The End

I never expected it to end this way. It all happened rather suddenly. We’d been warned, of course, that it would happen, but I never expected it to come in my lifetime. Now it is just me, barely hanging on to my life. Soon, I, too, will be gone, with no one to remember my story. Don’t believe me? Allow me to tell you it like it is.

I, Aviatress Hodajit, had just landed from a quick, solo flight from India back to my homeland in what was formerly known as the United States of America. The former USA had been lost in the third world war several years prior. Everything appeared normal until I reached my PD (personal dwelling) where my family was anxiously awaiting my return.
When I arrived at the PD, I noticed that it was deathly quiet. Not even a breeze blew to make the implanted grass to sway. Disturbed, I unlocked the heavy iron door and stepped inside. Only the mechanical greeter with its monotone voice greeted me with its simple welcome.
I ran throughout the PD, which didn’t take long, considering it was a small, single floor building. I found nothing. Not even my son’s robotic pets, so lifelike in appearance, were to be found.
I went to the phone to call the Civic Patrol, but the line was dead, so I ran next door to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s PD. No one came to the door after several minutes of frantic knocking, and the door was unlocked, so I entered the building. Once again, I found no one.
Beginning to be a little panicked by now, I ran through the streets, shouting “Hello? Is anyone there?” repeatedly, but there was no reply. Everyone was gone and I was the only one left in the entire residential district. Except for a young boy simply known as Billy, whom I discovered a day or two later while searching for food.
One day, while we were looking for more warehouses for supplies, we came across a strange object. It looked a lot like normal plastic box, nothing significant, when I first saw it, but as I drew closer, I started to notice jagged lines running all around it. In the middle of each side was an indentation as if someone had pushed it in. When I was but mere inches away from the box, I began to hear a noise, similar to static on two-way radios coming from within the box.
As I stared at it, puzzled, two small appendages came out of it. It was like a small mechanical arm with a needle-like point at the ends. They buried themselves into the ground with an almost inaudible whir. I backed away from it, afraid, knowing that this box had something to do with the disappearance of everyone.
Something told me that I needed to get to one of the many launching pads I had discovered in my explorations that had been previously used for space exploration. I took Billy by the hand, as he had mysteriously appeared next to me, and started walking towards the nearest pad.

When we arrived there, I let go of Billy’s hand to check out the premises as I had before. I entered one of the many hangars. There, in the middle of the hangar, was one of the space exploration pods, also known as a SEP. I went over to it, looked it over, and noticed it had a full tank of fuel and that the keypad was activated.
“Strange,” I muttered as I walked back to where I had left Billy.
I found Billy standing right where I had left him, but something was wrong. He stared at me blankly, as if he could not see me. “Billy,” I said, “Billy! Can’t you hear me?” I waved my hands in front of his face, but to no avail. Billy wasn’t responding: it was as if he were in a trance.
Scared, I ran back to the SEP and looked it over again, checking for anything that might cause it to malfunction. As an aviatress, I had taken a course over the mechanics of SEPs and had learned how to operate one. I checked the storage area and saw it was well stocked with provisions.
“Strange,” I thought, “It’s almost like someone wants me to take it.” Unnerved, I went back to check on Billy. There was no change. So, leaving him behind, I got inside the SEP and took it into space. Shortly after passing Mars, I looked back to see that Earth had been destroyed! Nothing was left, except for space debris.

When I first realized my close escape from death, I rejoiced. It wasn’t until my food and oxygen supply began to dwindle that I realized it was a curse. Although I had escaped the Destruction, I was doomed to a worse fate.

I am now doomed to soar in space forever, alone, to my death. I can only hope that my end is better than my beginning, that it will be quick and painless. Sometimes I wonder where that little box came from, what happened to Billy, and why we were the target. I guess no one will ever know for sure, if it was aliens or if it was something else out there.

On a planet unknown to mankind stood two figures, watching as a ship sailed on by them, unseeing. They stood there, laughing menacingly as they thought about how they had exacted revenge on the human race. They had been made the object of terror for so many years and now the debt was paid. No more would they be hunted down like animals, no more to be blamed for everything. They watched as the ship hurtled out of sight, then walked back into their dwellings, satisfied.