Navigating Chaos: Adolescence in a Doomed World

This is a short story I wrote in mid-2022. Genre: cosmic horror as a metaphor for living with a high p-doom.



One

The last time I saw my mom, we met in a coffee shop, like strangers on a first date. I was twenty-one, and I hadn’t seen her since I was thirteen.

She was almost fifty. Her face didn’t show it, but the skin on the backs of her hands did.

“I don’t think we have long,” she said. “Maybe a year. Maybe five. Not ten.”

It says something about San Francisco, that you can casually talk about the end of the world and no one will bat an eye.

Maybe twenty, not fifty, was what she’d said eight years ago. Do the math. Mom had never lied to me. Maybe it would have been better for my childhood if she had [...]

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Outline:

(04:50) Two

(22:58) Three

(35:33) Four

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First published:
July 18th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6qgtqD6BPYAQvEMvA/love-stays-loved-formerly-skin

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.