NOVEL
The Milky Way, so Infinitely Large, So Distant
AUDIO: Listen to The Last Human in the Milky Way, chapter 14
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I started writing The Last Human in the Milky Way early in 2021, and I took a pause from writing the novel last winter. The last months I have resumed the work on the novel.
Every man has a universe inside him
Excerpt from the novel The Last Human in the Milky Way, chapter 14
He is worried. It’s hard to put it into words, because it’s like it’s in the air, in the sky above The Milky Way. It’s not the same all the time. At certain periods of the day, it’s as if he doesn’t need to think about it at all. The ominous, vague threat from the dark is far away, hidden behind the safer everyday facade.
It is especially in the evening and at night that he feels it. He stands in the dark by the large window in the living room and tries to see the stars in the night sky. The many thousands of luminous little dots in the Milky Way are difficult to spot, because the two street lights that still burn at night further down the street dazzle and blur what he would otherwise be able to see.
He tries to go out on the veranda to see the starry sky better, but there is no other way there. All the light from humans on earth creates too much light. All the light sources that bear witness to human activity on earth dazzle the vision. He only gets a pale picture of the cosmic, the unimaginably large that is the universe, the Milky Way, so infinitely large, so distant and at the same time so close.
And suddenly it strikes him. Inside himself, inside man — every man has a whole universe inside him. A universe of feelings and thoughts, ideas, knowledge, good and bad memories, pain and joy, ties to other people, ties to hidden corners in one’s own mind.
He is the universe, a unique universe, unlike any other! He exists on a completely different level than the Universe out there. The Milky Way, so infinitely big. Close, and at the same time so distant.
He sees himself from the outside, like a small grain of sand on the beach, and at the same time, this tiny, unimportant human being that he is. He has bits of the endless and unbounded inside him. He is, like all human beings, a small part of the great whole.
In the blink of an eye, he thinks that it is like a spiritual, or an almost religious experience. He sees himself from the outside, where he stands in the night with his head tilted back and takes in the great, the endless that is the Milky Way, this shining, millions of shining points that testify to how big everything is up there. And down here.
He thinks that he must get out into the terrain, far away from the city and all the bright lights there that prevent him from seeing the countless dots of light that are stars in the night sky.
He finds out that he has an extra jug of petrol standing in the garage. He goes out to the garage, finds the jug and puts it in the back of the car.
He looks around in the garage, all the shelves with things, all the clutter he has never had to throw away. He sees the green tent bag and gets up on a box and pulls out the tent. He stretches and pulls the old tent mattress down from the garage attic.
Afterwards he goes back into the house and finds the sleeping bag and two thick, warm blankets. He walks several times between the house and the car, loads paper bags with dry food and canned food, a large bag with clothes, bottles and plastic jugs of water, a propane burner to boil on, the binoculars from the closet in the study, the toiletry bag from the bathroom.
He feels relieved. Now he has decided — he does it! He’s going out of the stalemate he’s been caught in for far too many days already.
(…)
On the road he meets no other cars. He’s not surprised. On the contrary. In fact, he would be very surprised if he met other road users at all during the next hour.
He comes out on the main county road, and finds a position where he leans back and relaxes well in the driver’s seat. Music from the mobile phone, which can hardly be said to have much other value in these times than just that — as a kind of music box. In any case, it was almost impossible the last time he tried to make it work as intended, for two-way contact, to talk to people. The net was down. Or maybe more accurately — the internet was gone; it had not worked for a long time.
After almost an hour on the road, he reaches the large national highway that lies like a straight line through the landscape, across the high mountain plateau. As he drives over the flat part, he sees in his mind the road ahead — the steep, demanding parts of the national road that he will soon embark on. After the high mountain plateau, long tunnels come through steep mountains that were previously insurmountable obstacles for people on either side of the mountain massif who wanted to cross to the other side.
(…)
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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