Short Stories / The End Of The World

Un cuento corto de ciencia ficcion publicado en Bookrix.com en un certamen bajo el titulo The End of The World. Espero que lo disfruten.







"Lonely! Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"

--THOREAU

“Yes. I wrote it”; I remember was the last thing I said to the interviewer. As I slowly open my eyes I discover what I have never seen before… total darkness. I had no idea of the time of the day or the night and I was not sure now where I was, because as far as I remember it was routine for me to go down to our family compound of the skirt of the Yunque Rain Forest in cave 11 some 3 miles deep every 5th day from the Gene Experimental Laboratory. It was in 2025 when the government of Puerto Rico finally sold the island to the United States for 100 billion dollars and allowed just 300 families of the richest of the island to move into the largest cave compound systems in the Caribbean, the rest of the dwellers where from all parts of the planet. My father was one of the engineers who worked in the design of it, and in exchange they gave him a great space within the whole compound. Ten years later in 2035 I graduated from the Universal Supreme University with a Master in Gene Programming was when I wrote the short story called The End of The World, the same year the United Nations dissolved creating the (G.N.U.) Global National Unions dividing the world into four parts known as R.A.A.B. Ruchindia/Africania/Americana/ Brazilia and the world map as we knew it changed. My father also left that year moving to Ruchindia where he was working in the largest inner cave compound in the planet and left me his only son to live by himself in Puerto Rico. It was allowed as part of the guidelines of the compound to visit other areas of the island on weekends when I really just debauch myself into wild, wild parties. So a many times I had this same feeling but only lasted seconds. This time is different.

The end of the world was a very popular theme from movies to great fiction novels when I was a child. In High School at World Future class must discussion was about how to help the world no to end. But for me the end of the world at the beginning was something that I did not wanted to talk about outside the classroom. Until one day my father was reading a book called Fin which based on the studies made by the top scientist and their theories of how the world would end. It strokes me harder as I began my studies at the university. I kept track on the side on the studies of those facts learned on the book and began to write my own ideas of how the world will end. It took me 3 years to finish my story with the last line that said; “and all was darkness once more”.

And now that I am experimenting total darkness a shiver runs thru my spine to think that I am in the end. Suddenly I remember that just yesterday in the news the suicide of Dr. Arkaibiosa whose theory about the Nuclear Disaster Scenario made him to be dislike by the members of the R.A.A.B. Nuclear programs. In his letter left to the world he said; “tensions in the world would continue to grow, and war is at its most sophisticated state. There are over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the R.A.A.B. today. We would all be in danger of a global nuclear holocaust. If a bomb did drop, nuclear fallout in the form of deadly radiation and electromagnetic pulses would have immediate and lasting effects on humanity—and since enough of them would be deployed, life would no longer be possible in the nuclear wasteland that will become of this planet”. It was tragic. But I had already for years changed my views about the event of the end of the world if it happened during my life time. I decided to think of this event as an opportunity rather than a cataclysm. An opportunity for me and mankind and kindred planetary beings to make a quantum evolutionary leap, “…a moment in which the human spirit can emerge from unconscious patterns and blossom.” To many of my friends this sounded so shallow. But to me it helps even not to think about the end of the world.

As I thought I was thinking aloud the most incredible light came directly to me. It was then when I knew that the end of the world had arrived for me. Was I dead?