The modern world ended back on August 18^th, 2015, but that’s old news. I’m not sure how many of us are left now, but I’m fairly sure we’re all scattered about in small pockets. I’m not even sure if people will be able to read this, or will be able to read at all, but I’ll jot it down just the same. You never know.

I want to tell you a human story, so that the human story can go on. My story is about the Wangs, the only family I know of who survived the end of the world by their own design and not by chance. There are three people in the family – Mr. and Mrs. Wang, and their 8 year-old daughter, Toothpick.

I met them up on this mountain where I’m staying nowadays. It’s a huge mountain in Hubei province, China, that I was touring when the world ended. There are a few other tourist/ survivors up here with me now, but the Wangs were the only ones who came here after the apocalypse. Three days after, to be exact.

The Wangs survived because Mr. Wang invented the world’s first and only Armageddon survival machine. He built it without knowing the future, or anybody else knowing it, so he was considered nuts. Mr. Wang lived with his wife and daughter in a small Hebei village called Gold Field, where most folks were poor. People in Gold Field were lucky to have a TV and, if someone did have a TV, they were expected to share it by inviting others over to watch. Because the village was poor, not only did the villagers think Mr. Wang was nuts, they hated him, too.

“How could he waste that much money?” old man Chang asked.

“The man is a crook because only a crook could waste money like that. Probably a drunk too,” Ms. Zhang, the primary school teacher, said.

“I wonder if he’s got a TV in that thing. Think he’ll let us watch it?” a farmer’s daughter, Little Peng, asked.

‘That thing’ was what Mr. Wang had named The Big Yellow Safety Ball. It was a metal sphere, 9 meters across, painted the brightest yellow the world had to offer. It was impact-proof, water-proof, fire-proof and it could float. It was stocked with enough food to last for 3 months. Mostly it was canned food but there were some spicy-beef flavored instant noodles in there as well, Toothpick’s favorite. The Big Yellow Safety Ball had no TV, but there was a radio.

Whenever the Wangs sensed serious trouble, they made a break for The Big Yellow Safety Ball. They had four false alarms in the past, times when they ran into the contraption, only to re-emerge to the jeering and laughter of the residents of Gold Field.

Twice they had been fooled by nothing more serious than rainstorms. Once a forest fire had been mistakenly reported to be approaching their village, but nothing came of it. The other time, about a week before the end of the world, they felt the ground shaking and ran in their Big Yellow Safety Ball. This time, Mr. Wang was genuinely embarrassed because Gold Field was on flat ground and there were no tall buildings which could have fallen on top of them anyway. When Mr. Wang brought out his family, he thought of the proverb “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” But he quickly brushed the thought aside because he knew the real nail would appear from the woodwork sooner or later. He was certain of that. Mr. Wang took comfort in the fact that he had the only hammer in town, or the maybe the whole world, for all he knew.

When they finally emerged from The Big Yellow Safety Ball after the ground shook, Little Peng was waiting for them. She asked them if they had a TV in there and if they had watched ‘China’s Got Talent’. Toothpick told her they didn’t and hadn’t, and the farmer’s daughter called them idiots.

The fifth emergency, the real one, came in the early morning of the last day of the world when the ground shook again. Mr. Wang was hesitant, thought about the hammer analogy, but in the end decided to err on the side of safety. Lucky thing too, because things started happening quickly.

There are no windows on The Big Yellow Safety Ball and, because it is impact-proof, it is difficult to hear what’s going on outside. The ground started rumbling harder after the Wangs entered, and they could feel that. Then they faintly heard the screams of the villagers who used to laugh and jeer at them. A lesser man would have interpreted this as vindication, but Mr. Wang did not. He cried about it when he told me.

Something slammed into them, something big. There is a platform inside The Big Yellow Safety Ball that swivels, so even if it is rolling down a hill, the occupants can stay on an even keel. But whatever hit them that first time was violent enough to roll them over inside twice. It made them dizzy but the Wangs weren’t hurt. Mr. Wang had though enough ahead to pad the walls.

After that they knew that they were floating because they were in motion and it was smooth. If The Big Yellow Safety Ball were rolling down a hill, their platform would stay horizontal and shake a little, but that wasn’t happening. It was smooth motion, like a waterbed.

The Wangs were at sea, a new sea, created by the end of the world. This was day one.

The first thing Mr. Wang did was to turn on the radio.

“Daddy, what’s happening?” Toothpick asked, pulling on her father’s pant leg. She was strangely relaxed, Mr. Wang was surprised to see. “And why don’t we have a TV?”

“Quiet, dear. I need to hear this,” Mr. Wang said.

And hear he did. The world was blowing up and the world was caving in. Reports were sketchy, but these facts were known: America had experienced 27 earthquakes, 17 hurricanes and one volcanic eruption; England had slid into the sea; Japan, which had apparently been existing above a large sinkhole for all of its existence, was swallowed up in 5 minutes; Australia had experienced so many earthquakes that they quit counting, and all of the hurricanes had coalesced into a single super storm that blew the Outback 100 miles into the Pacific Ocean. The Big Yellow Safety Ball floated on unmolested, and even a bit of sunlight reflected off of its bright, yellow hull.

The radio went silent. In his mind’s eye, Mr. Wang saw the news building being swallowed up by the sea, like a peanut disappearing into the mouth of a dinosaur.

The Wangs were afloat and there wasn’t much to say, even though the new the world had come to an end, or maybe because of it. For the rest of day one, they hardly broke silence, except when one of the girls asked Mr. Wang to open a can of food or adjust the radio dial. They spent day one playing mah-jong and eating spicy-beef instant noodles, uncooked, because they were afraid to start the burner. They slept early and were well-rested for day two.

There is a Mickey Mouse clock on board The Big Yellow Safety Ball. Mickey’s right hand, slightly shorter, points to the hours. His left could tell you the minutes. When the Wangs woke up, Mickey told them it was 7 in the morning, on the nose, in so many hands. It was the second day of the end of the world.

Because he was sure that he was on level ground (so to speak), Mr. Wang knew that he could chance a look outside the hatch. He knew his machine well because he had built it and slept in it. He slept in it on random nights before the end of the world, whenever he felt like camping. It made him feel safe in there, like nothing could touch him.

When he opened the hatch, all that he could see was an oceanic horizon in every direction. North, East, West and South all held the same picture – nothing. Mrs. Wang and Toothpick popped their heads out too, saw nothing either, and then all retreated back inside with a sigh. There were no peaks nor valleys nor islands nor plateaus and it strained their eye, because they had known a crooked landscape all their lives.

The radio crackled and said nothing and so they all sat down and sulked. It was the end of the world, after all. You were due a good sulking. But it didn’t last.

Something big started slamming into the water around them. First they heard a whoosh whoosh, about three seconds apart. Next they heard it again, but they felt it too, a thump thump thump, and these seemed to come much closer together. The Big Yellow Safety Machine was a rocking.

Then there was a brief silence that the meteorologists like to call the calm before the storm, and somehow the Wangs, in that moment, knew that’s exactly what it was, without knowing the future.

The cavalcade began anew. Now a heavy downpour engulfed the family. Instead of raindrops, the projectiles were the size of cars, but unseen. They threw the Wangs against the padded walls like toys in the box of a spoiled child . A couple of cars/ drops bounced off their ship, but none scored a direct hit. But even the glancing blows sounded, to the Wangs, like they were living in the belly of an angry drummer.

After exactly four and a half minutes, all was quiet again. And so it was that the Wangs thought the second day of the end of the world was a lot like the first day, in that it was loud and then quiet and they were all still alive, for some reason.

After they knew the terror had subsided and that they were again faced with uncertain boredom, they continued on as they had done the day prior. They played mah-jong and ate noodles. This time, though, they cooked the noodles. After all, you never know when you might run across your last chance for spicy-beef flavored instant noodles. Mr. Wang also saw fit to cook up a bit of soup, from a can.

Finally, after boredom had overtaken his good sense, Mr. Wang spoke, “Those were probably meteors.”

“What’s a meteor?” Toothpick asked.

“They are rocks that fall from the sky, from outer space,” he said.

“Have we ever seen one on TV, daddy?” Toothpick asked.

“I’m sure you have,” he told her, and he did with in the most placid tone he could muster, “you watched a lot of TV.”

“I wish we had brought one, Daddy.”

“I know, Toothpick. Me too.”

On the third day Mr. Wang was the first to wake. Mickey Mouse announced that it was 8 o’clock in the morning, and Mickey Mouse was still smiling as he did so. He always smiled, no matter the end of the world.

Mr. Wang took stock of things. He rubbed his face hard to see if he was really awake or if he had dreamt the prior two days of the end of the world. It hurt and so he knew he hadn’t. He walked to the burner and put on some green tea. Might as well have some trimmings on day three of the end of the world.

Day three came on like a bore. Nothing on the radio or horizon. The Wangs had breakfast and tried to think of a plan. They couldn’t think of one.

“How long will we float, Daddy?” Toothpick asked.

“I don’t know, baby.”

“Won’t we run out of food?”

“No. We will find land soon and start a new life,” Mr. Wang said. He said it to reassure his daughter and to fool himself, but it failed on both counts. “The world is full of water now, but the world still has many tall mountains. We will find a mountain.”

They waited in silence for an hour, the radio crackling an obscene silence. Then they heard a ting ting ting. Someone was knocking on The Big Yellow Safety Ball.

Mr. Wang opened the hatch and saw a tiny, old man in a very large fishing boat. The boat had a living cabin and a motor. In the man’s hand was a long pole that he was using to get their attention.

The old man looked surprised. His bushy white eyebrows seemed to climb halfway up his forehead as he spoke. “I can’t believe you’re in there,” he said in the high-pitched voice of a surprised old man. “I was sure that the writing was some kind of joke” he said, pointing to the lettering which spelled out The Big Yellow Safety Ball on the side.

“No. It’s no joke,” Mr. Wang said, as he felt Toothpick nudging up beside him, to get a better look at the man. “We’ve been in here for two days. My name’s Mr. Wang and this is Toothpick, my daughter. My wife’s inside, too. How did you survive this long?”

“Survive?” the old man said. “It wasn’t hard. I was out fishing when the world ended. The only thing that happened to me is that my boat got raised a lot higher. My names Big Brother Gu and I’m from Hunan. Not real sure where we are now, or if it even matters. The days of big land are behind us, so a map is a useless thing.”

“You almost sound happy about it all,” Mr. Wang said.

“I am happy, to tell you that is the truth. Everything is much simpler now. I can live with much less. For too long the world has fed the mouth that bit it,” Big Brother Gu said. “But I see that you have a family. I can find land for you.”

And so it came that The Big Yellow Safety Ball was towed to our mountain, and Big Brother Gu stayed only for a minute. We were all shocked to see it on the third day of the end of the world, and even more surprised by their story.

We ate some spicy-flavored instant noodles with crackers and peanut butter as the Wangs told me what happened. Everything was delicious, and we had many questions for them and about our future, but I found myself wishing they had brought a TV on thing.