This Isn't Real

This Isn’t Real

I used to cry every time I watched that scene in Soylent Green. I mean the one where Edward G. Robinson dies surrounded by images of the way nature looked before overpopulation destroyed it. I never would have thought I’d be watching similar videos of the way my world used to look before the global pandemic destroyed our normal human lives. But here I am, alone in my subterranean bunker. I have enough food for a hundred years. I’ll be lucky if I live another hundred weeks.

Survival isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It beats being dead, but only by a little. I’ve begun to think the lucky ones are the people who got killed by the virus before they had to watch it decimate the human race.

The corpses piled up in the streets. Dogs and wolves and other predators came, then flourished and multiplied, and finally turned on each other when the human bodies were eaten up. The world outside was no longer green. It became bloody red. Where’s your peaceable kingdom now? Ha!

Sorry, sometimes I lose it.

Even though there’s no reason to go on living, I still don’t want to die. I’m afraid of what happens afterward. Where will I go? What will happen to me? What if dead people don’t go anywhere, but remain attached to the places they died in? I couldn’t endure being stuck here forever.

If there was a real escape, though, I’d take it. Aliens showing up and saving the last remnants of the human race is my preferred way out. Me being taken up in their flying saucer, or maybe that big oil refinery rig from Close Encounters. That’s my favorite fantasy. I’ve always envied Roy Neary. He got to leave. I’m sure I’m never going to go anywhere else, not even in death. There’s nowhere else to go.

So I wait here with my hundred years of food, my comfy memory-foam mattress, a laptop full of porn, another laptop filled with old movies, and a spiffy exercise bike. Wait for what? I have no idea.

Every day is just like the one before. Or the next one. They are all recycled, like the air I breathe and the water I drink. You get used to it.

I remember hearing the scientists talking about ‘herd-immunity.’ Does that mean that if I’m the only one left in the herd, I’m automatically immune? I’m too scared to venture outside to find out.

Sometimes I fantasize about walking the earth alone like some sci-fi nomad in a crappy post-apocalyptic movie, looking for the last surviving woman. On second thought, if she’s out there, I wouldn’t want to know about her. We might infect each other if we met.

Then again, if I could die in the arms of someone I loved, I think that would be all I needed to be at rest. Even if she only loved me for a short time- a day or two would be enough. I wouldn’t even care if we had sex before I died.

I guess I’m not really looking for love, but I wouldn’t tell her that. I’m looking for death. I just don’t want to die alone. And that’s what keeps me going.

I’ve probably written that statement in my recent journals many times. But it’s true. I don’t want to die alone. Because then it wouldn’t just be me who dies, but the entire human race. We’d be finished, kaput, terminated. However you want to say it. The earth would be finally cleansed of the worst predator evolution ever produced. A predator that preyed not only on other living things for food but on everything else, just for the pure enjoyment of destruction.

A huge meteor wiped out the dinosaurs. They couldn’t help what happened to them. Humanity wiped itself out. We had a choice. And we were supposed to be the most intelligent species on the planet. So much for ‘free will.’ Ha!

Sorry, I lost it again.

Well, humanity almost wiped itself out. You see, that’s also why I won’t kill myself. If I’m the last human and I kill myself, then my statement about humanity committing suicide becomes fact. If I remain alive, it’s only a possibility. As long as there’s one of us left, then humans aren’t extinct.

We failed to ascend to the stars, where we belonged. (We tried, feebly, when we weren’t fighting with each other and plundering the planet.) Instead of creating heaven, we wrought hell. And hell consumed us. All except me. I’m the last bastion, the last holdout, the last human. Mom would be so proud of me!

How many times have I written that in these journals?

Maybe the last girl will come and find me, or maybe the aliens will take pity on humanity, want to help us repopulate the planet, and deliver her to me. Then we can live happily ever after in our brave new Eden.

Just like we did the last time.

It was that damn recurring dream again. I don’t know why I keep having it. There is no pandemic. The world didn’t end. There are no aliens. All that is crap. And completely impossible.

So what is the dream trying to tell me? I have some anxiety? Yeah, I get that. But anxiety about what? My life is just fine. Normal. It’s not extraordinary in any way. I’m not rich, but I’m not poor, either.

The sun comes up every day. Work is mundane, but not horrible. My girlfriend and I are doing okay. We watch Netflix and cuddle once or twice a week. It’s a quiet, normal, almost humdrum life. But safe. Very safe. Really safe. And it’s going to continue that way. Not just for me, or for us, but for everyone.

So why the anxiety?

Why can’t my unconscious mind give me a break? I have better things to do than wake up exhausted by fear about being the last human alive. I mean, come on! There are 7 or 8 billion of us! Plenty to go around. Pandemics just happen in movies (mostly bad ones.) One couldn’t happen to us.

Right?