Fluorescent lights in the cramped break room banished all shadows from the stained linoleum counter, and cast the ancient microwave into stark contrast with beige cabinets above. The smell of cheap coffee brewing in long-unwashed filters was slightly nauseating, but I masked it by dumping a packet of hot chocolate into the three-quarters filled paper cup. Light brown powder shimmered on top of the black sea of coffee, forming islands and archipeligos and peninsulas. Surface tension held the powder clumped above the thick coffee, tiny avalanches occasionally falling into the murky depths, imaginary villages on the powdery slopes wiped out in an instant.

Slowly swirling, the power of coffee seeped up to disrupt the peacefully floating hot chocolate powder. Had the imaginary inhabitants been technologically advanced, tiny TVs with tiny CNN anchors would be frantically shouting "Coffecup Crisis!" with attractive yet insistent animated graphics. The higher mountains resisted, while shallower islands succumbed and sank to the treacherous black depths.

Not content to let mere chocolate powder resist for so long, the vengeful coffee deity dipped a massive red-and-white striped cylinder into the impenetrable depths. The cylinder began rotating, forcing the flat sea into a gaping whirlpool that sucked islands and mountains and villages down, down, and still down, to dissolve into the hot sea. Even still, mountain fortresses stood fast against this divine assault, withstanding the worst that an ill-tempered god could throw at them.

The swirling slowed, and finally came to a stop. Only the most solid of chocolate mountains had survived the catastrophe. Nonexistent villagers poked their tiny heads from tiny homes along the mountainous sides, and breathed tiny sighs of relief that the storm had abated.

But wait! Another calamity from the sky rained down, this time in hard white crystals. Sweet, heavy sugar spread across the surviving powder clumps, forcing the already-precarious weathered islands to sink even lower. Even more humiliating, the heavy white crystals allowed scalding coffee puddles to form and spread in previously intact archipeligos and islands, tearing down the fragile landscape from below.

Into this latest catastrophe, the dreaded cylinder again began its circuitous journey around the rim of the world, dragging the black coffee sea and remaining stalwart chocolate powder into an even more frenzied cyclone. Bubbles rose from the deep, mountains shook asunder, and powder sank in clumps and globs into the unimaginable, unseeable depths.

It was soon over.

The formerly black sea, now transformed into a marbled dark brown by its unholy ingestion of the peaceful world that had once floated atop its murky depths, slowed its hurricane rotation and finally stopped all movement. The surface became flat, unmarred by any signs of chocolate. Even the dread cylinder of doom withdrew, its gruesome task complete.

The world was lifted, gently sloshing, but alas, there was nobody left to see this anticlimactic end. Slowly, slowly, the gently cooling sea was drained, until only unhappy reminders remained, dregs in a slowly cooling world cup whose walls stretched up and up.

Mmmm. Mocha!