Population: One, Me by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview

My world

Driving down a deserted road, I have gotten tired so I pull off into a used car lot. My van is towards the back among the vans that need repair. I know that there will be no one but habits.

All the good cars are alongside of the road

All still with their faded “We Finance” stickers on the windows along with the tattered flags on the antenna. The “we are open” pendants are almost gone.

This is how life is now. I missed the last call deliberately. Everyone on this world has gone into space to avoid dying from the end of the world. That was predicted to happen two years ago. They left for what they call the new earth. That was now three years ago.

The new earth is a journey of possibly generations. The only problem is that the new earth images are light years in the past. There is a good possibility that the world may not even be there. That sun may even have gone nova. They will not know until they are at least half the way there.

If it has died they have another that they will settle. Not one of them knew that the direction they set out on was a course into the past. They did not realize that our world was on the very edge of this galaxy. We were the country bumkins.

Light years away, over ten billion miles from here those worlds have lived and died. I’m afraid that they now are committed to the journey and will die searching. They were so certain that this world was doomed that it will never occur to them that they will never be able to turn around.

Enrico Fermi proposed that our position in the galaxy was so remote from the busy center and that center is so much older that it could be possible that only those worlds like us, on the ragged edge of the galaxy, may be the only ones alive. There may come a time that I may be the last person alive in this galaxy.

With their leaving, they took a lot of the wildlife with them for food. Breeding their meat. It is a world in itself. I would not be surprised if they lose track of the fact that they are a ship and that will be their world. Traveling endlessly through a dead galaxy. Not even realizing that they once lived on a planet.

Now back to this world, even though I am the only one here, I do realize that I may not be the only one here. I must act like I may be ambushed, I do not really expect it. The world population clock ticked down as did the embark countdown clock.

Everywhere you turned those were displayed. When the departure clock started on the plus side, the population clock stalled at one. I need to say this right now. My feelings were that I would rather stay with my feet on the ground rather than dying in some hopeless flight to nowhere. The thought of the dead being rendered down to mush to feed the plants did not sit well.

I could never eat a vegetable or meat on that trip.

That is one of the reasons that I stayed here. I can grow things in the soil here.

For what was supposed to be just rock, this world is refreshed. Nature is reclaiming its rightful place. Nature will always win out. Once the population reached one, those world killing emissions from cars and cattle are now within safe limits. The steams are becoming clean. Just by looking, I can see that this world is taking a deep refreshing breath.

It is a glorious sight. A great shame that all those wise men did not realize that paradise was only a breath away.

Over the two years after the destruction was supposed to have happened, I have decided that what I can erase, I will erase. I have now taken those horrible examples of urban sprawl, those miles of the same house and burned them down. Those areas are now being reclaimed by this world.

They would have, in time, decayed but I figure that I now own it all, I would help that decay. I can only do those areas that are in the area I live. Cities are full of steel and concrete. Time will erase those but over tens of thousands of years. I do not have the power needed.

I drive around just to keep from losing my mind. I play the music and sing to the now very familiar lyrics. No one around to complain about how loud, how bad I sing or whether I am precise on the words. I sing just to hear some live voice.

There is no one to answer me. I don’t know how many years I can go living alone like this.