FICTION
The Last Human in the Milky Way — 3
Excerpt from Chapter 3. Something Was About to Change
3
There was something wrong, something disturbing, something that would not let go of him. It was a kind of uneasiness, and he didn’t understand where it came from, he struggled to understand what it was.
He thought that this is perhaps one of the important moments in life when your life is teetering and you have to dare to make a choice in relation to two different paths that you can take. But the more he thought about exactly that, the surer he became that it was a wrong thought.
He had been in the middle of that election situation earlier and then it was Sara who was standing on the other side of the road and it was Sara who turned her back on him at the same time that he turned his back on her.
This was something different, he thought, this was something less tangible, something almost invisible and something that could hardly be captured with the senses and the normal sensory apparatus.
He thought that it must be an intuition, a secret insight that something big is going on out in the world like here, in this society. And he knew with himself:
— I am forced to stand in it, and I am forced to stand through it.
— I will stand straight in the storm; I will stand through it.
He felt this uneasiness inside him. He was not like usual. Something that would not let him go. He knew it. These events, this chaos, this haphazardness. He recognized this feeling again, this black space inside him, this numbing feeling of being caught in an invisible net. But he didn’t worry; he was not afraid. No, he wasn’t afraid at all.
No, he said to himself. Not afraid. Just a little uneasy. Mostly because he no longer had his closest neighbours with whom he could talk. Like the Larsen family two houses further down. One day he had discovered that they were gone. Had probably been gone for several days, maybe weeks already. Grass had begun to grow across the aisle from the street to the house. Not normal at Larsens’, who had always been so careful about mowing the grass keeping it orderly around the house.
But that was not what had made him uneasy. It was rather the way they had disappeared.
What bothered him was the way it had happened. Almost without him noticing, that something was going on, that something was about to change in society.
He went into the living room and turned on the TV, in a kind of desperate hope that what he knew deep down was not the case. But that was it. The TV screen was as dead, as damned unable to convey signs of life from the world outside as it had been for the past few months.
He looked at the remote control, shook it, even though he was fully aware that it was no use, that it was not actually the remote control for the television set that was faulty.
He had not the slightest doubt that the explanation for the failure was different, and that the answer lay far out there somewhere, in society, in parts of the world from which he could no longer see pictures and videos. The internet had failed them. Everything was futile, everything had to be accepted, because no power in the world — at least no power over which he had control could do anything about the error; it was out of the question, and he had no doubt about that.
But still he felt this insane, this childish impulse inside him. He would get up and raise his hands to the sky, he would scream as loud as he could, he would throw the poor TV remote between the walls — as if that would have helped. He knew very well that there was no point in playing out his anger and frustration in that way. It would only lead to him feeling that the grey-black, the pitch-dark despair overpowered him and pushed him even more down to the ground.
Little by little he managed to calm down. He thought about the Larsen family, and the last time he had seen them at home or on the street. But he couldn’t remember when it had been. He decided to go outside and take a closer look.
When he walked the last steps up on the porch at the front of the Larsen house, he became aware of the full extent of it. He peeked in through the window, and he felt himself freeze on his back. The furniture, everything was gone! They had simply evaporated, had packed their things, rented a moving car and then had left early in the morning. Without mentioning the relocation plans in one word. Without stopping by and saying goodbye!
(…)
Read more << Excerpt from chapter 2
Read more << Excerpt from chapter 2.1
Read more >> Excerpt from chapter 4
The author is currently reviewing and editing the manuscript for the novel The Last Human in the Milky Way. Excerpts from selected chapters will be published as previews on Medium.
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