The Last Man

He whirled through space like a dervish, like a dreidel, going everywhere and nowhere at once. In the distance he saw the flickering lights of Babylonian stars blink out, like bulbs in a weathered Oklahoma farm house. Below him was nothing- no planet, no star, not even a black hole to crush his lungs. It was empty. As he spun, the ape-part of his brain wondered if his useless limbs would be sliced off by the remnants of his space shuttle. But they too had fallen away, as if they were simply another part of his faulty human memory. The void devoured all.

His world was lit by a single red-giant, an obese dying star. It refused to expire first, stubbornly pulsing and exhaling its toxic fumes from hundreds of light-years away. He knew it must have been conceived after he’d fallen asleep, but at this moment it had been there since the beginning of time and would be there until the end of it. He mused, wondering at the fact that he’d awoken in time for the End. What glitch in his harddrive or the computer’s had compelled him to get up, put on his suit and wander amongst the stars.

‘Stars,’ He thought and laughed, realizing the crimson light had already begun to flicker. ‘It isn’t my sun, I’ve never seen it before, its light has never reached Earth, but Christ, it’s all I have now.’ He howled at the encroaching darkness. He could not bear to be alone, with just himself and-

“You’re running away from God!” she had shrieked when she learned he was taking the flight. She had already thrown ornaments and wise men and a Santa Claus, but the only sharp things left were her words. “You’re running away from me, you’re running away from your daughter, but most of all you’re running away from God, because you can’t stand the idea of being judged at the end of your life.”

“If there was a god, I’d outlive you and him both, Karen.”

Her rage simmered and then quelled. She dropped to her knees and sobbed, as the Virgin in the nativity scene looked on serenely.

“You’re going to Hell,” She wept, and her tears glistened with the tree’s colored light, “I can’t- I can’t even save you from yourself, so you’re going there alive.”

“Goodbye Karen,” He walked out then, not wanting to wake Sofia. It would be better if he tiptoed out of her life, a shadow in the night. He knew they let the family see the frozen bodies in their slick-steel containers. They would act as if it really was a funeral and he would not die trillions of years later with the stars.

A part of him started when he realized that his parents, his friends, Karen, even little Sofia had passed away. She had already taken the journey from cradle to grave and whatever came between. They were all gone. He had outlived them all. Though he saw the thought, the vision, he could not feel it. It felt as though the years that separated them were merely miles and it was only distance and not time that was a barrier; as if he could find a way home.

His eyes were drawn to the fat, heaving star and he saw its red light would soon be gone. This, he realised would be the last moments of light. Ever. With the light would go everything that was or had ever been. Spiraling galaxies, infinite columns of stardust, flourishing planets, would all fall away with no one to remember them. And he would be left. He had outlived God- and his prize was to see the very atoms around him dissolve into nothing.

He began to weep as the screeching, emergency siren blared in his ears. ‘It won’t kill me fast enough,’ he thought. He would survive the end of everything and be the only pathetic relic of a miserable world. He would be the only thing to answer for all the universe’s complexities, and triumphs, and errors, and he had missed it all.

Desperately, he pounded on the helmet’s glass, hoping to expose his lungs to the vacuum of space and expire with the stars. He could feel his hands begin to bruise with the force of his blows, but he pummeled anyways. His clumsy, layered-cloth gloves did nothing to the glass. He realized it was steel enforced; it would not budge. The small, human part of his brain took charge over the task. He decided to release the helmet from the bronze collar about his neck. He fumbled at the choker’s keyboard, attempting to type in the password to release himself and the helmet. His fervor finally died down enough to to maneuver his thickly clad fingers onto the numbered buttons. He typed in the digits and awaited death.

It did not come.

Instead, a small calm female voice, below the siren, began to whisper.

“Low-oxygen environment. Helmet cannot detach.”

“I know, I know-”

“Low-oxygen environment. Helmet cannot detach.”

“I know, can’t you see I’m doing this on purpose?”

“Low-oxygen environment. Helmet cannot-”

“Just let me die!” he roared, “let me die before everything else does! Christ, I don’t want to outlast everyone! I don’t want to be God!”

In his fervor he began to beat his head against the sides of his helmet, hoping to crack his skull and splatter his thoughts across the clean glass in front of him. He could not bear to think anymore. He decided he would rather die than face the growing darkness. He thought it a rational decision, only heightened by fear, not motivated by it.

Eventually, he tired and stopped, realizing the neck brace and limited space prevented him from gaining enough momentum. Escape was impossible. He would die in the dark.

A lesser or wiser man may have resigned himself. A man who believed in God and in the inevitable pattern of the universe may have securely watched the lights go out. He did not. The dis-ease in his heart began to rot and fester as the scarlet light pulsated with the beat. A brutal rage rose up in his chest and nearly choked him. He wished it actually would, but instead it made him angrier. How dare the universe end, how dare it go out and leave him all alone in the dark!

And then it did.

The last rotting remains of the crimson sun’s fetid light pulsed out of existence and he was alone.

Alone, he was alone with his thoughts and the cold and all the people he had left behind, who might have not existed except in his own head. They would emerge to the forefront of his consciousness and fall away, leaving only the infinite darkness outside and inside of himself.