by Earl
l “So it was, my friends from the Dawn, that the species of genus homo to which you belong vanished completely over a billion ‘years’ ago. And yet you must not let that distress you, for after all, the new species came from the old; you have a right to be proud that from the graveyard of your species came the new race, a new man, more fit in many ways to carry on the work and progress of Mankind.
“From thence on Mankind came into a new heritage. The new species was so radically different, in certain ways, from the old, that civilization leaped ahead with gigantic steps. Yet, from that you must not infer that there were no further retrogressions. There were sloughs and peaks just as before, but they came less frequently—the sloughs were further apart and shallower. I could spend ‘years’ telling you the differences that marked the new era from the old, but I will instead only outline a few outstanding things. To begin: the new race began a series of records that survive to this day. Where much of the detailed history of the first era is guesswork and deduction, from now on I am quoting from indelible metallic records. Then, the new race founded its civilization on the great creed of universal brotherhood and abolished war once and for all. That, of course, was after the last Earth-people species disappeared. The finer things of life, all of which originate in the mind, were lifted into the light. Art, expressed in a multitude of ways, grew to be one of the main factors of the new civilization. Individual expression and community spirit grew side by side to the everlasting glory of Mankind. Much that exists today in our lives originated in those times.
“That Era of Change is sometimes known as the Era of Happiness, for truly Mankind must then have been happy. The new species naturally overran Earth after the old species was gone, and side by side the two worlds flourished through the ages. I mentioned once before that a billion ‘years’ ago the population was a half-trillion people, equally divided between Earth and Venus. That was at the height of that era. Look. . . .
With a suddenness that startled the two interested listeners, the room darkened and on the wall appeared an image. For several minutes the professor and Boswell could make out nothing that could be interpreted by their minds. Then gradually they began to dimly understand the scene. It was an aerial view of a metropolis. Ten-mile-high buildings spread all over the landscape for what seemed thousands of square miles, all interlaced with a multitude of bridges and suspensions. In the air darted a myriad of craft of all sorts, all seemingly on the point of collision, yet none colliding.
“Behold,” said Monituperal. “One of the centers of population on Earth a billion ‘years’ ago. Notice the sun, how dull it is—not the burnt-out cinder it is now, but nevertheless rapidly declining in brilliancy from the sun of the Dawn of Civilization. See those ships; they ply the trade between the two great worlds, Earth and Venus, and also between every body of the solar system. There was adventure in those days, new regions to explore, new creatures to observe and record on the different remote heavenly bodies, the constant danger of space-travel with its numerous flying rocks, and then the extreme complexity of social life, which was a fascinating adventure in itself. Look at the beautiful architecture, how skilfully expressive—look now as I change the scene to the machine room underground. See the legion of robots and wheels that give Man leisure to develop his artistic and intellectual life. Now we approach a man of that time—look at his peaceful expression, his small but well-formed body, his bulging cranium. Now let us look at the countryside—see the beautiful flowered canals and rivers, the broad expanses of a riot of rainbow colored flowers, of smooth greensward and blue grasses, the shady forests with sweet caroling birds. . . .”
Monituperal ceased speaking as the room became filled with the noises of that world of long ago. Every note of the birds they passed (the image constantly moved) was recorded. As they passed over more gorgeous flower beds, their faint intoxicating perfume filled the room. For the next few hours, Monituperal led his listeners via the almost magic powers at his command through the duo-world of a billion ‘years’ before. As disembodied spirits might roam over forgotten places, they wove in and out of that fairyland of Mankind, seeing, hearing, and smelling to the extent that when the lights flashed on and the marvelous scene vanished, they rubbed their eyes in bewilderment, as though they had forgotten where they were.
“That, my friends, was civilization of the halfway mark. I somewhat dislike going on, because of the enormous change that it will be my lot to relate. Undoubtedly that was the peak of human happiness. From then on there is no improvement in any except intellectual lines.
“It was not more than five million ‘years’ after this that the greatest calamity of all time occurred. Perhaps the doom that hovers over humanity now is the only thing comparable to it in magnitude and awfulness.”
Professor Reinhardt and Boswell looked at each other in growing wonder. They had so thoroughly enjoyed the long spiritual jaunt into the past, and become so immersed in its sublimeness and beauty, that Monituperal’s words struck a cold chill in their hearts as if the doom he hinted at were to affect them. Then they looked at their tutor again.
Monituperal resumed, but his voice was filled with a heaviness of the distaste he admitted would flavor his further speech.
CHAPTER XI
The Last Man
l “It is sad to relate what follows, my friends from the Dawn, but go on I must, for the story is but half-told.
“In those billion ‘years’ that mankind had struggled to those peaks of the duo-world millenium, keen and potentially dangerous changes had been going on inside the worlds. Their hot cores had cooled, resulting in the upheavals that had so tormented past civilization, but for a long period the disturbances had been mild and easily allowed for.
“Then dormant Nature, almost as if answering a challenge from Mankind that had all but conquered her, arose in her terrific might and in a series of titanic efforts, laid civilization low. Both Earth and Venus, just a few ‘centuries’ apart, convulsed in the first throes of impending death, brought on by the cooling of their cores and the simultaneous cooling down of the sun. The next era of five hundred million ‘years’ the Era of Reconstruction, is a continuous round of building up and casting down. Whatever Mankind built, Nature ruined. In desperation, a new home for humanity was sought, but never found. All the planets and satellites were either too small, too impossibly different, or undergoing similar disturbances. Even the stars were searched, those within reach of the space vehicles, but the worlds of those stars were totally alien and quite unfit for human life. So Mankind was forced to get along as best he could and gradually, as the ages passed, the two worlds quieted down.
“But then they also began to get very cold, and the air seeped into space and the waters disappeared with the air. Plant and animal life died altogether and only man in sealed cities, breathing artificial air, survived. For a long time Mars became the center of civilization because it had suffered much less of the cataclysms of internal origin. There amongst the numerous ancient water conduits built by a race of creatures that must have sometime in the dim past, before even Mankind was born, tried to colonize the solar system and had failed, or been destroyed in some mysterious way, sprang up the metal walls of the new sealed habitations. But there is inborn in humanity a certain love of sunlight, that makes him strangely troubled without it. Mars was abandoned and again Earth and Venus sheltered the bulk of humanity. But no longer were they transformed into one continuous garden of flowers and birds and tame creatures from a score of worlds. There was little air, no water to speak of, and not enough sunlight to nourish life outside the walled-in cities. Mankind became content to do without those things and made his stand against Nature.
“Five hundred million ‘years’ ago Mankind again evolved into a new species. It was a gradual and natural change. The long ages of indoor seclusion and inactivity physically, and the renewed mental vigor that replaced much of the unrestorable art, slowly changed him into the present species of which I and my fellows are me
mbers. Our limbs shrunk to their present state and our heads made room for more brain. There was no combination of the old and new species as there had been during the first mutation, because here the whole race changed as one. The change of species marks the beginning of the last era, the Era of the Dying Worlds as it is called, because during this era, all the planets from the largest down cooled to their final heatless, immobile state. All the nearer planets moved closer to the sun as if to get as much of his declining heat as possible, and ceased rotating independently of their revolution. Then they froze over with the cold of space, dabbed here and there with the frozen water that had remained in tiny amounts.
“But these devastating blows to civilization were not without beneficial results also. Mankind had much more time to think and reason in the comparatively quiet life of the sealed habitations. He began to see many things that had been hidden before in the bustle of a busy world. There was born the present-day concepts of peaceful life, wherein each individual would be like a sovereign king, and yet in total harmony with his fellow men. In fact, as man began to look back and seriously study the records of the three great eras before, he perceived many imperfections that he now had both the opportunity and desire to better. Gradually a new era unfolded, marking a new phase of civilization, the Age of Enlightenment. Mankind at last found himself.
“Fifty million ‘years’ ago, Mankind deserted his birthplace and age-long home and moved en masse to Mercury, partly for the comfort of the stronger rays of the dying sun that Mercury received, and partly because this planet is most suitable in certain ways for our underground habitation. Here civilization again touched new peaks of advancement and a great peace of mind and comfort stole over everybody. The evolution of the new species had brought even more uniformity and individual equality than had the first mutation, so that what was now ordained and meted out for one could unreservedly be likewise given to all. Mankind had ceased to be a combination of different beings and had become one true harmonious whole.
“A half-million ‘years’ ago came the perfection of the spore manufacturing process. From then on all female life-cells that were not needed by us for the continuation of the race, went to make these spores and we began to seed them through the universe. They were packed in metallic shells and shot at the speed of light away from the solar system. In a certain number of ‘years,’ a timed bursting charge would open the shell and liberate the spores to speed freely through space to land we know not where.
“All things considered, in perhaps another billion ‘years,’ humanity would have become masters of the universe, or something akin to it. But. . . . as you know, as I have already related, a mere hundred thousand ‘years’ ago came a voice from heaven saying that it was the end. . . .” Monituperal lifted eyes with the infinite weariness of great wisdom in them and finished: “That, my friends, is the Story of Mankind. You are from the Dawn of Life and I. . . . I am from the End of Life. . . .”
There was a long silence, filled with the silent wailing of a doomed people. But the professor and Boswell were no longer mere dazed spectators. The Story of Mankind had bridged the gap of ages in their minds. They felt the doom now as keenly as Monituperal. After all, these people amongst whom some queer fate had dropped them were their descendants, many times removed, but unquestionably of their original stock. The extinction of these people, their posterity, meant the ending of everything they had lived for. It was bitter, thought Boswell; but when he looked at Monituperal he noticed that his sorrow was mixed with patient resignation. He must remember that philosophy which attributed a purpose to the clipping short of a great civilization.
“That will be all for now,” said Monituperal after a time. “After your next sleeping period we will extract from your brains the items of information we are curious about. Soon after that we will perform operations to increase your lifespan, make you independent of gravitation, and certain other similar things. Come, take my hands. We will return to your bedroom.”
l Andrew Boswell looked long and sorrowfully at the figure reclining at full length on its death-bed. The face which seemed so small in comparison with the bulbous skull was molded in a peaceful, happy expression. The deep-set eyes were closed in their last sleep.
“The last man!” said Boswell in a low whisper that echoed strangely in the quiet room. “His death leaves me. . . . the last man!”
With a sudden gesture of resignation, Boswell straightened up from his kneeling position beside the bed where he had listened to the last words of the dying man. Those last words had shaken his mind mightily—“I go, Andrew Boswell, Man from the Dawn. You must carry on, for you are the last man!”
For long minutes Boswell stood there, his mind digesting the awesome fact that he was truly the last of humanity. His bent and weak body, carrying the load of five centuries and more of life, rested but lightly on the soft carpet. His failing legs had long ago lost all but a vestige of muscular power. He depended on the miraculous “stomach” machine, with its absolute control of gravitation, to keep him from falling to the floor from the weakness of extreme old age.
His face too was profoundly changed. Wrinkled and yellowed it was, lined with senility and wisdom. It held also the background of brooding sorrow that had become his lot in common with his fellow men.
Five centuries of learning and thinking had embedded themselves in his capable brain, the vast lore of this civilization which had watched a dying sun and seen in that a symbol of its own death. In those long years, Boswell had seen opened before his eyes the wonders, the sublime advancements, of a mighty people. He could remember yet with what amazed bewilderment he and his companion from the past, Professor Reinhardt, had regarded each new thing they had seen and observed as their “education” went on apace. Endlessly, it had gone on, every hour of their life, instilled into their minds from a tiny instrument which fitted in one ear, not by sound, but by direct contact with the brain. They had lived the identical life of any of the people around them, eating no solid food, sleeping not at all, and cramming each moment with the new life. They had seen some of the grand drama, witnessed the waving “color symphonies” which acted on the brain like a stimulating drug, listened to the heart-rending, celestial-sweet music, and engaged in mind-probing discussions of philosophy which gave such free play to imagination.
But all this while, quiet as things were, the population had been dying off steadily, unreplenished by new births. Two centuries before, Boswell and Professor Reinhardt had bowed their heads with an aching in their hearts as Monituperal, their constant guide and companion in the new world, had closed his eyes in death. A century later, the biologist who had perfected the virus of suspended animation that had brought them from the Dawn to the Dusk, gasped out his life painlessly. Many times after that Boswell could still feel that last touch of his trembling hand as he whispered a “farewell.” Boswell had not wept, nor cast himself down in grief. The philosophy they had learned showed that as no true indication of feeling. But he had felt a soft pain in his heart from thence on whenever he thought of his deceased friend and companion and fellow time-traveler.
From then on the people had died off rapidly, seemingly without any desire to live. The bodies were methodically disintegrated into atoms and scattered into the void outside.
Boswell took a final look at the man before him. Together these two had lived in a dead city, empty of other life, for five years. It had been a question which would survive the longest, which would close the book entitled “Mankind,” but now it was over. Boswell was the last man.
As the deathlike silence smote him like a living force, Boswell knew that his hours, too, were numbered. Something inside him warned him that death was close. He must leave this place, must see Earth once more before the end.
In a flash, utilizing the powers of his “stomach” machine, he passed through the city, wall after wall glowing red before him as he passed them. In a gigantic chamber he stopped and floated easily toward one of the space vehicles
about him. Into this he wafted himself and fitted his wizened body into the compartment built for it. By the power of thought, he caused the small ship to rise from the floor and dash through the open roof to the airlocks of the city.
Soon he was out in space, shooting like a bullet to Earth, ten times faster than light. Through the transparent hull he could see Earth, a dull globe in the black void, reflecting the feeble rays of the sun.
Then he looked back to Mercury, the last home of Mankind. It glittered like a precious jewel amongst the quiet stars. But he turned his eyes again to Earth, the birthplace of Mankind. In the gloom that surrounded it shone a gleaming spot. Larger it grew, and larger, till it took form. It was the monument to civilization.
The ship landed on top the flat surface of the titanic monument, a mass of pure, indestructible diamond. Carven into its sides were pictorial representations of the civilizations of the solar system throughout the aeons. Captured in the immense object, the rays of the sun broke from their prison finally in a blaze of blinding glory. It was a beautiful sight. It would remain there forever as the sole memento of a great people.
l Boswell suspended around his waist a metallic belt set with little mechanisms and left the vehicle. He did not die from the cold or the vacuum. The belt was a perfect protection by reason of its properties of maintaining an aired and warmed space all about the wearer, bound in by an invisible wall of energy. He floated majestically along the top surface to one side where a stone colossus, similar to the one he had seen on Venus, reared its huge bulk. He halted and looked about him with dimming eyes, for death was near.
“It is the end,” he murmured. “Here on this planet was born Mankind, the receiver of divine Intellect, and here on this planet dies. . . . the Last Man!”