LIVE NOVEL
She Turned to Him, Smiled All Over
The Last Human in the Milky Way Chapter 23
One day it dawned on him that great changes had taken place in the neighbourhood and in the wider world. He decided to try to find out what had happened, packed things into his car and started driving.
Somewhere on the road he sees a woman standing on the side of the road, and he stops next to her. They are two strangers who set out on a journey to rediscover the world, a world where great changes have taken place that they are only guessing the consequences of.
23
She was about 20 m in front of him when they reached the viewpoint. She stopped abruptly at the edge of the cliff. Then she turned to him, smiled all over her face. He approached and saw the wide landscape unfolding there. It was the first time he saw her smile like this. He felt something warm inside him.
“Look over there,” she said, pointing.
He looked in the direction she was pointing. There were cars on the road, trucks, vans, land cruisers. Many cars. The traffic was slow. Along some flat parts of the road stood many cars, motorhomes and caravans.
“That,” he said, “does not look good.”
“But it looks relatively normal, doesn’t it?”
“Not so sure!”
“Yes, cars with people in them, traffic moving slowly forward.”
“No, I think we have to drive in a different direction. We have to try to avoid this — it is not advisable to drive down there. Too many people and too many cars. Chaos. And it can be dangerous.”
They began to go downhill.
“What do you think happens now?” she asked.
“Not easy to say,” he said, “it does not look good, all these people out on the road.”
“But what shall we do then?”
“Well, first of all,” he said, “I think we must drive east. We must try to find a place — yes, a not too chaotic place where we may get to know what is happening here. And what has happened in the world. “
“Yes, out here in the wilderness there is no connection. No Internet or anything up here.”
“Yes, exactly. So maybe, if we get to a bigger city, a couple of days’ driving away — maybe there’s hope there.”
He stopped. She asked no more. They walked in silence for a while, each inside their own universe of thought.
He thought about the situation. And he thought of her walking there a few meters in front of him, steeply down a slope. He did not feel comfortable.
— The denial. The lies, the alternative truths that pervaded.
— Future. What was the future?
He wanted so badly to believe that the worst thing could not happen now. That, after all, there was hope. He thought, “There must be a solution.”
“You,” she said.
He flinched. Did not expect her to speak right now.
“Yes.”
“The thing about people denying things,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I heard a story about it. It happened in the spring of the second year during the first pandemic. There were some people who refused to believe the information they received from the government about how dangerous the pandemic was. They simply refused to comply regulations and rules from the authorities. For example, it was not allowed to gather more than five people, and there was a man who stood out as one who would not relate to this. He refused to accept that there was a pandemic, that it was as dangerous as the authorities said; it was probably just the flu or something like that, he said.
“Yes, I’ve also heard of that.”
“He was active on social media and posted messages in which he questioned the massive measures taken by the authorities to prevent something that, according to him, would be like a cold or mild flu.”
“Yes, he was the one who arranged a barn party where he gathered a large number of people.”
“I have read that he posted a Twitter message questioning what could be the reason for the massive measures to prevent something that will be like a cold or mild flu?”
“Yes, after the party, the police started investigating him.”
“And he also published a tweet saying that the good news is that the risk of being affected by a dangerous disease on ‘flat ground’ is “practically zero.”
“Yes, I saw it. And then it turned out that he himself got symptoms of the disease. And he became ill, but did not want to seek medical help. He insisted that the risk of infection and the pandemic was just something the authorities invented. It was just inventions and lies. And then he got sicker, and then he died a few days later. A little later, another party participant on the barn party died of the same symptoms, and several others who had attended the barn party refused to provide information that could help the authorities with infection detection.“
“It’s almost too unlikely to be true.”
“Yes, but it has actually happened. There are clearly some people who refuse to accept the facts. They do not want to believe what the authorities say about the virus, about the spread of the infection pandemic and the whole thing.”
“Yes,” she said, “and it is very strange that people do not want to believe what the authorities say. What is evident, what is fact-based.”
“Yes, there is always someone who does not want to conform.”
“Yes, you are right. It will always be the case that there are some people who will not accept what is widely read and accepted, what is true. They will base their worldview and vision of the world on something wild which they have been convinced of, something they hold on to no matter what.“
“Yes, in religions for example.”
She looked at him with her serious eyes.
“But is it not possible to make them understand that they are wrong?”
“Sometimes, but not always,” he said. “There will always be people who doubt what others are convinced of. People who blindly follow their leader. — It is insane!”
This is chapter 23 of the novel The Last Human in the Milky Way. The novel is written and published ‘live’ chapter by chapter in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters.
The author is in the middle of writing the novel, and works daily to write new chapters. The author accepts input, questions and comments from readers. You can provide such feedback in the comments section below or by writing to [email protected].
To see all published chapters, go here.
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Chapter 24: Drive up Into the Mountains