The Next Chapter

 

When the virus first began to spread, my five crew-mates and I gave the outbreak no more than a “glad I’m not living there,” comment. We are scientists and engineers involved in specific projects so Earth’s problems aren’t anything more than a passing interest. One exception was, by using spectrographic photography, we noticed that as people stayed home more, and manufacturing ground to a halt, the air became dramatically cleaner. It’s something that might be worthy of future research but we already suspected this would happen, no real surprise to any of us. Our work continued uninterrupted.

Approximately three weeks after the first countries went into full lock-down we received our unmanned resupply rocket. Everything was sealed and sanitized so again, our little island in space remained untouched. We continued to work and the virus continued to spread. More than three-quarters of the planet eventually contracted the disease before a vaccine became available. Everyone in the world regardless of age, race, religion or country of residence was required to be vaccinated. We wondered how safe a vaccine, developed so quickly, and fast-tracked through clinical trials, could be. Only time will tell. Earth went back to normal and we continued with our jobs, once again cocooned by space.

It was time for our next resupply ship when the world as we knew it vanished. Communication with ground control went from regularly scheduled briefings to sporadic and sometimes confusing directives. People we normally spoke with at regular intervals no longer were available. Intermittent commercial radio and TV signals we intercepted talked about the return of the pathogen and its’ increased potency directly resulting from the vaccine. Our resupply ship, now three weeks overdue, was still on the launching pad in Florida when we finally received communication from the head of NASA.

Due to the lack of qualified personnel, we are unable to launch fresh supplies for the foreseeable future. The Pandemic that has encircled the Earth has already killed much of the world’s population and we are projecting total global human extinction within the next three weeks. I strongly recommend you remain on-board the ISS until the last possible minute. This will give the disease a chance to complete its’ work and self-eradicate. You six now represent the future of Mankind.

We survived for another five weeks before having to leave our home in the sky. Shortly after our last communication with NASA all transmissions from any source went dead. We plotted a course for re-entry and an acceptable landing location, climbed into our escape modules, three people in each, and launched for Earth. I piloted Mod 1 and Jane flew Mod 2.

Disaster struck Mod 2 just before re-entry when it collided with an out of control spy satellite, causing it to miss its’ entry trajectory and skip off the outer atmosphere and careen into deep space. My flight path was true but instead of gently returning to Earth one of the main parachutes failed to deploy and we slammed into a rocky outcropping, the impact killing one of us.

My copilot and I extracted ourselves from the severely damaged capsule and removed our flight suits. After regaining our composure, we explored our forever changed world. Hostile or infected people would not be a problem since everyone on the planet was dead. It was up to us to re-build and re-populate this rejuvenated world. We folded our flight suits and placed them in what was left of the capsule with our name tags visible for future generations to hopefully find one day.

Adam Wallace & Eve Smith