The Last Man Alive

The year of this story is one that is lost time.

Time, as we all know, is a fabrication. It was invented by humans to measure our living and to adorn life with a little bit of an illusion of control and order. Time is of no importance to The Last Man Alive.

The Last Man Alive was, like time itself, forgotten. He had no memory of what his real age was. He didn’t know what year he was born. He had no idea if cars flied in the skies above when he was a kid or if postal service still existed when he was a teenager. And he was used to being alone for so many times that he had no concept of human company, social conventions or even fashion. He wore the same clothes everyday for he didn’t know that there was a time when washing machines existed. Besides, there was no one left to tell him his smell was less than pleasant. The only company he’d had in the last decades (and trust me, it had been many, many decades) was his loyal Dog.

Technology had advanced into stages that are beyond comprehension to the men of the twentieth century. It eventually allowed people to live longer and longer than their parents and grandparents had lived. History was in the meantime lost. Someone just stopped writing. People just stopped recording. Throughout many decades people only lived and died and eventually they stopped living. The population became so old that there was no way to procreate, to create the next generation. So, replacement of the species became a distant memory.

No babies were born for a few centuries. Adults lived, for long years. They learned to enjoy the advantages of “almost eternity”, as they called it. Lovers stayed together for longer than before. Marriages lasted decades. Sons and daughters lived in their parents homes until they were middle-aged people (and middle-aged by that time’s standards accounted for more than forty decades).

Animals started to disappear too. Men and science became too selfish to extend their advancements in technology to other animals. First, the animals that weren’t needed to satisfy human needs died. Then, all the other animals, including cattle and domestic pets, stopped reproducing enough to guarantee the next generations and, as the same thing happened to humans, it happened to all kind of animals as well. Their time on earth was over. They were gone.

Men realized too late that they needed to extend the curtsey of science to their fellow animals on this planet so it eventually mankind was forced to go back to being a certain kind of primitive nomads, eating from trees and feeding on fruits and berries. By that time, humans were so old and few that the impact on nature was barely noticeable and food was available for everyone. Not even the best of technologies could cheat death. So people died, slowly and not so painfully, but they died. And so, The Last Man Alive became exactly that: the last man alive.

He and his dog wandered through the ruins of the old world, of past civilizations, travelling freely or staying put, whatever their wishes were for the day. They had no cares about finding food or shelter. They didn’t need money to buy conveniences. They didn’t need to open the newspaper every morning or watch football on television on Sunday afternoons. The Las Man Alive and his Dog lived happily, free and content as they were. They enjoyed the sunrise and the sunset everyday for what they were: sunrises and sunsets. Not exactly a measure of time but rather two unique moments in one day, two beautiful events that The Last Man Alive and his Dog watched together as if to remind that they were still alive, still on this planet and still breathing the same air. Every flower they found on their path was a miracle to behold. And every remnant of old civilizations, like a piece of jewelry or simply a piece of wood from an old door were simple but charming treasures.

One day, roaming through the rumble of old buildings that had fallen to the ground, The Last Man Alive and his Dog found a threshold making an arch at a distance, where once stood a door to a beautiful room.

He knew it was a beautiful room because The Last Man Alive was a man whose imagination allowed him to recreate the places he visited. Though limited by the end of the recording of history and betrayed by his own memory, the old man still had the imagination of a young child. He kept in his brain the vivid images of old houses, big houses, big apartment buildings. He could enter a room, or what was left of it, and recreate it entirely in his mind as if he was standing there when it used to be a room to entertain presidents and ambassadors. Or when it used to be a kitchen where a mother prepared her children for school everyday (he could see the nice ladies kissing their kids on the forehead and telling them to be nice to other kids). He could see the sofas, the dining tables, and the exact distribution of the plates, forks and knives on the table. He could see the fireplace at the far wall of the living room, with the fire burning red and orange and filling the air with the comforting and warm smell of burnt wood. He could see Christmas trees, with red garments and golden stars atop. He would visit old movie theatres and delight in the memories of classic movie stars, beautiful divas and handsome cowboys, as if he was sitting in the red chairs, smelling the moldy air of the projection room or recreating every cut in the film, every tremble of the rolling tape. He could see bookcases filled with the greatest books ever written, entire libraries opened to the public.

The only thing he couldn’t imagine, and that was when his memories betrayed him, throwing him suddenly out the realm of imagination and into the cruel and dirty world of ruins that was his reality; he could not see the printed letters on the book. Not one book, not one page, not even one of the letters that were written in gold across the red cover of the big book on the coffee table of a regular reception of a roadside motel.

So that day, as he found that place he had never visited, he went bravely to the direction of the threshold. He could not read the letters on top. He could see that it was an important place for the lettering was big, carefully imprinted and marked as if to call attention. It stood on a higher place, probably on the top of what used to be a big staircase. He followed his Dog to the top of the hill and passed through the arch.

Across the floor he swayed, slowly, walking on his wooden stick. In front of him the Dog sniffed the wooden floor as it walked. The Last Man Alive could see that for some reason he could not understand, his Dog was more excited than he had ever seen him. He followed him, not knowing where he was taking him and went straight through the corridor to the last door of the hall.

There was no ceiling left, not anymore. The doors on the corridor, some of them were already gone, some were only half standing, gave passage to numerous rooms that now stood out in the open, like old patios, with wild weed growing in between the cracks of the floor. He passed them all because he knew his purpose on that abandoned building couldn’t be the same old destroyed rooms as he had seen in so many other buildings and he walked patiently after his Dog to the last wall on that long and large corridor.

The door at was different from any other on that corridor. It was intact, as if no one had tried to open it before, and carved on the floor. He leaned down and tried to open it. It was dusty and heavy but the old man pulled it towards himself and opened a little hole on the ground. Right under him, was a staircase going underground. He looked down but he could only see a couple of flights down for the darkness in there was bleak and frightening. He was, for the first time in his long life (or as long as he could remember) experiencing something new and exciting.

The old man caught a couple of stones from the floor and made a small fire with some pieces of this wood. He then caught a bigger chunk that he used as a torch and lit it in the improvised fire he had just started. He took a deep breath and took a step forward down the stairs.

The air was damp. He could see that that little room had been closed for decades, maybe centuries. He had no idea of what he was going to find down there. He moved along with his Dog following him, sniffing all around him. He could see that his Dog was now scared and shaking. But that only convinced him that he needed to go down, much further and find out what was it that the room was hiding. He felt like a little kid again, searching for a hidden treasure. With every step, the wood creaked under his feet until finally he reached the last step.

The room was empty. The walls were covered with dust and molder. A mixture of disappointment and rage filled the old man’s chest as he realized that his descent had been in vain. There was nothing new or old there, just the same old disappointment and boredom of the rotten world above his head. A rat passed next to his right food, squeaking. He followed the rat with his eyes, concentrating in his gaze all the anger he was feeling towards that place, wishing that he was a younger and faster man so he could stamp and squeeze the rat as an act of revenge for the time he had lost going down the stairs, for the time he had lost roaming in a world that was sterile, futile and utterly useless. He thought, for the first time in his long, very long life, that maybe he had no place there, that maybe he should just go upstairs and find a rope and a roof beam that was wasn’t soaked in humidity so he could hang himself.

But the rat hid under something, a wooden structure with straight lines, like a small closet, that caught the man’s attention. The old man’s eyes followed the lines of the structure on the way up and they found a lid on top. The man got closer. He reached his hand to the lid and realized it was shaking. There it was again, the feeling of something unknown to come. He thought the feeling was useless, that the hope of finding something new was useless in the world he lived in. Still, his hand was shaking with anticipation.

He opened the lid. Inside the cabinet there was a magnificent instrument that he had never seen. The lid had kept it safe from dust so it was the most pristine thing the old man could remember seeing in his entire life. It was black and round, with a round hole in the middle. Around the hole, there was an inside circle made of paper that had something written on it. He damned himself for not being able to read it, for not being able to remember how to read. There was a small structure, like an arm or a bridge that went across the black circle from the side and stopped at its middle. He passed his finger above it and then under this thin bridge, from its beginning to its tip and got stung at its end. It had a needle there.

For some reason he could not explain, he knew in only two seconds, exactly what to do with that machine. His hand passed gently on the side of the cabinet as if it was looking for something and it found what he was looking for. His hand found a handle that the old man slowly started to turn in the direction away from him. He then grabbed the “bridge” carefully with his thumb and forefinger and placed the needle above the edge of the black circle.

Suddenly, there it was. The moment the old man had been waiting all his life. Something that he could not explain filled the air around him and echoed in the cramped space of the small room. His Dog barked once, than again, and then ran upstairs. That was the last time the old man saw or heard his Dog. All he could hear now was the sound coming from the machine. He could say that it was something different from everything else he had ever heard. The only human voice that came out of that black circle spoke in a language he could not understand. And she (for he could hear it was a magnificent female voice) did it with such grandeur and power that the old man asked himself how was it possible that the voice of one woman could fill an entire room. And she did it with a certain cadence as if obeying strict rules about the timing that she was instructed to speak. Her voice went high, then low, then high again. It had a hidden pattern within it. Behind her voice, the old man could hear different sounds that could only be made by dozens, maybe a hundred different objects. They all sounded in synchrony, as if everyone knew their place and knew when to start and when to finish, as if someone was commanding them and instructing them all to sound exactly like that at that exact time. He doubted that this could have been made by ordinary men or women, he doubted even if it wasn’t the work of the gods. The most amazing thing was the feeling he could not explain, the feeling that he was in the presence of something wonderful and transcendental that made him feel more alive than he had ever been in decades, maybe centuries, of existence.

He took a step back. He sat slowly on the last step of the stairs, down in the darkness. He dropped his wooden stick and his torch to the floor and leaned on the wall. He could feel the vibration on the bricks. The fire of the torch on the floor started to fade slowly as it burned the last chips of wood. The sound stopped with a scratchy noise. The black circle ceased to spin. Silence filled the little room because the old man’s heart had stopped beating only seconds ago and note even his slow breathing could be heard anymore.

The Last Man Alive died on a time unknown and he left no record of his experience. His Dog had died seconds before, of natural and unknown causes, as soon as he had reached the threshold of the building. The last sound that was heard on earth was an opera of which the title and the author are unknown because no historical record lasted of it and because the last man that heard it could not read the words on the label. But the sound of the music echoed throughout eternity in the air of a doomed planet that is this earth.

Inspirado pela minha amiga Sara e pela nossa conversa sobre música. Obrigada.