Have you ever subbed for your DM?
We've all been in a pinch before where your loyal Dungeon Master has some trip planned on a three-day weekend or simply wants to spend an evening with his family and not his DnD party (traitor). Although they've been your DM for the last 3 centuries in your DnD plotline, nobody else in the party has ever dared take a look behind the curtain of their story-crafting skills. How is it done? What do we do? Where do the NPCs come from? Could we run the story in their stead?
But you see, this is exactly why we don't ask how the sausage is made.
Your Dungeon Master has conducted your DnD nights so thoroughly and so perfectly for so many years that the one time they're absent, the whole world is set on pause. Perhaps you think your Bard can step up and take over the reins for once, but you'll just find your party trapped in a tavern with NPCs with half-baked background stories and a cursed object blocking the front door.
Let's keep the DMing to the experts and just take a week off next time your main guy can't come and play god-mode with your party. It's safer for your entire Dungeons and Dragons universe that way. In the meantime, scroll onward my fellow paladins, fighters, and druids! Magical memes await you (and they're not even cursed).