27%

After global warming, the oxygen crisis. We learned in school that the atmosphere’s 21% oxygen, right? Twenty years ago it was. It’s 22 now. So old folks get to breathe a little easier, nothing wrong with that? At 24%, you can’t fight city fires. At 26, you see long-term health damage: blindness, strokes.

No-one knows why it’s happening. Humanity’s grown so big, everything we do bumps up against something, like Alice in the White Rabbit’s house, but we still know almost nothing about how the world works.

At 27%, it’s the end. All the vegetation will burn until it’s gone.

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, including the imaginary science.
Any resemblance to actual facts is coincidental.

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Image credit: Cameron Strandberg, 2009