Short story

Dedicated to Rik - because he asked to read it =D   


Blessed are the Meek.


    “I’ve only got a few hours left,” he said out loud. “I may as well enjoy them.” He finished calmly peeling his apple and popped a slice into his mouth. Then an angry frown gripped his brow and he crunched it viciously. A tear fell from his eye, smashing into droplets on the marble floor.
    Sure enough, they were all gone within three days; every single living creature, and I was the only one left. 
    All the wild and corny stories that men had ever written, about the Last One on Earth had finally come true.
    And it was me.
   
    It was such a shame. They had just begun the final experimental stage of a treatment for the terrible sickness that was consuming the whole living world of creatures. I was among six others to whom they had administered the new drug, but they had all become too ill to watch our progress.
    At first, my companions died, one by one, so, with no encouragement to keep working, the scientists gave up the fight and retired to small ailing groups to await their ultimate fate.
    If only they had stayed to observe, but only one dying man came, probably out of morbid curiosity. Sadly, he was in the last stage of the disease, and the excitement of my recovery was too much for him. The sight of me, alive and thriving, drove him into a frenzy of joy, misery and panic. I had survived both the virus and the treatment, so suddenly he was obsessed with an insane effort to treat himself. Within moments of  filling the tube with the drug he had collapsed and begun convulsing. I watched him die on the clean white floor. He lay there, his back arched and rigid, a look of sheer terror fixed on his face. His flailing arm had released the catch on my prison and I was freed.
    I left the room and the building, grateful for my good fortune and ready to explore. I passed by bodies that had been maturing for days, lying lonely and neglected in the summer heat. The only sounds were from moving plants, abandoned washing and deserted mechanical systems that continued their faithful tasks, unaware of the pointlessness of their existence.
    It was a rich and beautiful world. Everyone had been so contented and happy with their lives, until a strange new virus had arrived on incoming transport from space, survived all the eradicating techniques, infected the atmosphere and spread rapidly over this delicate and unaccustomed planet, destroying all animal life with unexpected speed and virility, and before we had actually noticed anything, it was already too late.
    So now this gentle Earth was all mine.
    I explored far and wide, stopping for rest at one point in what was once the Chief Administrator’s palace.
   
Odd-shaped robots went about their business as if nothing had happened, running out their programmes with blind devotion, and even attempting to feed the occasional fresh body until a medical check program reminded them that corpses do not need sustenance.
Shortly thereafter a disposal unit would arrive to remove the body and sanitate the immediate area.
    The main hall had been decorated with fancy illumination according to the personal whim of the man who had been the chief. Tiny flickering lights swivelled sparkling colours, gently, round glittered walls, with a complementary main light source originating in the floor; a reflection on the wealth of the age.
    The soft deep chairs were all empty. I settled into one of them.
    This is all mine! I thought to myself. All the beauty and fortunes of the world were mine. All the food and drink, all the visual entertainment, servants . . . .
    I quickly tired of the chair and the great hall, so I moved on into the City. The night life was waking, as it had done every dusk for a hundred years. The almost-silent clicks of flashing signs disturbed the air with their minute vibrations. As the sunset deepened, other sounds sprang out of the silence.  Mechanical vendors and various shades of music, interrupted occasionally by the warm hiss of the empty monorail cars swishing high over the moving walkway, halting at the rooftop stations and opening their empty doors, only to draw smoothly away again, still empty. The absence of the hubbub of human activity screamed at me, and I shut my mind to the futile noises that persistantly ground on and on, as I drifted into thought, and a cool wind touched me from behind.
    “This all belongs to you!” it whispered.
    Yes, they’ve left it all to little me. If only they knew. I replied to the breeze. All the wealth and riches. All the fortunes, all the space, all the emptiness, all the solitude, all the wasted world.
    This wonderful city, the tall and stately buildings, great leviathans towering their vacant magnificence above me, so small, on the stationary paved zone. Did they know they belonged to me, that I had become their master? The street led into beautiful gardens, created for the relaxation and pleasure of the people who had lived here; coloured lights on drooping willows and cascading waterfalls, but now the people had all gone. My only company was the spectre of memory, and the sad and crumpled bodies, huddled together for comfort in anticipation of death.
     So beautiful.
     So tragic.
     Perhaps I should have felt guilt as I entered the dimly lit living quarters. Small, empty and frozen in the cold moonlight. Who knows how long the two dead people in the bed spent, exposed to the chilly summer nights? I could hear all the little apartments calling to me,
    “We all belong to you!” Their blank stares of windows and open doors profoundly expressing their pointless existence. Great grey pillars of power in the distance, destined to function for centuries, giving light, sound and warmth to the empty land and the purposeless automatons.
    “But you know I have no use for you!” I cried out loud to the desolate grey shells that had once been homes, “I have everthing I need to live without all of you!” I shouted back at the cool wind, “It is such a waste, I don’t require any of this!” I stopped shouting.
The ideas had calmed me. I whispered to the two corpses in the bed, “I am laden with eggs, and there is plenty of food for thousands, no, millions of my children and their children for years to come.” The bad moment had passed and I remembered why I was here, and it pleased me.
    I flew over to the larger of the bodies to deposit my precious burden, one by one, and with no fear of disturbance I had time to carefully place them in the eyes, nostrils and around the open mouth. The destiny of the world was left to me; I and mine had inherited the Earth, with all its useless trinkets. Little me. Who could have predicted that?
    A little housefly.