Elizabeth II continued, "From what we gathered, but mostly from our Bearded friend explaining us, this engine propelled Earth into the Sun in less than half a second."
A man near me shouted, "So why did we all wake up in our beds?"
The bearded man responded, "It was a final test, to see if humanity could cooperate. When humanity became the dominant race, I knew it'd be connected, but not this connected. There are 7 billion people in here, and you all got here because you either had the privilege of wondrous technology or," He paused, looking at the impoverished people of third world countries, "Or you had spiritual guidance. But you're now in paradise. You won't starve, you won't die unless you want to be reborn, you will all have a prosperous life full of opportunities. Are there any questions?"
There was a sudden silence at this announcement. But eventually, the woman right next to me asked, "What about people who were evil?"
A man miles away yelled, yet I heard him as if he were right next to me, "Yeah! The terrorists today or Hitler from 70 years ago."
The bearded man suddenly had a look of dread on his face. "I- I never considered that. I could make a 'Hell' for some who are evil, but how do we decide who's evil? Serial killers had families, dictators had children. For once, God is stumped."
Out of nowhere, a child asked him, "Well, I mean, you're God, right? So why can't you just make everyone not dead? Or rewind time or something?"
Everyone had a look of either astonishment a child had solved their problem or anger that a child would deny them paradise.
Finally, God spoke, "I have an idea. I'll set everything back, but I'll leave clues of people who aren't to be trusted. Be right back"
Suddenly, half the people in the room vanished and were replaced with different people.
God returned, "Okay, how'd I do?"
"You killed Genghis Khan and a bunch of other warlords! Half of us descended from them."
God looked annoyed, "Okay, one second."
Suddenly the population quadrupled on the cloud, which was now bigger to accommodate all these people.
Before God could wipe his shoes off, someone yelled, "You gave Genghis Khan machine guns. He conquered the whole world and raped like 250,000 people."
God eventually said, "Well, that's more people to enjoy paradise, right?"
We all had a look on our faces of confusion, but then happiness. It was over, finally over. This story can end and the author can go to sleep. Everyone was happy and stuff and there was no Hitler, the end.