"It's like a bad dream you can't wake up from, isn't it?"
The voice, belonging to a man whose face was etched with a haunted weariness, broke the silence. He was seated on a dusty bus stop bench, his posture rigid, eyes scanning the empty street as if expecting a phantom double-decker to appear. The others, drawn together by the sheer absurdity of their predicament, nodded slowly.
Idara's Perspective: The Crushing Silence
"You have no idea," Idara began, her voice a little shaky, a stark contrast to her usual confident tone at the bank. "I woke up, and the first thing I noticed wasn't the silence, but the absence of noise. That makes sense, right? Like, you're so used to the constant hum of Uyo, the Keke Napep horns starting at 5 AM, the market women already shouting, the traffic building up on Secretariat Road. It's a symphony of chaos, but it's life. And then... nothing. Utter, profound, suffocating nothing."
She shivered, pulling her arms around herself. "My phone. No notifications. That should have been my first clue. My WhatsApp usually explodes by 6:30 AM with 'Good morning, ma' from the junior staff, or some silly meme from my friends. Dead. The screen was just... black. I thought, 'Okay, power cut, probably a fault at the sub-station.' But then I went to the window. You know Ewet Housing, right? Usually, even at that hour, there are joggers, cars heading out, people getting their morning papers. But it was just... still. Like a painting. A very, very disturbing painting."
Idara gestured vaguely towards the distance. "I remember standing there, staring at the empty road, and this ice-cold dread just clamped onto my stomach. It wasn't just the cars, or the people. It was the complete lack of movement. No leaves rustling in the wind, not even a stray dog sniffing around. Just... nothing. And then the real fear hit me: Where is everyone? Not what happened, but where did they all go? It's a terrifying question to ask yourself when your city just… vanishes." Her gaze hardened, a stoic mask attempting to cover the raw fear. "You think you know loneliness until the entire world around you ceases to exist."
Udeme's Perspective: The Void of Inspiration
Udeme rubbed his temples, his artist's hands, usually smudged with charcoal or paint, now clean and restless. "It's the quiet that got me too, but differently. For an artist, quiet can be good, you know? For focus. But this wasn't productive quiet. This was… dead quiet. I crashed on my sofa last night, typical. Woke up, and usually, even through the thin walls of my studio, I'd hear the hustle of Ikot Ekpene Road. The buses, the hawkers, the frantic energy. It fuels my work, that chaos. But it was gone."
He ran a hand through his dreadlocks. "I looked out the window. Just concrete and dust. No movement. The street dogs, even they were gone. And that's when the creeping dread started. It wasn't the usual morning grogginess. It was a cold, alien feeling. Like my own presence was somehow wrong in this silence. Every artist fears creative block, right? But this felt like the entire world's creativity had just… ceased. Like the inspiration had been sucked dry, leaving behind this hollow echo."
Udeme's eyes scanned the empty street. "I kept thinking, 'Is this a dream? Am I still high on those energy drinks?' But the clarity, the sharp edges of the buildings, the dust on the ground – it was too real. And the more real it became, the more that sense of profound emptiness suffocated me. My art, my life, it's about capturing life, movement, emotion. But if there's no life, no movement, no emotion… what then? What am I without that? Just a man in a ghost town, with nothing to paint." He exhaled slowly, a stoic acceptance of a situation that defied all logic. "It's a bizarre kind of freedom, I suppose. The freedom of absolute nothingness."
Dr. Inyang Okon's Perspective: The Loss of Control
Dr. Inyang Okon adjusted his glasses, his neurosurgeon's precision evident even in his distress. "My internal clock," he began, his voice surprisingly steady despite the profound anomaly. "It's a finely tuned instrument, waking me before dawn for years. The absence of the usual cues was the first disruption. No maid, no gardener, not even the hum of my own smart home system. It was all offline. That's when I felt it – a flicker of unease. I thrive on order, on predictability, on the science of life and death. This... this is the antithesis of everything I know."
He looked at his hands, movements still precise. "I checked my phone. No network. Not a single bar. In Shelter Afrique, with our infrastructure? Impossible. My first thought was a massive network failure. A blackout, perhaps. But then I went to the balcony. Usually, the residential hum, the faint sound of generators, the occasional car – it's all there. But it was barren. Pristine, yes, but barren. Like a perfectly preserved specimen, devoid of life."
Dr. Inyang's gaze was distant, contemplating the impossible. "As a surgeon, I am accustomed to situations of extreme gravity. Life and death hang in the balance. But there is always a protocol, a path, a solution. Here, there is nothing. No data. No patterns. Just a complete, inexplicable void. The unsettling thought that I might be alone, truly alone, began to form. And for a man whose life is dedicated to saving lives, to combating the chaos of disease and injury, to be faced with this absolute, uncontrollable stillness… it is a profound helplessness. A complete loss of control. My stoicism is a defense mechanism against chaos, but this chaos is... invisible. Unknowable."
Mfoniso's Perspective: The Stolen Vibrancy
Mfoniso, usually boisterous and full of life, spoke quietly, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her wrapper. "The market, you know? Urua Ekpa. It's my life. Waking up, the first thing I do is check my stall. Make sure everything is perfect. But the morning... it was too perfect. Too neat. No customers." She let out a small, mirthless laugh. "I called out, 'Owo Mi! Anyone here?' My voice just... swallowed. It echoed. In a market that's never known silence, my voice just bounced off empty stalls."
Her eyes welped up slightly. "I live for the noise, the haggling, the jokes with Mama Udo from the next stall, the smell of fresh pepper and stockfish. It's vibrancy, it's energy. My heart, it started pounding like a drum. That sterile quiet? It was like someone had sucked all the air out of the place. Like the market itself was holding its breath, waiting for something that wasn't coming."
Mfoniso pointed a trembling finger. "I saw a half-eaten plate of groundnuts on Mama Udo's stall. Like she'd just left, mid-bite. And that's when it truly hit me. This wasn't just quiet. It was abrupt. Like everyone just vanished in the middle of living. The market, my life, it was stolen. Not just the people, but the very essence of what it means to be alive here. The chaos, the sweat, the laughter – it's all gone. And I'm just here, an actor on an empty stage. It feels like the world ended, and I didn't even get to say goodbye." Her usual cheerful demeanor was replaced by a raw, unadulterated fear of utter erasure. "What is life without the bustle? Without the noise?"
David's Perspective: The Glitch in Reality
David, ever the logical one, pushed his glasses up his nose, his voice flat with disbelief. "My laptop. Dead. My phone. Dead. Not just 'battery low' dead, but 'no response, no light, nothing' dead. I was up all night coding, so I usually sleep through anything. But the lack of noise from the university area, the generator hums, the distant music from student hostels… it woke me. That in itself was a glitch."
He looked around, as if expecting the world to dissolve at any moment. "I ran to the window. The university gate, usually a mess of students, security, taxis – completely still. Main road? Gridlocked. Except it wasn't. It was empty. Not a single vehicle. Not even a tire mark. This wasn't a power outage. This was a system crash. A global one, it felt like. All data, all connectivity, just… gone."
David's gaze held a deep, unsettling fear. "My world is built on logic, on algorithms, on predictable patterns. If something is broken, you find the bug, you fix the code. But this? This is beyond any bug. This is a complete re-write of reality, and I don't have the source code. It's like the entire world's operating system just blue-screened. And then, the chilling thought: what if it's not a glitch? What if this is the new normal? What if all the order, all the sense, has just… melted away? It's not just scary; it's existentially terrifying. The universe decided to delete itself, and we're the remaining bits of corrupted data. A complete, total, irreversible breakdown of everything." His stoicism was a thin veneer over a mind grappling with the ultimate illogical. "How do you even begin to debug reality?"