FICTION
The Last Human in the Milky Way — 7
Excerpt from Chapter 7. The Event
7
Before he had found out about the Event, he had had a hard time seeing what could have led to these changes, so that all the neighbours had left without warning. The Milky Way was a good place to live, a good neighbourhood and a good environment. He had only good memories from the first couple of years. They had had barbecues with the neighbours, and street parties at least once a year, in the spring. And then they had games for the kids.
That was strange, he thought. But then he realized that it had been a long time since the kids were small, and when he thought about it, no one in the Milky Way had small children anymore. But for the Jensen family, it was a bit awkward. They lived on the other side of the Milky Way. They had a daughter who was almost grown up and he had seen her pass by not very many days ago, he thought. But then he was a little stunned. It might have been several weeks ago. After all, he was not at all sure when it had happened.
He walked further down the street. The Stormberg couple in the big house further down on the other side of the Milky Way had two dogs, and then they had an adult son who occasionally came home and went for a walk with the dogs. It was empty in the yard there too. He felt that while thinking of the Stormberg family, unrest began to rise to something resembling panic. — He had not seen them come back from shopping at the mall either, not for a long time. He had thought, “What’s going on in the neighbourhood here? What’s going on here? It is unbelievable. Has anything happened in the world? ”
And yes, indeed, now, he knew. Something had happened in the world. He frantically tried to find out if he was awake or if he was in a dream. It was not easy to say. He wished he could just wake up and discover that what he had experienced in the dream, it was not like that in real life, it just had to be like that. A bad dream, a nightmare.
He decided to go home but got nowhere. It was as if something — an invisible arm — was holding him back. It was something that held him tight.
He decided to make one last attempt and walked down to the end of the street where there was a small turning point just past the house of Moss. There was no one there either. He started to get really worried. This was completely wild. There were no people to see at all.
What was this? He saw it now, clearly. For a long time, he had not followed what was happening in the world at all. He had missed out on the important thing. He had not realized that the world had completely changed, that important things had happened out there.
He had not watched TV for many weeks, because after he had decided to write this novel and he had started that work, there was one thing that mattered, and that was to write, to write, write all the time. As long as new things came into the story that added value to the script, the most important thing was to keep going. Just keep on writing more of what came from within.
It had become like an obsession to be able to move this project forward, and as the volume — the page number — had increased he had become more and more monomaniacal, only focused on one thing — writing, writing, writing.
(…)
The author is currently reviewing, rewriting, 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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