[ WP ] All humans fall into unconscious stasis simultaneously . Exactly one year later they all awake , simultaneously , and have no knowledge of the lost year .

*Thank God I was n't driving. The people who were just before the Big Sleep did n't stand a chance. One second they would have been doing fine and the next* 
 
 Steve stopped writing. His counsellor had told him to keep a journal of his thoughts. Write them all down and then never read them. Condemning fears to a paper prison was apparently the modern way to deal with grief. Typing was too easy, too modern and nowhere near personal enough - so Steve wrote every day until his hand cramped up. The ledger he wrote in was fast becoming a shrine to madness, thoughts scrawled over every page, chronicling the descent of a happy man. 
 
 Half of it was about Heather. His wife had been out of town when everything happened and she had n't been able to come back. The hotel she had been staying in had been in the middle of dinner service and the unattended kitchen caught fire. With no fire services able to respond it had been nothing short of a miracle that the entire city had n't disappeared in an inferno. 
 
 Most animals had been scared of the people who stood like statues for that year. Reports were coming in from other countries that had aggressive, large predators about people coming back and discovering they were missing limbs. These days you could n't trust what you heard, especially that rumour about the spiders that had adapted to living in people's brains. 
 
 With earth's population decimated by the Sleep it was impressive that the cities had recovered so quickly. Steve had a counsellor, a doctor, a working phone and a television. Money had been suspended temporarily, at least until everything was working again. Right now you worked for the right to get services - usually cleaning the roads, the buildings and getting everything looking like it used to. Even after a catastrophe on that scale appearances mattered. 
 
 Steve checked his watch. He was due at the cleanup group in half an hour. That left him just enough time to grab a small breakfast and cycle there. The care would be gathering already, swapping stories about the weekend and taking in the sun. Three hundred miles of highway was ahead of them needing cleared and there was no one else to do it. But on the same track there was no hurry. Vital supplies were shipped by rail anyway so it was just busywork while the governments of the world decided if they were going to fight a war or not. 
 
 He grabbed his coat - you never knew if it would rain or not - and slipped it on while he decided what to eat, eventually settling on a few slices of bread. Those had been the first factories to be back up and running, and the farms had flourished without human contact. Just another little miracle that had made sure the race had n't gone extinct. 
 
 Steve had never believed in the concept of god - and after losing Heather he never would - but he saw the weight to the argument that there was something intelligent looking after the race as a whole. 
 
 He passed the days cleaning roads, the nights writing and wrestling with sleep, and all around him life began to get back to normal. The majority knew they would never get answers and the Big Sleep slowly faded to legend. 
 
 Steve would never know. 
 
 But light years away the answer was in orbit around another planet. It had identified the dominant race and put them into stasis, analysing everything about them. A year passed and the answer moved again, on its way across the galaxy once more, scanning planets as it went. 
 
 Over time it built up a repository of knowledge on the galaxy. It ran every algorithm it could, analysing strategy, potential battle sites, and came to one conclusion. Nothing in the entire galaxy would make an effective ally against the coming threat. 
 
 
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 Think I might have rushed ending. Sorry, but this was getting long and my lunch break was over lol 
 
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