[ WP ] You ’ re getting ready to make waffles for breakfast when , to your horror , you realize there ’ s no maple syrup left !

Most people over the age of 25 can tell you where they were when they heard about 9/11. Everyone I know can tell you where they were when they heard about 7/2. The day after Canada Day, 2017, when half a continent just ceased to exist. I was just getting out of the shower. 
 
 At first I assumed I was listening to some bizarre radio comedy ( or possibly sci-fi ), but I immediately went online, and every single credible news source confirmed it. Canada, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, along with the northern parts of a bunch of other states had just... gone. Along with about 40 million inhabitants. 
 
 As I went about my business, I listened to more and more incredulous reactions from politicians, scientists, religious leaders. No-one knew what to make of it. Obviously everyone wanted to blame terrorists, but how could terrorists have done this? New York now had a northern coastline. There was n't enough C4 in the world to achieve this level of destruction, never mind the logistics. 
 
 Over the next few weeks, there were the conspiracy theories, of course - Canada never existed, Canada was destroyed by the Scots because they kept winning world bagpiping championships, Canadians were the Chosen Ones, and the entire continent had ascended bodily into Heaven, all the usual stuff - and to be honest, none of them seemed any less crazy than any of the official explanations. There was some complicated theory based on geology, a super-volcano and something about tectonic plates, but to be honest, it did n't seem like the scientists who came up with it even really believed that one - where would the rocks have gone? 
 
 We had spent the first few months in total shock. There was a mourning, of course, there was horror at the sheer, unimaginable loss, and the inevitable TV interviews with people who did n't know exactly which country their family members had been in. The heartwarming TV shots of families re-united. There was also the expected looting and rioting - all the stuff you see in Doomsday films. 
 
 But then, gradually, it started to settle down. There was no follow up, no more mysterious disappearances, no messages from whoever had done it. Nothing. Life went on. US TV comedy was missing some of its biggest stars, there were seven fewer teams in the NHL, you could go surfing in Montana, but most of the time, it was as if nothing had ever happened. 
 
 Church attendance soared, of course. Everyone started to believe in something. If you still could n't bring yourself to take up one of the traditional religions, a few new ones sprang up, usually based on the idea that 7/2 was the work of a hyper-advanced alien civilisation, and working out ways to contact them. I had never really been to church, so I ended up joining the Seti-ans. I gradually settled into a routine, go to work during the day, pop into Laboratory to look through radio telescope print-outs for an hour on they way home, and then drop down in front of the TV and zonk out. 
 
 It was six months after the event, early February, and Katie was staying over - a nice girl I'd met at Laboratory, and been dating a couple of months now ( I'd just started worrying about what I was going to do for Valentine's Day ). I thought I'd prepare her some waffles for breakfast, when I realised, to my horror, there was no maple syrup left. 

