Look around you. The homework you’ve procrastinated from doing, the teacher you’re ignoring, the sibling you’re trying to shake off, is all in the bubble. Everything you do, everything you see, almost everything you care about, is within the bubble. The thin membrane floats high above us, encasing all the Earth in the bubble, protecting it, you could say.

From time to time, the bubble has rippled, swayed, almost cowering at the tumult below, not afraid that this time will be the one that pops it, for it knows that this is too trivial for it, but afraid that this will lead to the problem that pops it.

The bubble has always been beyond our reach, beyond what we can influence. The goings on on Earth, the homework, drama, politics, battles and wars have always been entirely too trivial to affect the bubble, though it will occasionally sway and tremor.

If the bubble was to be measured as an earthquake, it would have had merely a tremble every century for the longest time, until recently. Until recently, it would have simply glanced down upon all of us, slightly wary at the goings on, but it would know, somewhere, that it had nothing real to worry about.

Recently, however, the tremors started coming more and more frequently. It would shake a bit every decade, then every year, every month, week, day, and now it shakes perpetually. Now, it doesn’t just glance down, worried, every once and awhile, its eyes are perpetually trained on us, trying to work out what is going on, how bad, exactly, the threat is.

The bubble knows now, with 100% certainty, that our activities are now dangerous to it. It can tell what we are putting into the air, it can tell that we are using our fossil fuels with an abandon, it can tell.

Recently, even more recently still, a certain figure was lifted up to the level of the bubble, along with a handful of his other, in large part more sane, counterparts. A certain someone who has no idea of the problems that would be caused were the bubble to disappear, a certain someone who denies that we are even causing the danger to the bubble. This person has poked and prodded the bubble, causing it to quake more ferociously, more frequently still, and will continue to prod it. This person in power is poking and proding the bubble constantly, with a sword of ignorance and apathy.

The bubble is our protection, the Earth’s protection, from the environment that our planet may revert to. The bubble is our atmosphere, which we are corrupting. The bubble is what protects us from disaster, what has thus far allowed the Earth to inhabit life.

What happens when the bubble pops?