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The fiery meteor streaked across the skies one cold autumn night, crashing into an orange grove in Florida.
No one noticed the tiny life form inside, an alien virus of unknown origin.
At dawn, workers picked up the fallen oranges, taking them to distribution centres.
Within days, the mysterious disease began to spread like wildfire.
The first symptoms were harmless: fever, muscle aches, but quickly evolved into respiratory failure and massive organ failure.
Hospitals were overwhelmed and mortality rates reached catastrophic levels.
The population panicked as the virus swept through entire cities. The scientific community worked around the clock to discover a treatment, but the alien pathogen was lethal and relentless.
Weeks later, millions lay dead in the deserted streets. Civilisation as we knew it had completely collapsed.
The survivors, decimated and terrified, took refuge in underground bunkers, praying that the virus would not find a new way to spread.
Somewhere in the heavens, perhaps another civilisation watched our fall with the same indifference with which we watched helplessly as the meteor struck and triggered our apocalypse.
We had been annihilated by something smaller than a grain of sand, a reminder of human insignificance in the face of the vast forces of the cosmos.