The Last Man
The Last Man
by
James Bailey
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
The Last Man
Copyright 2011 by James Bailey
baileymrb@gmail.com
*****
Elim looked out of the window of his quarters, sighing at the view that greeted him. A black empty void interspersed with scattered, twinkling pin pricks of light emanating from distant stars greeted his vision. Moving closer to the window he looked out at the dark orb of the planet he was orbiting, only visible due to it’s obstruction of the stars behind it. The planet was desolate and imposing with few features that could be made out even with the many instruments on his ship. Just out of sight of the window was a brown dwarf star, the once glorious remains of a bright sun that had lit up this solar system now dying, sputtering out the last remnants of energy before it cooled to a rock as dead as the planet below him.
Rising from his bed he decided it was time to head to the bridge, he had seen and done all he could in this system and it was time to move on and start preparing the next coordinates. As he walked down the corridor he stopped at one of the wall screens situated at regular intervals. Accessing the ship’s status he quickly checked the condition of the stasis tubes in the ship’s hold. The ship was carrying a thousand stasis tubes in it’s hold, a thousand members of his race frozen in time and waiting to be woken up, possibly the last chance for his species to revive itself as a civilisation. All Elim had to do was find a world for them to inhabit, a task that had once seemed so easy was now becoming impossible. This was the thirty seventh potential world he had explored and found the star’s light had extinguished. The universe was dying, star by star.
His race had recognised this time would come and had escaped their own home world thousands of years earlier just before their sun became a red giant, swallowing up their planet and moon. For the thousands of years since this time, they had roamed the stars as interstellar nomads, stopping and staying on a world for as long as possible until that star died away as well. Elim had never known these worlds, didn’t even know what system their home world used to be situated at. So much history and technology had been lost during the regular movements of the civilisation that little of their old culture remained.
As they ran out of worlds to move to and fuel and materials for new craft their population dwindled. Their race rarely bred but their lifespans stretched into centuries, however the constant trials and dangers of terraforming and interstellar travel took a toll. Eventually, once all the nearby stars had extinguished it was decided that the last best hope for the continuation of their people was to refurbish the last of their spacecraft into long distance lifeboats with a sufficient amount of their population placed into stasis to repopulate the civilisation on another world, should one be found. Elim was one of the best pilots and navigators among his people and had piloted several flights to nearby systems in the past, his many travels had adapted him for easy and regular stasis to allow for the incredibly long flights between worlds. Elim wasn’t surprised when he was chosen as one of the lifeboat pilots.
Initially he had had a companion, Jerom, however his stasis tube had failed in some way Elim hadn’t yet worked out. After their first flight Elim looked into his stasis tube to see Jerom, withered and gaunt as if all the moisture had been sucked out of him. Elim put the body out the air lock, there was little point keeping it as there was no way of knowing how long it would be before he found a planet to bury it on and nowhere to store it in the mean time. His people had not considered the possibility of a pilot dying mid voyage when they constructed the ship and Elim could not revive one of his fellows in the hold without landing the vessel, leaving him alone to conduct his search.
Elim thought back to the years just before the life boat left, the sun was still shining then, not as strong as it once had but he could still feel it’s warmth. He remembered his family, his friends, the lake nearby that he used to swim in. He thought of his many friends and family who were in stasis in the cargo hold, and then thought of the many who had stayed behind. They had been unable to manufacture enough lifeboats and stasis tubes to evacuate everybody, leaving the rest to survive as long as they could on the planet. Elim kept telling himself that there was still a few thousand years of life left in the star but it didn’t help his grief. In total fifty seven lifeboats launched from the planet, all heading in different directions in hope of finding a system that could hold their civilisation long enough for it to reproduce and flourish once more.
Wiping tears away from his eyes Elim decided that that was enough reminiscing and made his way to the bridge.
The bridge was quite spacious, two identical desks side by side in the center of the room with status monitors displaying various updates and information . The room was semi circular, a large view screen at the front displaying various images of the hull around the ship and outside into space. In all the time Elim had spent on the bridge he had rarely seen more than scattered stars and dead planets, much like what he could see now. The rest of the walls were left bare although Elim had the ability to turn them into extra view screens if he so wished. Elim walked over to his desk and sat down, with one finger he pressed a raised silver button on the arm rest of his chair. A three dimensional holographic projection appeared in front of him displaying all the nearby stars, nebula and other space anomalies in miniature form and relative to his position. A small flashing dot depicted Elim’s current location over a green coloured star, the system displayed green coloured stars when there was a possibility of a planet that could support life, red stars were dead systems with no hope of supporting life. There were very few green systems left and even fewer anywhere near Elim’s ship. Elim reached out and manipulated the projection with his hands, moving and expanding a particular region of space that held two green systems that were nearby to each other. The distance to this region was significant and would stretch the remaining resources on the ship but there were no better options nearby, he had no choice but to take the gamble.
Plotting the coordinates Elim engaged the engines then watched silently as the ship slowly veered away from the dull planet on the view screen. Once the ship had left orbit Elim left the bridge and headed towards the stasis room next to his quarters to dream through the next few hundred years.