Last Words

A fragment of a short story about the last man alive (never completed)




Last Words

I decided to come back to Earth after I projected Ayla's coffin into Alpha Centauri. There was no flash at all, no consummating spark, only a brief reflection before I lost sight of my wife. I sat there for some time, watching the green yellow disk of the sun and the other points of light through the viewport window. Some were brighter than others, and some seemed to be of different hues, but they did not twinkle or gleam or flicker - there being no atmosphere to animate the light before it entered my eyes. They existed and hung in the blackness unlike jewels or eyes or tears, unlike any worldly thing at all in fact - as if in space, their masks had become mathematical rather than aesthetic, simplified - now they were simply points of coloured light in the unending darkness. I turned away.

So it was over and I was the one. I had always known it would be so - the thought of it being otherwise was never even a consideration. She had accepted her death as a gift from me - it was all I could give her - To not be the last. After she had drank from the cup she had looked into my eyes with a kind of wonderment - almost as if she was drinking me in as well. I had let her touch my face as she looked, and I clasped her hand tightly in mine, enclosing the warm fingers. I wanted her death to be bounded by me, by my love for her, an envelope of love saving her from nothingness. And in those final moments it really was as if our love existed tangibly, corporally, between our fingertips, filling up the space between us with a warmth that smiled into us both and drew us together. I only realised she had gone when her last glance never ended - it simply continued on in its own motionless fashion like one of the points of light outside the ship. I brushed her lids shut with a stroke of my hand before carrying her to the Escape Pod.

When my solitude began the love that had existed between my wife and I became something different - as if it had become fused with the past of all things, appropriated by them, as it were. I felt it was now the property of the universe itself, or of time or even the stars- no longer ours, no longer mine. In that sense, I lost her twice.

....

Of course I have not mentioned the others before her. Their goings had punctured the years like sharp needles at the time , but there had always been Ayla and the sweet enveloping mist of our love to fall back on. And those others (who were not really just others, but my dear friends) - they too had their own subterfuges and lies, and life sustaining pockets of love to reach into - but at least, so it now seems to me in my solitude, the truth was they died well - that is, in the manner of all previous men. They inherited a purely human death. We were a race of men, and the death of each of us was absorbed by the humanity of all the rest - and that humanity had proven infinitely absorbent, infinitely capable of taking death into itself and going further. Our own existence testified to the sinuous, winding victory of the human. It answered death with new life. Death was carried as a burden but our eyes continually found each other in the darkness and we walked on, together.
Why then, was it to end with with Ayla, with me, I cannot say. When I was a child I played with my companions like any child , teasing them and making stories, laughing too - and their faces were just as ignorant and joyful as my own. The hope in my parents eyes projected me forward into a universe of life, not death. I mistook love for the world, like all men before me. I was even an optimist.
Yet it has ended, afterall. Now I have to be the last man, and my merely personal life has ended. In allowing my love a human death I have ceased to be human myself. I have to take up the duties of my station, i feel, duties which are cosmic, rather than mundane. I feel that I will go to Earth, not because the she is my mother - but because she is my greatgrandmother. I was born on board ship - its white interior is like warm bed linen to me, it is my true home. But i will go to earth.
The phrase " to pay my last respects" comes to mind, even though this isn't quite right. I want to see some sand, I think - from the ocean shore, I'm not sure why. I will be with my greatgrandmother while I write what there is to be said.
And then I will die.