Early in the morning the streets were still empty, nobody went to work, stores were closed, and cats roamed around chasing rats. Blackjack rode alone and stopped in the middle of the city for three minutes, he had a black jacket, black boots, black wrist watch, black shades, and a black chopper.

Down the street Blackjack dismounted from a new shiny motorcycle, which then transformed into human Parker.

“10, 9, 8…” the silver man looked around, expecting something big to take place. “3, 2, 1.” after the countdown, love songs began blaring at full volume from each apartment.

On their left, a young beautiful Ethiopian lady re-opened her shoe store and then walked up the street possessed. To the right, an old Muslim man re-opened his book store, then walked down the road tearful to go and meet the woman of his dreams. As they kissed, a strange man fell from the roof top and all hell broke loose in the neighborhood.

Eventually everyone came out screaming their partner’s name out loud, nobody understood that they were single anymore, or had ever had an ex-lover, for that matter. Some handsome men were pulled from both sides by two women who were fighting for their attention. Chased by a dozen men, some beautiful women were kidnapped and thrown over shoulders.

A young lady in a red dress rode a bicycle down the road with a gun pointed at her lesbian partner who then ran away with another spouse. Two gay partners ran, clutching their puppy, as they were chased by a mad man holding a knife.

Angry girlfriends, who felt violated, crashed every car on the road, painted swear words, set things alight, axed their bloody partners in public, and eventually sunk to the ground, sobbing. Haircuts were burnt by angry boyfriends.

True lovers stole vehicles and tried to speed away together. They ran away, hand in hand, chased by gun shots. They ran from angry mobs – across open clearings, holding red roses, wedding rings, and reading Shakespeare’s love poems from books.

Blackjack stood in his spot beside his father, observing the madness.

“Dad, it’s been 20 minutes already!” he said

“15 minutes from now it will all be quiet…forever” The silver man responded, turning his head to look at Blackjack who was impatient.

Eventually, the city got quieter, with only moaners still sobbing beside lifeless bodies, drowned in pools of blood. Parker dragged a bag full of talking heads.

“You can’t do this to us”, “what are you going to do to our heads?”, “this is not fair”, and “hey I want to see my attorney!”

“Ahh shut-up!” Blackjack said as he carried on tossing the heads that he had just cut off of his victims.

Blackjack walked in and out of offices and appartments, searching for vulnerable prey. He found bodies that had been drowned, bodies lying next to guns, seated next to poison bottles and even hanging from the roof – there were dead bodies everywhere! Blackjack finished collecting a bounty of brains which he tied to the back of his chopper. Then he dragged the heads along the dusty road at sunset, leaving the city in flames.

In the following years, Blackjack visited every town he could, returning with more and more transparent robots. They hunted down true lovers as bodies ran to jump over rooftops, hand-in-hand. Alarms rang out and glass broke as he chased hard through near-collapsing buildings.

After 15 years Blackjack and Parker had eradicated the human population to near extinction. Now, there were less than a billion people to find. All the captured brains were stored at the golden tower, where a Navy was built each day. It had taken him 15 years to find his path.

***

Tell us what you think: What do you think of the idea in the story of being infected by ‘love-fever’?