Epiphany
The Past And The Present
Michael, if that was truly his name, might have had valid reasons to mistrust our message. So far, we had it rather easy around here. Ours had been more of an emotional struggle, overcoming the initial fears and getting organized. We faced no menace nor dangers.so far. Maybe not everyone had gone through the same? "Who the fuck are you?" was not a good start for a friendly conversation, but we didn't have many options in selecting future relationships.
We replied in the best and most transparent way we could, and we started with a "Dear Michael." Already writing that quickened my pulse. We chose not to ask any questions, leaving the decision entirely to him whether or not to disclose any details of his situation or where he was. We described how we went through that morning in February, how we discovered things. We told him about the dead people; how they apparently all died for the same reasons and roughly at the same time.
Mary and Annah watched over my shoulder while I typed, rewriting things over and over with my palms sweating as if they were runners in a relay race in the effort of putting down the right words. Sharing emotions and passing Michael the baton with enough reasons to read our words and reply back. I had the impression to be under examination and that every word was wrong and in the wrong place.
Because of all the dead commuters, their demise had most likely occurred between 5:30-6:30am and everyone seemed to have died in the same way. We were in CET, or GMT+l, so he could use that if he lived in a different time zone than ours. He would then be able to verify whether there were any coincidences in timing. We shared we had proof of at least another person alive in town though we could not say if there were more survivors.
Funny, while writing those things, my brain felt as if it floated in a cold bath, detached, repelling emotions as poisonous spores that bogged down rationality with their sticky ooze. I wondered whether my wife and daughter felt the same but I could not raise my eyes off the screen.
I told Michael that I didn't believe the causes to be poison or a plague of some sort. We had no symptoms of anything; we felt healthy, at least physically. Unless, for some mysterious quirks of our genes, we were immune to an external agent but I doubted that was what happened. Everything had been so sudden, with people dying in their vehicles, in their beds, or waiting for the first bus in the morning. Something or someone had access to the switch of human lives on Earth and decided to pull it.
For the first time since that February morning, I formulated a thought that lingered unexpressed and that I repelled, because it frightened me. As when as a child, I lay in bed at night, hea