For millions of years since humans first came to Earth, they have stared at the same sky, looked at the same moon, felt the same sorrow, and wept for the same reasons.
Humans have always loved looking at the sky. It reminds them how insignificant their troubles are, and raises so many questions!
Like this enormous asteroid, for example, heading... toward us?
I scratched my head and looked at the computer again. I compared the coordinates on my computer with the database on the tablet and adjusted the focus, but I was still seeing the same thing.
This enormous object is heading straight toward us at tremendous speed?
I don’t know. I must be mistaken. I don’t know enough to be certain of anything. If this were really happening, they would already have known about it.
Even if it were true, I don’t think it would really be a problem. We managed to divert a giant asteroid away from Earth in 2217.
Surely we can do it again with ease, another sixty years later.
I tapped my pen twice and returned to my capsule inside the colony.
Teleportation really is wonderful. I don’t know how humans lived before it. I’m truly grateful to live in this era; I wouldn’t have survived in any other.
A week later, while checking my points balance, an extremely sharp, loud alarm sounded.
“Channel One, seven o’clock in the evening!... Channel One, seven o’clock in the evening!” the automated voice said, then stopped.
It was certainly suspicious!
I put on my virtual-reality suit, stepped into the designated device, put on the headset and switched it on. I set it to Channel One’s coordinates, then closed my eyes.
“Channel One” had become a virtual space where people gathered for important announcements.
I saw so many people there. So many, in fact, more than I had ever seen gathered on a channel before. People of every nationality and race, bodies overlapping, children running right through you. How rude! Someone ought to teach them that this is bad manners!
In any case, it was still three o’clock. After wandering around a little and asking a few people, I discovered that nobody knew anything.
I took off my headset, returned to my capsule, and tried to sleep. I don’t know why, but I had a bad feeling.
***
The next morning, the world was quieter than ever. Or did it only seem that way to me? Perhaps my mind was quieter than it had ever been.
I don’t know how to feel. Humanity had managed to preserve the planet to the very last moment. After three world wars and the Great Resource War, the extinction of our species and of all other life on Earth had become only a matter of time.
Getting back on track had not been easy, and it had cost humanity dearly, but it had given us hope for a bright future and a sustainable environment.
Exactly nine months after the asteroid was discovered, none of this would exist anymore. Earth would become just another abandoned planet in the vastness of space. That would be the best-case scenario—if it even remained in one piece!
I looked once more through the telescope at the blazing asteroid hurtling straight toward us, and burst out laughing:
“At least my calculations were right.”
A few moments later, my laughter turned into sobbing that lasted for hours, until exhaustion made me fall asleep on the roof of the old building.
August:
A month had passed since the announcement of our planet’s inevitable end. It was the only thing anyone talked about, but not in the way I had expected. To be honest, I had anticipated more drama.
Nothing had really changed. Workers went to their jobs, students attended school, and I lay around at home all day, as I always had.
There were a few protests here and there, and conspiracy theories could be heard wherever you went.
As for me, I didn’t know what to believe.
In my opinion, all of it was pointless. I was not inclined to support the strange theories that the news was nothing more than a huge hoax, and of course I did not believe we could find another inhabited planet. Everyone knew that. For centuries, this had been a question troubling scientists and ordinary people alike. Yet after the applications of quantum physics, the ability to teleport over limited distances, surveys of the galaxy, and the dispatch of hundreds—even thousands—of expeditions throughout it, humanity had found no other life and no alternative planet that could shelter us. At least not in our galaxy!
There had been talk of sending exploratory missions to some neighboring galaxies, but under the current circumstances, such an effort would be utterly wasted.
October:
I don’t know what I should say in a situation like this. The words stop and fade at the edge of my lips, while thoughts flash and crowd together in my mind, weighing me down with the responsibility of choosing what to say.
I was about to apologize, but did that really mean anything anymore?
If I were physically beside her, I would pat her shoulder or squeeze her hand. Perhaps progress isn’t so wonderful after all.
I glanced at her again. She was still staring at the floor. Her back was straight, and her hair was neatly arranged, just as I had always known it to be. But a quiet, mournful aura surrounded her, sending a shiver through me—more than usual.
She raised her eyes to me, and I caught sight of tears held back in them, barely threatening to fall.
“I received permission to fertilize an egg from the embryo bank about four months ago.”
My body froze. I had barely begun to process what she had said when she continued:
“Today, the Ministry of Human Resources issued an order to shut down all embryo incubators completely.”
“I wanted to share the news with you while holding my baby girl in my arms, but fate had other plans.”
Shock after shock poured over me, paralyzing my thoughts.
“My deepest condolences. I don’t know what to say.”
My throat tightened, and my eyes burned with overwhelming tears.
“I have to go to work now,” she murmured, and then her image vanished from the private chat channel.
(Do you wish to remain in the chat room?)
.
.
.
(Do you wish to remain in the chat room?)
.
.
.
(The room will close in five minutes.)
I took off my headset and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
My sister had always wanted to raise a child. It was something that did not fit with her decisive personality or her choice to join the workforce.
In this era, the vast majority of human workers were no longer needed. Having a child was no longer a personal decision.
The very few who passed the test for caring for and raising a newborn had to wait for many months, sometimes years, to receive carefully selected, genetically enhanced gametes. These would then be fertilized and placed in a specialized incubator that functioned exactly like a natural womb.
Humans were no longer necessary at all.
I had chosen not to join the workforce and to live on the points distributed to me, like the vast majority of people.
I had never wanted to raise a child anyway. It simply wasn’t worth all the trouble.
But my sister had gone through all of it, and it seemed to be the one thing she had truly wanted.
It wasn’t fair for humanity to end at this particular moment.
I’m forty, in the prime of my youth!
I still have another eighty years to live, at least.
Can’t the world wait just a little longer?
December:
My breathing was ragged, my eyes bloodshot, and my heart pounded so hard it seemed ready to burst through my ribs. I struggled to keep the metal bat from slipping out of my hand, but my whole body was shaking violently.
With my free hand, I brushed the hair stuck to my forehead aside and wiped the sweat from my brow. The bat slipped from my hand with a ringing clang, and I followed it down, bracing my forearm against the hard ground.
At last, I stared blankly and silently at the shattered pieces of the telescope scattered all around me.
I had spent the previous forty minutes venting my anger by smashing my precious telescope. I could still remember the overwhelming joy I felt when I won it in a space-science competition, but it was useless now.
I didn’t want to stare at my approaching end as it hurtled toward me.
Anger boiled and my blood surged whenever I remembered that there was no solution.
Apparently, this asteroid was enormous and very close. Even if we tried, we could neither change its course nor destroy it.
I ran my finger over the letters of my name engraved on my metal pen.
I bit my lip, and hot tears streamed down my cheeks.
I was about to throw it off the roof, but losing my teleportation device would only make my final days harder.
I could teleport anywhere I wanted in seconds, but for the first time, I didn’t want to go anywhere.
I put the pen back in its case, then lay on the floor, covering my eyes with my forearm.
March:
Sister:
I returned from work to my cell, trying as hard as I could to avoid looking at the left-hand corner.
But I could no longer put it off. There was no time left to postpone it.
Over the past few months, work had kept me occupied a little. But now all facilities had closed, with only one month remaining until the end.
It was a late decision, to be sure. Most students and workers had stopped showing up anyway. Perhaps the government had been forced to make such a decision eventually.
But why had they waited so long? To maintain order until the very end? Perhaps.
I would have gone to work on the morning the asteroid struck anyway.
Everyone says goodbye to the world in their own way.
Avoiding conflict had been my approach. It was the least frightening, at least.
Immersing myself in work had always been my way of clearing my mind.
I had intended to resign as soon as I received my baby girl anyway.
Working on an environmental restoration team when the world had only days left was nothing short of a cruel joke.
During the past week, I had been working almost alone on my final task: planting a group of trees that would take forty years to mature, after everyone else had resigned.
Forty years.
No one even had forty days left.
I sighed deeply and looked at the baby’s crib and the other supplies piled up in the corner of the room.
It was time to let go.
I opened my case and pointed it toward the waste disposal port.
Then I pushed everything into the case. When I was done, I caught sight of a pacifier out of the corner of my eye. I had overlooked it.
I turned it over in my hand for a moment, then discarded that too and closed the case.
I was looking at the sky for the first time in months. My hair spread across the hard floor beneath me, and my hand held my sister’s.
For the first time, I wasn’t searching the sky for anything. I simply looked at it.
My foot hurt a little after the long walk that had brought me to this place.
I traced the sunken letters of my name on my pen with my fingernail, gazing at the bright sky with a clear mind.
For the past several days, night had hardly fallen at all.
The sky had remained bright because of the approaching asteroid.
It was visible even during the day!
I turned my head to check on my sister. She was already looking at me with a tender expression.
I squeezed her hand, then rested my head on her shoulder and closed my eyes.
The End
