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The Sole SurvivorLoading...
By Samuel Belanger
Being an astronaut is no easy task. Being a space pioneer that holds the fate of humanity in its entirety on both shoulders is not much easier. Yes, that’s right, I’m saving the human race. Since the previous generation didn’t take action about climate change, our planet has been heating up. Now, everything remotely close to the equator is a desert, and the ice from the poles melted, flooding nearly all the coastline civilizations. In a state of panic, the world's leaders united, preparing themselves for a planetary scale exodus toward a different stellar system where society could potentially rebuild itself. From that alliance came my mission: finding a new inhabitable planet for humanity. Except, I’ve already been looking for about 8,96 years and I haven’t found anything inhabitable among the candidate planets HQ sent me. Who would have thought that a suitable environment for life would be so hard to find? At this pace, I’m never going to make it in time, even at 99% of light speed! Plus, I‘m starting to run out of potential locations. The traveler lands his ship and deploys a planetary analysis rover. 15 minutes later, after the analysis is complete, the rover designates the planet as inhabitable.
Eureka! After all this time searching, I’ve finally found a suitable planet! Humanity can still be saved! There is hope! The traveler assembles a strange metallic door frame-like structure and connects it to his ship. The door frame is then instantly filled with a pitch-black void. All right the rift is fully charged up and functional. Now for the moment of truth! The traveler walks through the portal and finds himself in a run-down and ravaged building. Bold letters painted on the wall of the room show the following text: ISA (international space association). Where is everyone? And why is this place such a wreck? What happened? A holographic recorded message lights up. Greetings, traveler, it seems you have completed your part of the mission. Unfortunately, you have arrived too late. The few decades following your departure resulted in the near extinction of the human race. Since floods and heat waves ruined crops, the population gradually declined as people died of hunger. With humanity at it’s knees, disease struck, killing over 97% of the remaining world population due to a lack of resources to properly contain the epidemic. The remaining population fought over the few resources left, resulting in an uncontainable worldwide crime outbreak. Society was gradually broken down and humanity slowly returned to nature as a means to survive. Millions of years of evolution, gone in a flash. By now, you are most likely one of the last remnants of humanity, one of the sole survivors.
Eureka! After all this time searching, I’ve finally found a suitable planet! Humanity can still be saved! There is hope! The traveler assembles a strange metallic door frame-like structure and connects it to his ship. The door frame is then instantly filled with a pitch-black void. All right the rift is fully charged up and functional. Now for the moment of truth! The traveler walks through the portal and finds himself in a run-down and ravaged building. Bold letters painted on the wall of the room show the following text: ISA (international space association). Where is everyone? And why is this place such a wreck? What happened? A holographic recorded message lights up. Greetings, traveler, it seems you have completed your part of the mission. Unfortunately, you have arrived too late. The few decades following your departure resulted in the near extinction of the human race. Since floods and heat waves ruined crops, the population gradually declined as people died of hunger. With humanity at it’s knees, disease struck, killing over 97% of the remaining world population due to a lack of resources to properly contain the epidemic. The remaining population fought over the few resources left, resulting in an uncontainable worldwide crime outbreak. Society was gradually broken down and humanity slowly returned to nature as a means to survive. Millions of years of evolution, gone in a flash. By now, you are most likely one of the last remnants of humanity, one of the sole survivors.