Simulation

I don’t feel as though I was particularly cautious the afternoon that I met him. It was a hot afternoon; one of those afternoons with the sun beating down on you, sweat drenched clothes clinging to your skin. 

I’d been walking for over an hour, following what I had hoped were deer tracks as you do when your stomach grumbles and howls, begging for something, anything, to sustain it. Food became my number one obsession and deer became my next target. In this new world I’d created, real food had to be hunted. 

Leaves crunched and twigs snapped beneath my feet with every step I took deeper into the woods. I was unfazed by the amount of noise I made despite the several ‘No Trespassing' signs nailed to almost every tree within the vicinity. After all, what was there to fear when you were the last man on Earth? There was no one, not one soul, to apprehend me for trespassing on private property. 

As of seven hundred and thirty two days ago, the Earth’s population was a healthy 7.5 billion. Seven hundred and thirty three days later there was all but one that remained. 

I suppose you want to know why I did it. Maybe even, deep down, you want to know how I did it. Of course you do, there’s no shame in wanting to uncover the mind of a killer. He wanted to know, after all. 

He was walking in the opposite direction, his footsteps much quieter and more careful than my own. The leaves that gnawed at my feet seemed to glide out of his way and the twigs that fractured underneath my weight seemed to withstand his. The sun, too, had alleviated its ambush. In its wake, a cool, gentle breeze caressed my skin and rustled the hair out of my eyes.

At first, I thought it must have been a trick of the light, casting shadows that looked like a man, haunting me with memories of what ceased to exist. I slowed my pace, the taste of salt lingering on my lips as a river of sweat cascaded down my face, giving myself a moment to register what had appeared before me. Within seconds, my fingers curled around my old, rusted revolver and I aimed it ahead of me, gaze locked on the target.

He froze. The memory of his wide, grey orbs and the flush of fear on his pale cheeks never fails to bring a smile to my face. He was a young man, entering his early twenties, wearing only a faded pair of black trousers and a sweat-covered grey t-shirt hanging off of his thin body. He was the first human I’d laid eyes upon since the mass genocide. I never thought I would see one again. 

You should guess what happened next. No, no - you’re incredibly naive if you believe that I befriended the young man and we reminisced on our miraculous survival. You see, it wasn’t supposed to be our survival. It was supposed to be mine. Everyone, every single living, breathing soul was supposed to be dead. He was the sole source of my failure. Did he really think we’d be a team? Did you?

I didn’t eliminate him right away, though. No, I had questions. A multitude of questions. No doubt the same one you’ve asked me. How are you alive? 

We stared at one another for a lingering moment, as if we were two sides of the same mirror reflecting an unwanted truth. His gaze was the first to break.

“You’re human,” he breathed out, voice hoarse and disused. 

“Yes,” I’d remarked calmly, head cocked to the side with my finger hovering above the trigger, “Indeed I am.”

His nervous grey orbs darted in between the gun in my hand and the cool expression on my face, no doubt questioning why I had a weapon pointed at the very last of my own species. “I’m Quinten,” he introduced himself, as if I’d asked, “I uh, I haven’t seen...I didn’t know there was anyone else out there. I thought I was alone.”

My lips quirked up at the sides, a barely suppressed snarl waiting on my tongue. “As did I.”

I decided to lower the gun, not wanting to end the conversation before it could really begin. Thinking back, I should have just shot him then and there. God knows he deserved it.

We walked another half an hour and by this time, darkness had enveloped the woods, the faint illumination of the moon our only source of light. We reached a road - a long, barren winding path - never seeming to end. Quinten sighed as if he’d been expecting some kind of reprieve. Little did he know that there would be no amnesty for him. At least, not any time soon.

“Where do you stay?” I’d asked him. I wanted to know how he remained hidden for so long, how he’d survived what no one else had seemed to, how he’d ended up here, standing beside me. 

Quinten shrugged, a careless rise and fall of the shoulders that only seemed to infuriate me. “Wherever I can,” he answered, “I’ve been travelling for over a year now searching for...survivors.”

“Any luck?” I smirked.

“Not until you.”

I laughed, a harsh sound against the silence of the night. “I wouldn’t call that luck.”

Killing a man with my bare fists was an erotic feeling. It was a new kind of rush every time my knuckles slammed against bone and bones cracked against my fists. I forced myself to a stop, however, before I could land the final, deadly blow. It occurred to me, then, with the metallic scent of blood poisoning the air, that no one knew the truth of my achievements. And I wanted, more than anything, for someone to know what I had done. For him to know. So I told him.

He listened.

He was a good sport - didn’t interrupt once. I suppose the several blows I’d landed to his jaw did make interrupting difficult, but that is beside the point.

I told him everything.

I told him how I’d grown up in Yorkshire, leaving the Queen’s Country at the prime age of nineteen in order to pursue a career in Medicine in the States. I told him how in my second year of University, I’d transferred to a degree in Chemistry and worked for a time as a laboratory assistant. I told him I was at the top of all my classes, with straight A’s and a bright, optimistic future ahead of me. I told him everything he needed to know in order to understand. 

“Why did you do it, then?”

It was quite a simple question, thinking back. But when he’d asked it, his voice hoarse and choked up with blood, I thought it absurd. Why, with all that power, wouldn’t I do it? It just did not make sense, so I asked him why he thought I did it.

He didn’t answer so I answered for him. I told him the world was corrupt. It was filled with only the selfish, the self-centred and the self-important. I told him that no one had cared about me - about my successes and all that I could achieve. My flawless grades and my lustrous future didn’t seem to mean a damn thing to anyone. I was alone. But, you see, I thought that there was no reason I should have to be alone with 7.5 billion other people who were wasting the resources around me. If they were going to take and take and take what is mine but ignore me, I may as well rid my world of their existence entirely.

For some reason, he didn’t understand. He called me crazy. He called me, and would you believe it, a psychopath. A psychopath! To him, I was insane. It was ironic, coming from him.

Our conversation died down and for a long, agonising moment, silence hung in the air between us. I wanted him to know. I wanted him to realise. But there was just something missing. As there was every...single...time. 

When he spoke up next, it was a question. “What about your parents?” His voice was so quiet, barely a whisper, and yet I could hear pain. At the time I thought it to be mere physical, but now I’m not so sure.

I had none, I’d answered.

“What about your friends?”

I had none.

“Didn’t you ever love anyone?!”

No, never.

“You murdered everyone!” he’d cried, tears rolling down his cheeks now the way I imagined they’d never had before.

“Not everyone,” I frowned, crouching down beside him with my blood covered hands resting atop my knees. “I did not murder you. An accident, of course. But you’re alive, aren’t you?”

He whimpered. I smiled.

“Do you know why?” I pressed. 

Quinten stared at me with confusion. I just stared back, hoping the pure hatred in my eye would help him realise. 

It didn’t.

I sighed.

“Think,” I urged him, my patience running thin, “how are you alive, Quinten? How are we the last two people on Earth?!”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He did not know. No matter how many times we went through this, he never could quite come to the realisation. He never could quite remember. 

“It’s because of you, Quinten.”

The look on his face, no matter how many times I saw it, made all the effort worth it.

“The chemicals you exposed to them had entered your system - the ones you released upon the chem lab to intoxicate the airways of your faculty. It had wiped your memory but your mask and your scientific knowledge shielded you from Death. It wasn’t 7.5 billion people that died, though. It was 75. All under the age of thirty except for Dr David Vincent and Dr Jane Ford. 

You were the one who was born and raised in Yorkshire, who moved to the States for a hopeful career in Medicine, who took up a keen interest in Chemistry. It didn’t matter how many times I told you, you never remembered. You just stared at me - as you’re doing now - with the hatred I hold towards you directed at me. You hate me for the things you believe that I did. Yet it was all you, Quinten. You may not have destroyed the Earth, but you destroyed my entire world. Everyone I loved was killed in your little...experiment. I loved the people you took from me. They’re dead because of your own selfish desire to be...to be some kind of Mastermind when all you are is a sad, lonely boy who was angry at the world for not loving him enough. 

I wanted to know if you could feel it - remorse. I designed this endless simulation in the hopes of drawing out your memories and understanding that million dollar question. Why did you do it? But every time I rewind the simulation, we always end up here.”

A pause.

“So, I ask you now, Quinten, why did you do it?”

Quinten looked utterly distraught. He always did whenever we reached this part. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d killed people - that everything he thought me to be was actually about himself. 

“I don’t know,” he answered.

I sighed. “Of course you don’t.” I reached into my back pocket and wrapped my fingers around the injection he had designed in his early days of working in the Chemistry lab. It had the ability to wipe away memory - a formula that must have been incorporated into his own experiment.

“Let’s start from the beginning, shall we,” I said.

He opened his mouth to protest but before he could get a word out, the needle was in his neck and his eyes rolled back. 

I don’t feel as though I was particularly cautious the afternoon that I met him. It was a hot afternoon; one of those afternoons with the sun beating down on you, sweat drenched clothes clinging to your skin.