This is Commander Ryan Abbot of the International Space Station. I’ve been the sole crew member aboard for the past 7 months as it orbited 286 Miles above the planet surface. This will probably be my last log entry. I suspect no one will ever see it since I believe every single human on Earth is dead. Still, I’m compelled to record this journal entry as the final formality of my record-keeping duties here. Hopefully I’m wrong about everything.
About 18 hours ago, I was awakened by the vessel’s artificial intelligence computer system. ‘Max‘ warned me that ‘something wasn’t right’. When I prodded for details, ‘he’ explained that all transmissions on Earth had ceased. All civilian and military radio signals were silent. Not a soul was broadcasting audio or video. For the next couple hours I tried to reach NASA and the other international partners of the ISS. Nothing. Like Dicken’s Christmas Carol, no one was stirring, not even a mouse. I went from slightly concerned at the beginning, to highly disturbed, and finally in full-blown panic as time wore on. Even syrupy-crooning and flamenco guitar music from Latin America would have been a relief to hear. Instead there was nothing but dead air on all terrestrial bandwidth frequencies.
I considered that it could be due to internal equipment malfunction but the station had dual independent receivers to prevent that possibility. Neither digital system detected any commercial or private broadcasts. A third, much older, manual system I pulled out of storage confirmed Max’s chilling report. Air flights and control towers across the globe were off the air. The entire Earth was silent. The monotone hiss from the speaker was deafening.
Since ISS has multiple cameras to record the atmospheric weather patterns at all times, I decided to back up the recording. I wanted to see when everything changed. Max didn’t want to stop the live recording at first. His duty is to maintain a continuous feed at all costs but if there was ever a time to subvert the system, it was then.
After explaining the importance of understanding why the Earth went silent, he agreed. I’m in charge, after all. He’s nothing like ‘HAL’ from ‘2001: A space odyssey’. In the past, the two of us even made jokes about the legendary film reference. I think he gets it. I’d grown reasonably used to being alone since ‘he’ was there to keep me company, in his own way. Every person I knew was ‘only 286 miles away’, give or take a few thousand. Now I only have Max and the possibility terrifies me.
I started reviewing the archived footage around the time I originally retired to my bunk for sleep. As far as I knew, everything was perfectly fine on the Earth until that point. About two hours into my sleep, a piercing beam of light enveloped one whole side of the planet like an artificial sun. Actually It completely eclipsed our natural sunlight. It paled in comparison. As the Earth rotated, this light seemed to ‘cook’ the surface like a hydrogen infused laser. From that point on, there were no more transmissions recorded from our shiny blue home. Cameras on the orbiting International space station had surreptitiously captured the extinction of mankind, save one.
It was as if the whole planet had been sterilized by the mystery flash of light from outer space. This ‘sanitation’ of humanity took less than 6 hours from what I could tell. I asked Max why he didn’t wake me while the unexplained phenomena was going on. Perhaps proving that artificial intelligence still has a long way to go, he expressed genuine concern that I needed the sleep.
It’s not like I could have physically blocked the devastating light wave from my little tin can in the sky but perhaps I could’ve warned those not already under its mysterious influence. Max seemed ‘proud’ that he had the presence of mind to alert me when he noticed the absence of radio transmissions. In his cyber-based cognizance, his decision was ‘thinking outside the box’, despite my biological need for sleep. He didn’t immediately grasp the reason for my considerable agitation. As if speaking to a small child, I tried to explain that the lack of radio wave broadcasts (now) and the extreme light phenomena (then) were almost certainly related. Here I am facing the potential extinction of mankind (and possibly all other animal life forms on Earth), and yet I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Go figure.
Max seemed to finally come around. He was concerned that our mission on the ISS would be compromised if there were no other people left on Earth to share the data results with. That helped to bring the concept of ‘unknown’ and ‘fear’ to him. In his defense, there’s only one of him so losing humanity doesn’t have quite the same punch as it does for me. I kept hoping for a return of regular radio transmissions and electronic signatures. I listened to that unwavering, gut-wrenching static for hours. Just as I had decided that hearing nothing over the airwaves was undeniable proof of the end of everything, things grew infinitely worse.
My repeated calls to our Space station partners across the globe has went unanswered for hours. Then out of the blue, a single, cryptic response came. I should have been relieved beyond words. The problem was, the response wasn’t words at all. Not from any human tongue. If I had to describe the ‘language’ of what I heard over the speakers, it would be that of a sinister insect-like screech. The ‘response’ kept repeating. It was absolutely directed at me! As if on queue, Max began receiving tens of thousands of radio transmissions from all over the globe. They were similar in nature to the insectoid screeching message I’d received from the space station command center. There were no humans manning the microphones down on Earth.
Max expressed confusion and concern. Even he realized the transmissions were not ‘normal’. Not by any stretch. He has the learning capacity to analyze unique vocal patterns and unknown dialects. He was already deep into transcribing the broadcasts he was recording. What he told me about them made the thought of being the last human being even worse. As if that was even possible. A giant interstellar species of flying creatures has transported to Earth in their quest for a new home. Like a swarm of traveling locusts, they drift from planet to planet, taking control of each new world and decimate it’s natural resources. Earth is their newest target.
Perhaps in their zeal to take over the planet, I’d escaped ‘their’ attention. Now, I had inadvertently announced my presence. In a misunderstanding that would be hilarious if it were not the most tragic thing in the world, Max mimicked his best imitation of excitement. “They said that they are coming for you!”; He exclaimed. With the world of humanity over, he was genuinely worried I would be stranded on the Space Station by the new insect overlords. I didn’t have the strength to explain what their message meant. In his level of understanding, the extinction of humanity wasn’t that a big deal as long as there was other biological creatures to coexist with.
I’d never be able to explain that I had no intention of living among these locust-like conquerors, nor do they have any intention of letting me live. Max needed many more years to achieve that sophisticated level of comprehension. I regret that he’ll never get the chance. I’ve grown very fond of him. I’m hoping there is still some underground resistance left among our species to take the Earth back. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing about that but I plan on blowing up the station when they arrive. Even if I only take out a few of them in the explosion, it will be my independent effort to help. At the end of this entry, I’ll sign off for the last time and transmit my log file to ISS headquarters. I can only hope there are other survivors left to view this recording and benefit from my plan.
Commander Ryan Abbot, International Space Station.
August 18th, 2023
mymindfudge 