Fare Well

Part 6 - July 4, 2338 to July 5, 2350

July 4, 2338

Our seventh anniversary. The population has dropped by over 600 million. There are no children under 6. No preschools. The Headstart program has been dismantled. Breastfeeding and potty training no longer exist.

There are no babies. No toddlers. No three- or four-year-olds. Precious little giggling. No tiny hands touching a parent's cheek.

All the resources that had been devoted to the needs of preschoolers have been diverted to making the lives of older children, and the rest of us, better. With the lower population in general, it's working. There are no food shortages. No scarcity of medical services. Almost no unemployment. At the same time, people who would like to retire at 60 or 55 or earlier, can do so. Prices of everything have dropped. Airfares are cheap. If you don't think about it too much, it looks like everything is getting better.

Last week, in a coordinated broadcast, leaders of the eight most prominent nations announced that "our governments have incontrovertible evidence that forces not originating on the Earth are monitoring us and are responsible for the loss of human fertility. We are assured that these forces will care for our needs and will not interfere with our daily lives." End of broadcast. Questions from the press were not entertained.

I was not the only one who needed to be taken to the hospital emergency room after the broadcast but the reasons for my breakdown were different. Melinda had come home and found me catatonic on the couch. It had taken two paramedics to get me into the ambulance. As with most of the others, there was nothing they could do for me but give me a safe place and keep me hydrated.

You would think I would be the only one who was prepared for the news. But for me, my time with Astrid had always been part of a fantasy. Now I had no choice but to acknowledge that everything she had said was literally true. She wasn't a crazy girl. She was a space alien inhabiting the body of a human. And her people had pulled the plug on humanity. And she had loved me deeply in our brief time. The one thing she had wanted from me – that I believe her – I had not been able to give her. Until now.

Where was she now? And what if she had gotten pregnant?

Melinda says we should take some significant time off. Travel. Visit friends. See the great natural areas of the world. "Nature was here before us and will be here after us," she says. "Let's spend our last years in the arms of Nature." She wrote a little poem that I carry with me:

When a mother gives birth

It is Nature giving birth to itself.

When an old woman dies,

It is Nature unwinding itself.

Don't be afraid.

You are only Nature expressing itself

In constantly changing ways.

Melinda is one of the few people that I know who are happy. She has come to terms with our fate and spends her time comforting others.

* * * *

July 4, 2342

I didn't think I could write anything today. It would have been our eleventh anniversary. My greatest regret is that I was not with Melinda when she died. The paramedics said she whispered my name. Goodbye, Melinda. You lead the way for the rest of humanity. I love you.

The human population has dropped by three quarters of a billion people in these eleven years. Yet there are still 7 billion of us. How can I be so lonely?

The youngest children on Earth are 10. They have never known little brothers or sisters. They have never seen a pregnant mother.

We older ones carry a sorrow. We spend much of our time together watching movies that involve babies and small children. We laugh and weep at the same time. When we meet at a park, we sit silently near the playgrounds. The saddest part is knowing that the younger people barely remember what it was like to have children around.

There are no more children to adopt. Some people have taken to raising baby chimpanzees. Quite a challenge considering the mess that chimps can make. But when you look at the face of a young woman holding a baby chimp in her arms, you understand.

I know 50 is not old but I wonder what is left for me. There's no future to build and no children to pass our dreams on to. I have to remind myself of how Melinda lived. She lived so much better than I can manage.

* * *

July 5, 2350

Our nineteenth anniversary. I went to the desert yesterday, as I've done every year on this date. The blanket's long gone but I remember the spot exactly. In my memory, I am sometimes confused between what happened with Melinda and what happened with Astrid.

The youngest humans on Earth are 18. No secondary schools. No playgrounds. No Santa Claus. No tooth fairy. Granted, the young adults are more creative, more joyful, than we older adults. I wonder if they have considered what extinction means. Or perhaps, from the standpoint of youth, extinction is a far distant abstraction that doesn't mean anything at all. They are the first and only generation of humans that are free from having to preserve their culture or devote themselves to the future. I hope they will enjoy their unique freedom.

I'm not dead yet. At 58, I can look forward to another 30 years of watching the younger people enjoy themselves. For a moment I thought someone had taken my hand, but it was just the sun shining on it.