The Last Frequency

For the three hundred and seventh morning in a row, Sarah Chen broadcast her message to the world.

"This is Sarah Chen, broadcasting from Seattle. If anyone can hear this, I'm at the Space Needle. I broadcast every day at sunrise. Please respond on any frequency."

She waited, counting to one hundred as she always did, the familiar static crackling through her handheld radio. The morning fog pressed against the observation deck windows, obscuring her view of the city below. Not that there was much to see anymore – just empty streets gradually being reclaimed by nature, abandoned cars forming artificial reefs in a sea of wild grass and climbing vines.

The count reached one hundred. No response, as always.

Sarah switched off the radio and added another tally mark to her notebook. She'd started keeping count after the first month, when hope began to fade. Now the marks filled page after page, a growing testament to her solitude.

She hadn't always chosen the Space Needle. In the beginning, she'd driven from station to station, broadcasting on every frequency she could access. She'd broken into radio stations, television studios, and military installations. She'd learned to operate equipment she'd never touched before, spending weeks studying manuals and practicing with different systems. But after months of silence, she'd settled on the Space Needle as her base. Its height gave her the best chance of reaching anyone who might be out there, and something about its iconic silhouette made her feel less alone.

"Time for breakfast," she announced to no one in particular. Speaking aloud had become a habit, a way to keep herself tethered to sanity. Her voice echoed slightly in the empty observation deck, bouncing off the windows and returning to her like a faithful companion.

She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a can of peaches. Food wasn't a problem yet – the city had enough non-perishables to last several lifetimes. She'd organized systematic raids of every grocery store and warehouse in her vicinity, carefully rotating stock to avoid spoilage. Sometimes she wondered if she was being too methodical about it. Who was she saving the food for?

As she ate, Sarah watched a family of deer pick their way through the street below, now visible as the morning fog began to lift. They moved confidently through the urban landscape, no longer startled by the remnants of human civilization. She'd named the mother deer Augusta, after her own mother. The fawns she called Thing One and Thing Two, a small homage to Dr. Seuss that made her smile.

"Good morning, Augusta," she called through the glass. "Kids looking healthy today."

The deer, of course, couldn't hear her. But they were part of her daily routine now, like the broadcast and the tally marks. Routine was important. Routine kept the darkness at bay.

Sarah had been alone since The Silence began. She still wasn't sure what had happened – there had been no war, no pandemic, no dramatic catastrophe. People had simply... vanished. She'd gone to bed one night after a normal day at her software engineering job, and when she'd woken up, everyone was gone. No bodies, no signs of struggle, just empty clothes lying in empty beds and cars stopped in the middle of streets.

The first week had been chaos. She'd run through the streets screaming for help, broken into homes looking for survivors, tried every phone number she knew. The internet had still worked for a few days, but no one was posting, no one was responding to messages. Then the power had started failing in sections of the city as automated systems reached their limits. Now only her solar panels and generators kept her small corner of the world humming with electricity.

She'd tried to leave Seattle once, about six months in. She'd loaded up a truck with supplies and started driving south, broadcasting as she went. But after reaching Portland and finding it just as empty, just as silent, she'd turned back. Seattle was home. If she was going to be alone, she wanted to be alone somewhere familiar.

The peaches were gone. Sarah carefully washed the can and added it to her recycling pile. She wasn't sure why she still recycled – habit, maybe, or some deep-seated need to maintain order in her tiny sphere of influence. Or perhaps it was optimism – someone might return someday, and she wanted them to find a world that hadn't completely fallen into chaos.

"Daily tasks," she said aloud, consulting her notebook. "Check the generators. Water the garden. Repair the broken window in the north section. Library run for more engineering manuals."

She'd been teaching herself everything she could think of – engineering, medicine, agriculture, radio operations, solar power systems. Knowledge was survival now. If something broke, she had to fix it. If she got sick, she had to treat herself. The library had become her university, and she was its only student.

Later, as she tended to her rooftop garden, Sarah found herself humming an old song her mother used to sing. The vegetables were coming in nicely – she'd finally figured out the right balance of nutrients and water after several failed attempts. The first year, she'd relied entirely on scavenged food, but now she was growing more and more of her own. Sometimes she grew far more than she could eat, unable to break the habit of planting for a family that no longer existed.

"Look at these tomatoes, Mom," she said to the sky. "Finally got them right."

Talking to her absent mother had become another habit. Sometimes she imagined whole conversations, complete with her mother's practical advice and gentle teasing. Was this madness? She didn't think so. Madness would be forgetting, pretending she hadn't once been part of a world full of people. Remembering hurt, but it kept her human.

As the sun began to set, Sarah made her way back to the observation deck for her evening broadcast. Same message, same static, same silence. She made her tally mark – morning and evening, two broadcasts a day, every day.

But tonight, something was different. As she turned to leave, a flash of light caught her eye. Far in the distance, beyond the city limits, a pinpoint of brightness flickered in the gathering darkness. She grabbed her binoculars, hands shaking slightly as she focused them.

There, on a hill several miles away: a bonfire.

Sarah's heart began to race. In three hundred and seven days, she'd never seen a fire she hadn't set herself. It had to mean something. Someone had built it. Someone was out there.

She reached for her radio, then stopped. What if it wasn't a person? What if it was something else? The world had become strange in its emptiness – she'd seen things sometimes, in the corners of her vision, that didn't quite make sense. Or maybe she was finally cracking, seeing things she wanted to see.

But as she watched, the fire flickered in a deliberate pattern. Three short bursts, three long, three short.

SOS.

Sarah's hands were steady now as she reached for her emergency pack – always prepared, always ready for this moment she'd started to believe would never come. She had a decision to make: stay in her safe routine, her carefully ordered world, or venture out into the darkness toward an uncertain signal.

She thought of her tally marks, her daily broadcasts, her conversations with absent people and silent deer. She thought of all the questions she'd stored up over the months, waiting for someone to ask them to.

"Well, Augusta," she said to the empty observation deck, "watch my garden for me. I might be gone a few days."

She shouldered her pack, checked her weapons, and headed for the emergency stairwell. As she began her descent, she felt something she hadn't experienced in three hundred and seven days: hope.

Whether the signal led to salvation or disappointment, at least it was something new. At least it was a change. And maybe, just maybe, she wasn't the last human after all.

Behind her, the Space Needle stood sentinel in the gathering dark, waiting to see if its lone occupant would return with company, or if it would remain a monument to solitude in a silent world.