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Despite the multiple undisguised warning signs, the Paytons still take the trash out to the curb every afternoon, still mow their front lawn, still walk their Labrador retriever named Buddy as if they have all the time in the world ahead of them and still decorate the front of their beautiful home for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Even Jonah Payton still goes out every morning to work in his gleaming white Toyota Camry, his wife Debbie links up on Zoom with her Pilates class after washing the breakfast dishes, little Timothy Payton happily rides his bike to school every morning, Mrs. Dolores Ortiz continues to go every morning to work as a maid in that house, the homeless man in the neighborhood continues to make obscene gestures with the middle finger of his right hand every time he passes pushing his shopping cart in front of the window where Dolores is cleaning the glass, the television newscasts continue to talk about the melting of the glaciers in Greenland and other news such as the unexpected death by overdose of Hollywood’s most famous young actor for whom every girl under eighteen pined for, the eruption of a volcano in the Philippines that left hundreds of fatalities, the latest train accident in Utah for which no casualties have yet been reported, the plummeting of several automotive stocks on Wall Street, the earthquake in Chile measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale, the pollution of the oceans with plastics, the discovery in China of a new fossil of a feathered dinosaur, the German tourist who was stabbed at dusk in Central Park and who is fighting for his life at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the appearance of hundreds of pilot whales stranded on a beach in Australia, the fire that completely destroyed a restaurant in Little Italy, the new hurricane in the Caribbean that threatens to reach the U.S. coastline after its passage through Cuba, the increase in the crime rate in the suburbs of Colima, Acapulco and Tijuana, the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a star more than 100 light years away, the emergence of a deadly hemorrhagic virus in Uganda, the discovery of a virus capable of inducing rejuvenation in laboratory mice, the result of the parliamentary elections in Norway, the new humanoid robots with artificial intelligence that are more efficient than any human worker, the helicopter that plummeted over the Hudson River killing its five occupants, the fentanyl epidemic in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, the new dystopian series on Netflix that looks so much like a possible scenario, the appearance in a Bristol suburb of a new Banksy mural against the war between Ukraine and Russia, a report on the disturbing increase in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon, the new musical that has just opened on Broadway, a Syrian refugee’s complaint about the appalling living conditions in refugee camps in Greece, the discovery of a new species of tree frog in Costa Rica, the overflow of the Mekong River causing thousands of evacuees in Cambodia, the report on new sex scandals in Hollywood, the discovery of a new gene therapy for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the wreck of an Italian luxury cruise ship off the coast of Iceland, the new high school shooting in Texas perpetrated by a 14-year-old teenager, the publication of the list of nominees for the next Nobel Prize in literature, news of armed conflicts in various corners of the globe, the price of gold on the various stock exchanges around the world, and the recent blackout in Europe that left millions of people cut off.

If by means of an imaginary satellite one were to zoom out on the map from the Payton house one would soon cease to see the neighborhood of Westfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts to enter the anonymity of the view from space, in which the Payton house, those of their neighbors the Kowalskis, those of their other neighbors the Fosters, the Marinis, the Henkes, the Bautistas, the Shulmans, the Moseleys, the Collins and the Saavedras would blend into a blurred mass, so that we would soon realize that the individual details of the Paytons’ lives are in fact irrelevant.

It never occurred to the members of the Payton family that perhaps they were coming to the end of time, that their peaceful and predictable lifestyle might be at risk, that they may not get to see the next day.

According to the latest reports, the Paytons go on with their little routines, as if everything were perfectly in harmony, as if the world were the idyllic place they dream of every night after resting their heads on their respective white, fluffy, lavender-scented pillows.

Even the neighborhood homeless man continues to roam the streets with his shopping cart, cursing everyone he comes across, including Mrs. Dolores Ortiz.

Perhaps the only one who senses that something is about to change is Buddy, when he diligently inspects with some distrust all the posts in the neighborhood before deciding to urinate on the farthest and least visited by other dogs, in an indisputable demonstration of canine intelligence.

The evidence is there for all to see. We only need to connect the dots to recreate the total picture.

Global collapse is imminent.

But we are too busy in our routine to see it.

I sincerely believe that dogs are smarter than humans.