Scroll

SCROLL

It began subtly, almost innocuously, the way most great apocalypses do. It started with a thumb. One insignificant thumb, twitching over the surface of a phone screen. A mindless flick, a quick check of notifications. Innocent, right? But from that moment on, no one noticed the shift, no one saw how it spread. It was so simple. A few more scrolls. Just one more post. One more viral video. Just one more goddamn like.

By noon, the world’s thumbs had blurred into motion, scrolling without stop. People woke up with a need, a hunger, one they couldn’t name but always knew had to be fed. Up, up, up, thumb after thumb flicking through feeds that never ended. News, memes, cat videos, and a constant stream of misinformation so rich it could’ve been butter on the mind. It was all so entertaining, so urgent, and yet so utterly pointless.

And that's exactly what the aliens had banked on.

Of course, we didn’t know it at the time. We thought we were just scrolling, scrolling our lives away, feeding off each other like digital cannibals. But the aliens—they were clever. They'd been watching us, seeing how easily distracted we were by shiny things and endless dopamine loops. They had seen our weakness and exploited it, creating a parasite that rode the frequency of our Wi-Fi signals. This wasn’t just any parasite. No, it was the parasite, one that could think, whisper, and—most importantly—control.

You see, these aliens were lazy. They didn’t invade with guns or space lasers. They had no need. They didn’t have to. Why get their hands dirty when all they had to do was slip a thumb-controlling parasite into our phones?

Now, when we scrolled, we didn’t stop. We couldn’t. The parasite—tiny, invisible—embedded itself in the tips of our thumbs. Every flick of the screen, every innocent scroll, was now in service to the alien overlords. They didn’t need spaceships; they had Instagram. They didn’t need an army; they had Twitter. They didn’t even need an evil mastermind because—funny thing—our thumbs were doing all the dirty work for them.

And so, humanity's thumbs blurred into motion. The scroll. The eternal scroll. It consumed lives. People scrolled in bed, in cars, in grocery stores. They scrolled while eating, walking, even while making love (if anyone still bothered with that anymore). The world was one giant blur of thumb-powered addiction.

But it got worse. Because this wasn’t just about distraction. No, the parasites were feeding. They were feeding on our thoughts, our emotions, turning the endless scroll into a feast for their alien masters. Our minds weren’t just glued to our phones—they were slowly being devoured, one meme, one like at a time. Even the advertisers weren’t safe. They pumped out ads in a blur, clueless that they were feeding back into the same system that controlled them.

It was a perfect loop. A cycle of thumb-driven doom.

Except, for one tiny problem: Spacebuuk.

Spacebuuk was humanity’s last hope, the only thing powerful enough to break the spell. A social media platform from the far reaches of the galaxy, designed by an ancient race of benevolent tech gurus who saw the impending doom before it even arrived. Spacebuuk could save us, but the aliens—oh, they were smart. They worked hard to keep Spacebuuk from falling into the hands of the public. Any mention of it? Blurred. Deleted. Censored by invisible thumbs scrolling faster than the eye could see. Minds were numbed, and the truth was hidden beneath the endless feeds.

But there were whispers—rumors, really—about a few who had escaped. The Unscrolled, they called them. Legends said they had freed their thumbs, taken back control of their minds. These people—if they still existed—were humanity’s only shot. But they were few, and they were hunted, because the aliens knew: if Spacebuuk were ever to go viral, it would end their dominion over the human race. The scroll would stop. The parasites would starve. The advertisers would... actually have to think for themselves.

In a world where everyone’s thumbs moved faster than thought, the Unscrolled had a secret power. They had resisted the blur. They knew the truth. And somewhere out there, in the wastelands of Wi-Fi dead zones and forgotten corners of the internet, they were waiting for the right moment to strike.

The scroll was strong. The scroll was relentless. But it wasn’t invincible.

Not if Spacebuuk had anything to say about it.