but everybody's gone, so I will never know
Scott Lawlor
You've been away from home for a long long time, working on the orbiting space station, making repairs and installing new equipment. Your family understands your dedication and that you've got to be away from home for months at a time. You hear the news crackling over the radio about the pandemic that has begun ravaging your home world over the last few months. Every week, the effects of the new virus, actually, perhaps it's a very old virus, multiply exponentially, leaving thousands dead.
Economies have shut down, people hide away in their homes driven by fear and anxiety but the virus will get them too as it mutates again and again, each strain many times deadlier than the last.
You're the last one to leave the station and as you travel towards home, feeling a sense of anxiety but also hope for the future, for plagues have hit your world before, you're looking forward to a long awaited reunion with your loved ones, ever optimistic that they have not yet succumbed to the virus that has killed so many in its brutal wake.
You hear a communication over the radio as your ship approaches home that says not to land and you think, it has to be a dream. You call for confirmation but hear no response, just a looping distress call instructing you not to approach the planet.
Quarantined in space, unable to have the reunion for which you have been awaiting for so long, you remember events from the past: birthday celebrations with your children, playing in the park, family holidays. These memories are all you have left as you disobey the call and land to find a world devoid of human life. The virus has killed everyone, now they are gone and you will never know what the future with your loved ones could have been.
A last message echoes in your mind as you do what you know needs to be done: "But Everybody's gone, so I will never know."
Released: 5/14/2020
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