[ WP ] Groundhog 's Day except everyone remembers .

The first week was shock and disbelief. Especially that first day ( or rather, the *second* first day ), when some people noticed and some people did n't and some people noticed but did n't *want* to notice, and they went through their day like it was the next one, but it was n't. These people took it the hardest, and some of them went for a very long time denying that anything had happened. I can only imagine the mental willpower necessary to keep that fiction going for weeks and months, even years for some folks so scared of any other reality that they just *had* to believe that this day was different from the last one. I'm sure there are still some holdouts, somewhere out there, that still think this, but I ca n't imagine. 
 
 Once people figured out it was a repeat, that May 18, 2014 was to be *the* day, everyday, forever, well, it was both terrifying and liberating. Terrifying because humans our lives as we knew it were over. Liberating because those lives were n't always that happy to begin with. 
 
 We could stop working. Go travel. Spend our bank account on fancy dinners or give it all to the homeless while running naked down the street. And most of us, in one way or another, did just that. For a while. Until we realized that the bank employees were n't showing up for work, either. Ditto the restaurant workers. So we had to rethink our leisure time. 
 
 Running down the street naked got old after a while. Even though you may have the perpetual youth of a 25-year-old, when you turn 300, streaking feels a bit juvenile. 
 
 The Church has different variations all over the world, at least, as far as people are able to travel in a day. Twenty-four hours will get you to most places, depending on your start point. ( The people who slept overnight in airports on Day Zero -1 have the greatest advantage in this. ) Services are of all religious stripes, but the prophets of old have taken a backseat to mankind's purpose: keeping track of the days. Sameday in, sameday out, we gather and add one more to the day before, we count the days as they pass. They are always May 18th, 2014, but The Count continues. Likewise, oral traditions have supplanted the mass media we once loved, television and radio and Internet that I vaguely remember using, but usually do n't bother. Oral recitation and Remembering is the pinnacle of artistic expression. 
 
 It has been at least 539 years since Day Zero, otherwise known as May 18th, 2014. I say at least because there was some time between Day Zero and the point where some level-headed souls got together to establish the First Day of All Days... though at least a few months had passed since Day Zero. Or weeks. Or years -- everyone who cares enough about it has a different opinion. 
 
 Life itself has changed. We used to be born, get old, and die. Now we stay the same and that's it. We may live forever. Suicide does not work; those who try simply wake up the next day as usual. Humans were n't meant to live this long. I have held onto my sanity, though through many decades that slipped away. One day, we will advance, and wake up to the morning of May 19th, 2014, the Eschaton, the day we will be saved from our immortality and brought back to the Earth, where we will be able to die like our ancestors before us, and our bodies allowed to fold back into the dust.
