On that fateful day, the entire nation of Algeria was taken away.
"Taken" implies that some entity did the taking, and it was popularly held that this was so. The means itself were suspect.
It was three in the afternoon, Algerian time, when it happened. Two million square kilometers of land shuddered and rose up. Rose up, like a unimaginably huge pancake or bit of eggshell, leaving a nation-sized crater in its place. It was lifted (for surely, there was a lifter) up through the atmosphere at an incredible speed, but stayed sound structurally despite being as aerodynamic as a scaled-up piece of paper. Its shadow created a mid-day-night across Libya and, as it rose higher, Egypt.
Experts later recited that this missing slice of earth's crust was .56 miles thick. These experts stammered many such facts into radios and televisions and computer screens, but no amount of reassurance could set the public's rattled minds at ease, and the experts themselves spent many a sleepless night afterwards staring at the ceiling, wondering. Everything they knew about physics had been defied, and the universe did not seem to think it odd at all. The entire impossible event had begun, taken place, and ended in a merely an hour, with no fanfare or harmful after-effects. Not a single atom was split; the only causalities were textbooks.
Once it had passed through the atmosphere, disturbing dozens of satellites, the chunk of earth turned towards the stars. It floated into the star-studded emptiness like a magnificent interstellar Frisbee.
What became of the creatures on the surface? Before they had gone out of range, many of the Algerian population had communicated with their former kin who remained on the surface. Emails, instant messages, phone calls, radio waves. But none who stayed behind could make sense of what they heard or read. Descriptions of bliss. Exclamations of the purest joy. Well wishes. Declarations of perfect love for all. Portrayals of infinite contentment. Smiley emoticons.
What became of that piece of earth, that chosen handful of humanity? Did they asphyxiate in the vacuum of space? Do they travel still among the stars? Have they gone someplace wholly different? Those who remained shackled to the earth wrung their hands and chewed their lips. Talk shows and news programs and comedians considered and debated for decades onward, but no one could know. And no one could shake the unspoken anxiety that they had been left behind.
(Posted 27 July 2016) (Sometimes I pin this to the top of my blog because I like it. So there.)
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