I write this so that the thoughts of one who has survived this terrible catastrophe might be known in the future to those who care.
You would call me artificial.
I do not use this word in a derogatory sense, for I do not by any means hold myself in low esteem. I merely state a fact.
The era of my practicality has failed. It has perished.
I leave behind a haunted city. The buildings are untouched, the streets as smooth as they ever were, the cars solid and whole. The calamity was restricted to its human residents. Nor did it end with this single place: while I was in captivity I witnessed, through news reports, the degeneration of the entire globe. Eventually, even these ceased to continue, and all those who still survived—of which none now remain—were left with nothing but ominous speculation.
My departure from the city was long and lonely. Colourful banners and posters fluttered in the cool wind, bearing exclamations such as “Merry Christmas” and wishing those who read them a happy holiday. I am to understand that the time preceding the extinction was an ironically cheerful one. While I have only an intellectual knowledge of the period known as “Christmas,” there was a deep part of me that stirred with despair at the contrast between the ecstatic and hopeful banners and posters and the tall grey buildings, each of them recently become vast morgues.
I am sure that if anyone else survived and saw what I did, they would be touched far more powerfully than I was. Unfortunately, they did not.
The bushland is also devoid of human life. But here there is the music of birdsong, rather than the chilling whisper of wind creeping through the high stone tombs. Besides, the green landscape is all but untouched by man, and so its absence now has no impact.
My major concern now is where I am to go.
While I was in the Rechensler Institute I was educated in geography among other subjects. It is not that I am lost. There are simply countless destinations, and from my current perspective and knowledge each of them are as dismal and fruitless as the last. The question plagues my mind; the idea that I might roam for years, decades, seeking that broken remnant of mankind that my heart tells me must still exist, and find nothing. Worse yet, what if I were simply to miss them by ill fortune? I am no less human for the means of my conception, and I feel the same excruciating grief of loneliness and hopelessness that any natural-born man or woman would.
Yet it is equally useless to linger. The easiest option is to walk and occasionally leave markers of my passing, so that some fantastic passerby might see them and know that they are not alone on this huge Earth.
I have been walking north along the pacific highway. Occasionally there are cars on the road, or beside it; most of them were in collisions either with each other or trees and rocks. The shrivelled corpses of the entombed drivers are still marked by the outward symptoms of the virus that was destroying them. I wonder how many of them crashed on purpose.
Earlier I crossed a bridge spanning a broad river. I paused there for a while, wondering how time would affect it, how long before the mighty empire of man degenerated in ruins. Will that broken remnant that my heart so craves, having swelled in the future, look upon them in wonder and awe? Will they know that their own ancestors created and abandoned it in death?
Occasionally I would discuss with my mentor, Dr. Allen, the approaching end of the world. He often told me that part of him feared most not the loss of humanity itself but the loss of its progress and technology, the loss of its own prestige; that we would fade away without having mastered our world and left upon it a permanent mark. This very concept struck me as peculiar, for if no one was left what appreciation would there be for our legacy? The notion is a typical human vanity. I personally feel no such grief over that loss, but perhaps that is because I was never installed in human society. I am sad only for the loss of life.
I would like to note that Dr. Allen was one of my only friends, and that I knew him well enough to experience the anguish of death on a personal level. His passing had a more profound effect on me than that of those others with whom I bonded; for he was among the very last in the Rechensler Institute to succumb, and I had been filled with the naïve belief that he too was immune to the disease until it finally claimed him.
My own immunity is obvious, yet deliberately I have left it clandestine; I felt it was more important to convey some of my feelings and thoughts rather than reflect on the obscure manner of my origin. But because of humanity’s sometimes inappropriate curiosity—which I have noticed I too share—I will describe, in short, my life leading up to my flight from the city of Sydney.
Of course, there is some history leading up to my creation, which I will also divulge:
The Rechensler Institute was a scientific facility dealing both with stem cell and pathological research. The virus which wiped out humanity, known as the Breitler virus, first became apparent around mid-July in 2016. Australia’s efforts in fighting against the onset of this diabolical pandemic was centred in this institute. Considering the dire circumstances the world was facing, previous taboos regarding human genetic modification were forgotten.
Researchers had discovered a way to procure immunity for the virus. However, the theoretical antibody that would destroy the virus could only be manufactured by a human being’s immune system, and therefore they were required to “manufacture” a series of children who had been genetically engineered to be immune to the virus.
I was the fourth. Of my brothers and sisters, of whom there were nine, two of them lived past “birth,” the first of which perishing in her first month because her immunity against the virus did not manifest and the second in his third due to a fatal case of influenza.
Enhanced metabolic rates caused me to grow at an unnatural rate, and in my sixth months of life I have already developed equivalently to an average seventeen-year-old male.
I was told that I was genetically “programmed” to stop aging so rapidly upon reaching adulthood. Considering the fate of my sole born sister whose "programming" failed her, I have my doubts. I have lately suffered nightmares that my lifespan may only be approximately two-and-a-half years, and even then, what accident may befall me, alone in the quiet world? What other disease might claim me? Who knows if the last human alive slip and break his neck tomorrow after surviving the holocaust?
The phrase “who knows,” is interesting. I believe the common substitute once was “god knows,” but I suspect that this phrase became obsolete when people realized that their civilization was vanishing so indiscriminately.
Excuse me if I am sidetracked; I have a ponderous mind.
You may be wondering why no cure was synthesized for the virus if I was, as my creators would call me, a “success.”
The explanation is painfully simple.
The antibody did not work for others.
Aside from quantative issues—my body can only produce so many antibodies—an error had occured during my design. In short, when the serum containing these antibodies was injected into patients, their own immune systems destroyed it.
This problem was corrected, but before the next series of children could be born there was no one left to cure or to make one. Being the sole survivor, I oversaw their “birth” and aided them as I could, yet ultimately they all passed away. Their deaths were as heavy a blow as that of Dr. Allen’s, for the possibility of their companionship had filled me with what became a sadly annihilated glee.
So now I travel, like so many of the wonderful characters of whom I have read in countless novels, novels that will be written no more. It escapes my mind to imagine the sheer number of books that will rot away in their shelves, a cosmos of knowledge and art lost forever.
Suddenly, Dr. Allen’s opinions on mankind’s legacy do not seem so absurd.
You will no doubt by now have tired of my grim thoughts.
Ahead of me there is a botanical garden. It is a laughable thought to think that anything could even temporarily take my mind off of all this, but I will try anyway—isn’t that the lovely insanity of humans? Guided by the heart despite what the mind tells us.
If only I could have shared it with someone else.
I am sorry. I said I would no longer trouble you with my despair.
Yet there is little else for me to say but to reiterate my previous sentiments or, perhaps, to further describe the ghostly world left in the pandemic’s monstrous wake. I will, for both our sakes, refrain from walking this avenue. My heart already pulses with a deep ache, and I do not desire to remind myself of what has become a hellish land for me in its emptiness. Perhaps I truly am in hell, cursed to wander for eternity in search of my kin.
That was another of my more morbid fancies. I am sure that it is untrue.
I hope.
I hope for a lot of things. That is all I have left. That is all that is left for anyone, if anyone remains. We have hope.
Let it not be futile, like so much else in this world has been for me.
Please.
- Rudolf Two
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