The Cookiepocalypse

The Cookiepocalypse

The Secret Lair in the Midwest

Adam Adair stirred the oversized mixing bowl with a menacing grin, deep within his secret lair hidden in the most boring town in Minnesota. It was a town so uninteresting, so nondescript, that it was referred to by many as the San Bernardino of the Midwest. The town was also the perfect location for Adam’s base of operation because its inhabitants, unaccustomed to anything interesting going on around them, would never think to look for the evil deeds being committed in their midst.

The year was not too far from now, and the world above had no idea that their fate was being decided in a repurposed subterranean family nuclear fallout shelter. Adam had tricked his wife into allowing him to build the shelter by convincing her it could double as a guest house/pub. The shelter had long been emptied of beds and survival supplies, and filled with a bizarre fusion of a high-tech lab and a cozy bakery: stainless steel countertops littered with beakers and test tubes, sacks of flour stacked next to assorted mad scientist equipment. The aroma of vanilla and burnt sugar hung in the air alongside the hum of quantum computers. In this unlikely den of doom, the final ingredients of catastrophe were coming together with each slow, villainous stir.

Associate Evil Genius Adam Adair

As the self-proclaimed Associate Evil Genius, Adam took his title very seriously. He wore a flour-dusted lab coat with “Associate Evil Genius” embroidered on the pocket, just below a little cartoon cat paw print. Sure, he wasn’t a full Evil Genius – not yet – but that was only a matter of time (and perhaps paperwork). Standing at the counter, Adam adjusted his safety goggles and addressed an audience of none with a dramatic flair.

“Soon,” he monologued to the empty room, “they’ll see the genius in my madness… or is it the madness in my genius?” A crack of thunder (from a sound effects machine in the corner) punctuated his statement. In the background, three shadows with glowing eyes observed Adam’s theatrics with what might be described as feline amusement.

Unbeknownst to the oblivious world (and even to Adam at times), the true puppet masters lurked at his feet and on the high shelves. Adam’s three cat, the real brains of the operation, sat and purred softly, each in their favorite perch. One was a plump tuxedo cat named Mulder with a bow tie and a collar tag that read “Project Manager,” and another was a floofy Norwegian Forest cat named Bandit (AKA Mr. B) wearing a tag labeled “Chief Evil Officer.” They exchanged a slow, knowing blink. The third cat that made up this feline triumvirate was Elliot (AKA Dudu Kitty), a cat that could best be described as a very nice boy! But what he lacked in evilness he more than made up for with eagerness, which is why he wore a collar tag labeled “Assistant Regional Manager of Nefarious Activities”

Adam believed he was the mastermind, but the cats knew better. After all, it was they who had nudged him (quite literally, off the bed at 8:45 AM) toward this grand scheme in the first place (and hopefully some breakfast). Adam remained blissfully unaware that he was merely a pawn; in the grand scheme of villainy, the cats were holding the laser pointer.

The Masterminds Behind the Madness

Mulder and Bandit had been orchestrating this plan from the start. It began innocently enough: a nudge of a paw on a chemistry set here, a seemingly accidental keyboard stroll there, guiding Adam’s research without him realizing. By now, he had entirely bought into the idea that this Cookiepocalypse was his idea. It was the perfect cover; who would suspect that cats were behind an attempt to destroy the Earth? Humans tended to think of them as aloof house pets, not dark masterminds plotting global annihilation.

In truth, the cats had grown tired of humanity’s antics. Mulder, the more sardonic of the two, often knocked items off the counter as a subtle metaphor for toppling human civilization. Bandit, who had a flair for drama, enjoyed sitting on the big red “LAUNCH” button for the lair’s intercom, mostly to hear humans scramble.

Together, they dreamed of a world free of noisy dogs, vacuum cleaners, and delayed breakfast times. And if they had to annihilate the Earth in a giant mass of dessert to achieve that, so be it. After all, cats always land on their feet, right? They figured they had at least eight more lives to attempt space travel after this Earth was gone.

An Absurd Plan is Hatched

It had taken months of absurd pseudo-science and trial-and-error to get to this point. Adam (under feline influence) had concocted a plan so ludicrous that it just might work – in a cartoonishly evil way. He intended to create and weaponize a massive blob of Nestlé Toll House cookie dough large enough to envelop the planet. How does one create an Earth-destroying blob of cookie dough, you ask? According to Adam’s research notes (scrawled in crayon on the back of take-out menus), the steps were:

1. Gather an industrial quantity of ingredients. (Steal every bag of flour, sugar, butter, and chocolate chips from Costco warehouses across the Midwest.)
2. Enhance the recipe with “science.” (Adam added a dash of plutonium to the baking powder for extra rise, and genetically modified yeast cultured from samples scraped off a 1980s pizza box to create hyper-accelerated dough growth.)
3. Build a colossal oven underneath the Earth’s crust. (Using parts from decommissioned NASA rockets and a few repurposed volcanoes, he constructed what essentially was a planetary baking sheet. The plan was to half-bake the blob, giving it a hardened crust to hold its shape as it rolled over cities – truly over-the-top villainy.)
4. Unleash the blob and let it grow. (The dough was designed to expand exponentially, feeding on water, warmth, and organic material. The more it absorbed, the larger it would get, like a sourdough starter gone mad.)

Absurd? Absolutely. But in a world where reality had begun to rival the absurdity of comic books, no hero had yet thought to check “giant cookie dough blob” on their list of possible threats. Adam himself barely understood the fake science jargon he spouted (“Reverse the sugar polarity!” he would shout, while holding two wires that likely did nothing at all), but under the careful watch of Mulder and Bandit, the plan inched toward fruition.

Weaponizing Cookie Dough

Deep in the lair’s kitchen wing, Adam donned thick oven mitts as he opened a vault-like door to reveal the Proto-Dough. Inside a chamber, bathed in eerie green light, was a quivering glob the size of a minivan. It pulsated gently, like a living thing.

The smell was deceptively delightful, sweet chocolate and vanilla masking the underlying hint of biochemical insanity. Adam’s eyes gleamed with a mixture of pride and horror at what he had created. “Behold!” he announced to the empty air (and to the slow-clapping cats in the corner), “the beginning of the end…and it’s chewy!”

He had invented a way to keep the dough pliable and ever-growing without fully cooking it. Through absurd pseudo-science that he happily detailed to anyone who wasn’t listening, Adam explained how he used quantum microwaves to heat the dough’s molecules unevenly. The outer layer formed a crispy shell, but the inside remained uncooked and ready to absorb everything in its path. In theory, once released, the blob would roll and engulf terrain, animals, and unlucky humans alike, growing larger and larger with each absorbed mass. It was the Grey Goo nightmare of nanotechnology theorists, except browner, chunkier, and a lot tastier.

To “weaponize” it further, Adam stirred in several special components. For example, he added a strain of mold from an old sandwich (to give it a mind of its own, albeit a very moldy mind), a generous dose of caffeine (so the dough would be hyperactive), and just a pinch of catnip, at the cats’ insistence, for reasons only they knew. He had also equipped the blob with a rudimentary guidance system: a giant magnet shaped like a cookie at the North Pole, intended to lure the dough around the globe in a predetermined path of destruction like a wandering, ravenous Pac-Man.

Over-the-Top Villainy in Action

With everything in place, Adam Adair prepared to set his plan into motion. He stood before a massive control panel in the lair’s command center (which also doubled as a bakery kitchen island). Hundreds of buttons and switches gleamed, though many were purely decorative or repurposed from old arcade machines. Above him, a huge monitor displayed a map of Earth with a graphic of a smiling chocolate chip cookie superimposed menacingly over it.

“People of Earth,” Adam declared grandiosely into the empty air, “your doom is nigh. The Cookiepocalypse is upon you, and it will be baked to perfection!” He let out a diabolical laugh that echoed through the chamber. At his feet, Mulder yawned, while Bandit gave a polite, evil golf clap with his paws. Dudu Kitty took a nap.

Adam pulled a giant lever labeled “ENGAGE DOUGH.” Sirens (set to the sound of oven timers dinging) blared through the lair. The vault door opened, and the Proto-Dough blob oozed out, guided into a large tunnel that angled upward to the surface. On the monitor, Adam watched via satellite feed as the ground above the fallout shelter began to quake. A sticky brown mass burst forth into the twilight sky, like bread dough rising too fast in the oven of the apocalypse.

He could barely contain his excitement. Grabbing a vintage microphone, Adam broadcast a message on all frequencies (using text-to-speech, because his voice was too busy laughing): “This is Associate Evil Genius Adam Adair speaking. Today, I bring you homemade destruction! A dessert you cannot resist, and cannot escape. Good luck, and bon appétit!”

The Cookiepocalypse Unleashed

The blob of cookie dough, now freed from its confines, began its rampage across the Midwest. At first, onlookers were baffled. A farmer in Iowa reported something that “looked like a rolling hill of chocolate chip cookie dough” heading toward his fields. By the time the authorities realized this was not a prank, it was already too late for several towns that became the blob’s first snacks.

The blob rolled, slowly but inexorably, absorbing everything in its path. It consumed cornfields (creating oddly delicious caramel corn pockets within itself) and silos (adding a nice crunch). A stampede of startled cattle were caught up in it, giving the dough a rich, buttery flavor from all the churned milk and beef tallow – a fact both horrific and darkly comic in its absurdity. Entire houses got subsumed; from the outside, one could see faint outlines of furniture and flailing limbs just beneath the dough’s surface, like raisins in a giant oatmeal cookie.

Panicked locals tried to fight back. Bullets and explosives were fired at the blob, but they simply embedded in the dough harmlessly, like candies pressed into cookie batter. In fact, each explosion only served to bake parts of the blob’s surface into a firmer crust, which the interior dough then broke through and continued on, effectively self-repairing.

News choppers captured footage of what looked like a deliciously oversized Snickerdoodle wreaking havoc on suburbia. The footage would have been funny if not for the screaming.

When the blob reached San Bernardino the citizens were briefly so delighted by the sight of something rather ususual they began to dance and cheer (except for Karen the Homeowners Association President who planned to post strongly-worded flyers about how the blob is affecting property values and doesn’t match the approved beige color palette) – right before being devoured by the delicious mass.

Back in the secret lair, Adam and his feline overlords watched the news feeds with glee. “It’s working!” Adam cackled, clapping his hands. He offered high-fives to Mulder and Bandit; the cats obligingly raised their paws (mostly to humor him, as they were pleased to see their agenda moving forward). For added measure, Adam dramatically dunked a cookie into a glass of milk while watching a particularly scenic segment of the blob rolling over San Bernardino.

The World Crumbles (Cookie Crumbles)

Within 48 hours, the cookie dough blob had grown to truly monstrous proportions. It fed on everything: lakes (which evaporated into steam, partially baking the blob from within), forests (wood fires giving it a smoky flavor), and cities (one city’s entire chocolate factory went in, amplifying the chocolate chunk count to catastrophic levels). Every new addition made the blob swell bigger and roll faster. It left behind a trail of sticky, baked crumbs and a scent that alternated between heavenly bakery and scorched sugar.

The world’s governments scrambled to respond. A coalition of militaries tried the only thing they thought made sense: heat. If they could bake the blob solid, perhaps they could stop it. Operation “Critical Bake” was launched – warplanes napalmed the edges of the blob and missile strikes ignited infernos, attempting to fully cook the gargantuan cookie. For a moment, it seemed to work: the outside of the planetary dough ball began to crust over entirely, slowing its advance. The blob, now roughly the size of Rhode Island, started to resemble a giant browned cookie, steaming but motionless. People around the world held their breath (some in sorrow at the loss of life, others because the smell of that much cookie was overpoweringly sweet).

But the victory was illusory. In the heart of the dough, the genetically modified yeast and that dash of plutonium performed a miracle of dark science. The heat catalyzed an explosive leavening reaction. Suddenly – crack! – the enormous cookie shell fissured.

With a sound like a gingerbread house collapsing, the entire crust shattered, chunks of baked dough flung for miles. From within, a superheated mass of still-raw dough burst forth, now expanding even faster due to the heat. In one horrific yet comical moment, the blob overproofed and doubled its size in seconds, surging out in all directions.

The End of the Earth (Baked to Perfection)

In the final hours, humanity’s hubris (or perhaps its sweet tooth) led to its downfall. The massive cookie dough blob encased the Earth completely. From space, observers on the International Space Station watched in a mix of horror and absurd fascination as the blue marble of Earth turned into a brown, lumpy sphere. Oceans sizzled and caramelized under the dough’s heat. The atmosphere filled with a fine mist of powdered sugar as the blob squeezed out the planet’s air like icing from a piping bag.

Adam Adair, standing in his lair, felt the ground tremble violently. He realized, perhaps a bit too late, that being underground in the Midwest – ground zero for the Cookiepocalypse – was not ideal. In a dramatic last gesture, he shook his fist at the ceiling. “This is not how it was supposed to go!” he yelled, as a wave of warm cookie dough broke through the lair’s reinforced door. His last words, before being enveloped in his own creation, were: “I regret nothing!” (Though it came out more like “I regret mufflemph!” due to a well-placed chocolate chip.)

His cats, however, made it to the high shelves. No one knows if they survived, but odds are they’re floating somewhere in space, licking their paws and planning what to destroy next. Probably Saturn. It has rings. They hate rings. They much prefer boxes.

Epilogue: Crumbs in the Cosmos

High above the now cookie-coated Earth, a handful of survivors aboard the International Space Station huddled at the observation window. They had witnessed everything, powerless to stop it. The station commander, Jeph, rubbed his temples in disbelief. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered. “Earth… is gone. Eaten by… cookie dough.”

Floating next to him, astronaut Dave let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Well, that’s one way to crumble,” he said, immediately feeling the glare of his colleagues. Dark humor was all they had left, so nobody chastised him for it.

As the ISS orbited the site of what was once Earth, the crew saw debris floating by – not the metal and rock fragments one might expect from a shattered planet, but rather bits of overbaked cookie. A piece of chocolate chip the size of a boulder tumbled gently past, followed by what looked like a continent-sized cookie crumb. One astronaut donned a spacesuit to retrieve supplies from an external module and returned with a strange souvenir: a chunk of the cookie. In the sterile air of the station, the crumb still smelled buttery and sweet.

In a somber circle, the survivors held the browned morsel, understanding it was literally the largest piece of home they had left. In the ultimate gallows humor, Dave broke the silence: “At least it’s not oatmeal raisin.” There was a pause… and then, despite everything, a few of them chuckled. It was a small, absurd comfort in the face of apocalypse.

And then someone said, “Pass the milk.”

THE END