FICTION
The Last Human in the Milky Way
From Chapter 13. — It might seem like the end of civilization, the end of the society as they knew it.
After more than a week where nothing happened, he decided to give it a try.
The plan was to take the car and drive the highway northwest, to a city with nearly 30,000 inhabitants. He was sure there must be people in that city.
He took out a large bag and started picking out food from the drawers and cupboard in the kitchen. He found several cans of ready meals, and he took three of them with him, and in addition some cans of tinned peas and carrots. He brought enough to last for the first few days on the road.
While he was doing this, he thought he heard unfamiliar sounds from outside. At times he thought he could hear a distant bouldering or muffled bang far away. A kind of muffled rumbling, a kind of almost silent roar from an area very far away, a persistent sound that he couldn’t remember having heard before.
But the sound was just very weak and he thought it might be thunder. It was probably just something completely natural, nothing dangerous, he repeated to himself. Not something dangerous. Something quite natural.
He thought of the others inhabitants in the street. — No wonder people are really tired of living in this outpost. — They are so tired of living here. Why not you too?
He felt it was so strange, the way they had just disappeared, all these families, all these people. They had come here because they were all looking for something better, a different life. That is why they had sought here, to settle down and live far away from where the power had its seat, in this outpost.
They had traveled here because they believed in what they were doing. Here they should manage, different people from different backgrounds who had come together here with a common goal: Create something common, a small community out here. No matter what happened in the world, they would make it.
“We will manage this,” they said. “And we will create something new, together with other people, other small communities that work from the same ideas,” said the most eager.
It was not the first time the internet was down. It was not the first time, but the problem was no less for that reason. It was absolutely necessary to get in touch with the world out there, they had to catch up on the news. Had to know more about what happened.
The big problem was that there was a lot of fake news out there, and it was very difficult to know what was true. The wildest conspiracy theories were in circulation. In addition, there were other news that turned out not to be news even though they looked like news. Lies in disguise, disguised as news — that’s what they were.
It was completely impossible to know if it was true, what reports told about from events elsewhere. They said that there was war in Europe, and fierce fighting in some places in Sweden and the Netherlands. There was war in Asia. India and Pakistan were at odds with each other. One place one could read that there was mass flight from Northern Europe eastwards and southwards through Europe and further towards Asia. Some talked about fleeing across the sea, to Australia and New Zealand.
People were lost. Some said that it was not possible to do anything about it. What happened, it happened regardless of what they did here in the Milky Way, that was for sure!
They just had to get used to it, just had to settle down with the condition as it was. Try to do the best they could here in this remote area — and it was actually not something they did because they had knowledge. In fact, no one knew what was really going on.
Far, far away one could perceive the bouldering and sounds of planes high up. On a rare occasion — a very rare occasion — those who put their heads back could see planes high up in the sky. One could see condensation streaks from several planes. It was almost like in the old days, because it was such planes that people traveled with earlier between countries, it was like a passenger plane that drew a white stripe across the sky.
(…)
The story
In the neighbourhood, The Milky Way, where the main character lives, there are less and less people to be seen outside, and Eric eventually discovers this gruesome truth. People have left, the houses are empty of people, and in some of them the furniture has also disappeared. He decides to investigate the case, and fills up the car with the necessary equipment and drives off.
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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