N.A.S.A. Cpt. Freeman, Joseph

1 year after destruction

I was the first to see it coming, and I was the last to see it end. All things are gone except for my ship and me who are just left like helpless strays in this universe that no one can explain. There is no more death, love, God, and worst of all, hope. I am now just counting my life away on this pointless ship that will soon be my coffin. I am lost forever and will soon be the only artifact of human life from the planet we used to call Earth. I keep asking myself, as I watch the stars and stray moon orbit around nothing, could we have stopped this? But I keep finding myself saying the same answer, no matter how many times I look at the catastrophe. We were nothing compared to anything in this universe, how could our lives be so important, if all traces of humans was demolished in less than ten seconds? I am the last man alive, and I wonder why I couldn’t have been blessed with the panic and untimed death everyone else was so lucky to have. I have no prayer to say, no shoulder to lean on, I have no escape.

I have thought about killing myself, but I just can’t put myself to doing the thing my brain has been tempting me to do ever since Earth’s funeral. I will not let myself out that easy, because I must live my life and keep the beacon of what we once were. I can’t tell you if we were a great society compared to whoever finds this log. I also can’t tell you every great moment that happened in human history, but I can tell you how people were in the cycle we knew as life. We were all different in every way; nobody believed the same exact thing, but everyone was always looking for the people who did. There was hope and faith in gods and love, in family and friends; we saw either the good or bad in people, and never saw the in between. We lied, cheated, and stole, but we also forgave. There was murder and birth, there was love and hate. We had holy wars, oil wars, money wars; fuck, we even had a couple of world wars. It amazes me today that we didn’t destroy our planet before the asteroid came. There were survivors and people who were left behind. We had discrimination and acceptance. Our society was consistently an oxymoron of everything we could imagine in our primitive brains. We thought it was superior to anything else.

People got along and didn’t get along, but what I miss the most as the only survivor, is the love I would still be making to my wife, the kisses I would have given Carly before she went to school, the baseball games I will miss watching with my future son. I didn’t and still don’t care if the world exploded. I just want my family back. They were my world and my fire that kept me from burning out and becoming the drone I have unfortunately become now. If all of society wasn’t wiped out, I would probably have faith that I would see them all again one day, in some marvellous clouded city, wearing all white and walking down a street paved with gold, but I lost that faith instantly, when I saw the earth shatter into pieces. That was not the second coming that I was expecting or hoping to see.

Being the only man left in the universe gives you time to look back on your life and on Earth in general, a judgment day per say. I was only on the planet for thirty six years, and I saw a lot of changes, not only in people, but in my ideas and morals. I faced the issue of death plenty of times, but nothing can prepare you for what I saw in my final days. For the longest time I always felt it was unfair for people to leave this earth without being on their own terms, but the more and more I lived it, I realized it was a blessing. My son never was born because of this horrific occurrence, but he also never had to feel the pain and heartache I am feeling thinking about him. Are we lucky to leave early or are we unfairly taken away to who knows where?

Everyday in my head, I reenact the idea of the birth of my son. Although he was not yet born, he still is my son and I can’t help, but feel pain and cry myself to insanity because I never actually got to see my son. Even though he was never born, he is in my head every day. I am in Orlando Medical Center and holding on to my wife who is sweating and breathing, trying to push, and then through all the panic and chaos, I see him. I break down in tears, as we cut the umbilical chord and the doctor yells, “It’s a boy.” I hold him in my hand with a smile, and I look up to my beautiful wife looking back at me in a euphoric state that no human could ever explain. “HE’S MY BOY!” I scream and breakdown again, as our family runs in to see him. I can only imagine now the event that was “supposed” to happen two months after I would have touched back down to our now deceased planet formerly known as Earth.

I am in my final days as a human, due to the lack of food and other resources my desolate space ship and me have scoured up. It has been a year since the death of Earth, and I still remember every moment of pain and disbelief I went through during that day. As a dying human, my only piece of advice I can give, is to love the ones that love you and that nothing ever turns out the way you want it. Always expect the unexpected, but don’t let the unexpected scare you; don’t follow in pointless groups that are just using figureheads and bandwagons for issues that don’t convict you, our religious groups stirred more hate than love. Fight for your right to love anyone and always be open to everyone. This life is a hard ride and when you think you have control, it will always fuck you over. Be satisfied; don’t be greedy, life is too short to get to a goal that will never make you happy. I wish the universe a farewell and to whomever this log comes in contact with. I hope you have learned a little about our fucked up, crazy, hectic, beautiful, lonely, crowded, wretched, spiritual, faithless, hateful, and loving world.

-Freeman Out