Humanity's Last - Prologue, Rough Draft

Prologue

“Fus Ond Fǽge” – Ready for Death and Doomed to Die

         An imaginary clock counted down the minutes not only to their doom, but to the end of humanity.  Short was the time left, and nothing, nothing could make the Homo Sapien race live a second longer.  Everyone else was dead.  And now they were about to die.
         There were two of them, sitting on the step of the ship as the burnt-out wreckage of their companions floated aimlessly outside.  A boy and a girl, young enough not to be wise, yet old enough to be more than naïve.  They were the anti “Adam and Eve:” instead of creating humanity, they were about to end it.
         Sure, if they were to somehow miraculously escape and somehow miraculously remain together and miraculously find a planet they could live on, humanity may survive.  They understood that.  They could mate, have many children, and try to single handedly repopulate a forgotten world, far away from the toil and bloodshed around them.  It might work.  It might not.  But they would have tried.
         There was just one problem: they couldn’t escape.  They were surrounded, and a ticking time bomb.  Still, even with that realization of hopelessness setting it, they were still not weeping, wailing and cursing themselves.  They were surprisingly calm, with a sad quiver in their voices, but still in control.
         They had no families.  Both orphans, even if they were for different reasons, but that similarity had forged a bond of fellowship between them.  Even so, the bond was better described as dependency, but still.
         The boy stood up and paced the floor, still emotionless, stepping here and there to avoid the bodies of the crew, the command circle.  The captain’s body lay right where she had died.  They had been there, him and her, when she had died.  They had been there when her first officer had died, as well as the next person, and the next.  So much death everywhere.
         The sound of dripping echoed through the vacant ship as the girl silently watched the boy.  He continued to pace, go everywhere and still nowhere.  Finally, he stopped in front of the large panes of glass that made up three quarters of the room.  The girl, still silent, joined him there.
         “Are you alright?” she spoke quietly as a whisper, though she could have spoke louder that a rushing thunderstorm and gotten the same effect, with all the death in the room.
         The boy looked aimlessly outside the ship.  His eyes glazed, “With all that space, all that infinite area of nothingness, we still couldn’t find a place to live away from all of this.  The Last Hope of Humanity turned into the Humanity’s Death March,” he said, and then turned to her.  “How could we have been so foolish?”
         She took her own turn looking out into the emptiness, which was as spoken, except for the occasional piece of debris flying by.  “It wasn’t our fault.  We were young.  We weren’t in charge.”
         “But look where that got us,” he said, showing the room in its fullness.
         “It was a dream, a hope,” she quietly replied back.  “We needed a belief, something to keep us alive, and we failed.”
         “And so ends humanity?”
         “So ends humanity.”
         The boy took a last glance at the window and began to walk away again.  He stepped over the bodies of men and women who had died with a glint of hope.  He would not be so lucky.
         The girl remained by the window, lost in thought.  After a period of silence, she asked “How much time do we have?”
         The boy looked at her curiously.  “How much time?  Could be seconds, could be days, could be an eternity.  When they find us, or we run out of air, I suppose.”
         The boy shrugged and turned away.  The girl joined him on the steps, and sighed.
         “So, what now?” she asked earnestly.
         “What do you mean?  We die.”
         “Well, of course,” she said with a grimace.  “But do we just sit here until the reaper arrives on black steed to take us to our eternal flame?”
         “Do you really believe in that religious jumbo?”
         “Of course, even if I don’t like it.  Eternal punishment is not something to look forward to.  What, you don’t?”
         “No,” the boy replied indifferently.
         “So you believe in a pleasant afterlife, full of happiness and goodness?” she said half-mockingly.
         “Please, not in a million eons.  I just don’t believe in anything after death.”
         The girl remained silent for a moment, then replied “Hard, isn’t, to have nothing to look forward to, or wish against?”
         “No, the exact opposite,” the boy replied calmly.  “It allows me to live my life to the fullest, without having to worry about the future after death.  Anything I don’t do will never be done.”
         They were both silent.  Then, the girl asked “Was he…?”
         “My brother,” he interrupted.  “We had never been separated, not since birth, even when our parents abandoned us.  He always was with me, always my role model, my only family.”  He shed a tear down his grimy cheek.
         “I’m sorry,” she replied softly.
         “What about you?  Those woman with you…?”
         “My mother, yes.  One of the few who kept her child.  ”  Her eyes began to water-up.
         “I am sorry too.  It looks like we all lost something today.  But we survived, for what reason, we may never know.  But at least now, in our final moments, we can remember my brother and your parents, so they, to us at the very least, will not be forgotten.”
         “I can do that,” she uttered.
         “So can I,” he replied.
         And with that, they both began to weep at how much they had lost, and how little they had to gain.
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“I can’t just sit here,” she said, as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
         “What else is there to do?” he asked, using his grimy sleeve to wipe his soot-stained face.
         “I don’t know, but anything besides sitting here.  It’s too cold, too unforgiving.”
         “We live in a cruel world,” he spoke back.
         She nodded her head in approval, then stood up, and began walking out of the room.  He turned around and said “Where are you going to go?”
         She shrugged.  He then said in reply,
         “Count me in.”
         She smiled, if only for a moment, before the look of pure suffering, the one they both had, of hidden emotions and of death-seeing hearts, returned.  They took their leave, heading out into the long corridor.
         Death filled the corridor even worse than the control room.  Bodies were strewn everywhere, blood ebbed into rivers, those rivers into pools, those pools into lakes.  A burning smell filled the air; silence filled their ears; a deep pain filled their hearts.  The corridor was damp and cool, and close to dark, as most lights had been knocked out or short-circuited.  As they walked, the girl leading, as she was used to being a leader, and the boy following, as he was used to covering someone’s back, they saw the faces of the dead men and women, all looking up, eyes open.  They had been so lucky, not realizing the futileness in the situation, as I have realized, thought the boy.
         The ship groaned for a moment, and the pair stopped, ready for their last moment if the ship tore in two.  But the ship remained intact.  It was built to do such a thing.  And after the creaking stopped, the pair continued down the wretched hallway to oblivion.
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         After a passage of time, the pair, having seen many scenes of death and destruction, came upon a different sight, one unseen of before.
         “What was going on here?” asked the boy earnestly.
         “I have no idea.  I was never aloud on this part of the ship.”  She turned over one of the bodies in front of them, one of hundreds.  “All I do know is this: these were not normal soldiers.  These men were elite warriors.”
         “Guarding what…,” he began to say, before looking up.
         In front of the two of them stood a massive door, as tall as the hallway, and just as wide.  It was fierce, and looked to be made of many sheets of steel and iron.  Beside it was an electronic key station.
         “I wonder what’s inside?”
         “Let’s have a look then,” called the girl, holding up a plastic card she had found on one of the soldiers.
         They made their way to the door and put the card into the key station.  A series of hissing noises broke the silence as the door opened before them.  And inside, they saw it.
         It was massive.  It was mammoth.  And it was beautiful.  A three-sided pyramid, made completely of glass, stood before them.  It glistened in the little light the room had.
         But the little light was enough for the pair to make out the bodies around the machine.  Tens of white-coated personal, all dead, their pale faces staring blankly into the darkness.  The oxygen flow had been cut off from the room, with them trapped inside it.
         “What is it?” said the girl, her mouth hung low.
         “I’m one step ahead of you,” said the boy, as he ruffled through the papers on a nearby desk.  He searched for a second or two before finding what he was looking for.  He began reading.
         “So, what is it?” asked the girl.
         The boy, who was no longer reading, looked up but said nothing.
         “Well?”
         “I can’t believe this.  It’s a time machine.”
◙
         According to the screen, all system were up and running and they were good to go.  Every light was green on the screen save one: the destination light.
         And that was the question they pondered as they looked at each other, the boy in dusty rags, the girl covered in blood.
         “How far back?” pondered the boy.
         “Man, it is a tough decision.  If we go back to soon, we won’t be able to save ourselves from this nightmare.  We won’t be able to save humanity.” reasoned the girl.
         “And yet, if we go back to far, we won’t make sense, and no one will listen to us,” figured the boy.
         They silently waited, lost deep in thought, until the boy said, “December 26, 2012.”
         The girl raised a red eyebrow and asked, “Why then?”
         The boy spoke disheartened.  “Before I was a beggar and a thief, I loved history at the orphan school.  And one thing I remember is the teacher saying the December 26, 2012 was the day the fate of Earth was decided.  We did something on that day that caused this.”
         She though for a moment, then said, “We need to go back six months earlier, however.  It will get us a chance to get situated and figure out where we need to be, and what we need to do.”
         “Alright, then June 26, 2012,” he said while typing in the number.  The green light turned on.  The signal was good.
         As they walked to the triangular pyramid, she asked, “Are you sure this will work?”
         He replied, “I highly doubt it does.  For one thing I couldn’t understand half the paperwork on this thing, but what I did learn was that its first test run was supposed to be two days from today, so we are the first to actually do this.”  They stepped into the glass structure as a pane slid down behind them.
         “Well, here’s a dry toast,” said the boy.  “To the past, so the present may change the future!”
         The girl nodded in agreement, and he took her hand.  “To our happy future.”
         “To our happy future.”
         And with that, a flash of light, and it began.
◙
         Blue and white light hit every pane of the glass construction and shone more brightly than anything they had ever seen.  The galaxy seemed to flash before them, the stars spinning.  But perhaps it was just a side effect.  The boy felt torn as the light spun, being pulled in many directions by an invisible force.  And the girl swore she saw a reflection of herself in the opaque glass, except more than just a reflection.  But just as they discovered these things, the light blinded them, and they fell into the darkness.