Good Morning, welcome to what I am hoping will be a new series of using a writing prompt to spend 10-15 minutes getting some practice in. Please leave your feedback and your own responses to the prompt.
Prompt: Every day, the last person on earth sends out a message using their radio. Today, a voice finally answers.
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: 35 Sci-Fi Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Epic Story – TCK Publishing
Time Spent: 15-20 minutes
Word Count: 876
Prompt: Every day, the last person on earth sends out a message using their radio. Today, a voice finally answers.
Margaret awoke with a start and her left hand instinctively reached out to the gun on her left. The cot she slept on was small and bare, but it felt a certain comfortable feeling the cold metal of the shotgun barrel and the rough wood of the stock. Her heartrate calmed as she gripped the weapon and held it to her chest.
“Three years” the woman thought to herself. “Three years since nearly the whole population of earth simply disappeared.” She sat up in bed and spent several minutes stretching. Forty was fast approaching and it was taking more and more time to get out of the bed in the morning and get out of bed in the morning, at least not without some morning stretches.
Margaret got up and went into her small area that was being used as her kitchen. A quick rifle through her cupboards showed her that she would need to make the trip into town soon. With a large cup of black tea and some oatmeal in hand, she then made her way around to the opposite side of her cot and sat down at her desk. A large, green covered notebook was pulled from one of the piles on the desk and a quick rifle through it found the current date: April 4th, 20241.
Eating and sipping her breakfast slowly, Margaret picked up the transmitter of a large radio on her desk. She switched it on and tuned it to the first frequency that was on her plan to search for today. With a deep breath, she held down transmit and said:
“Hello, Hello, is there anyone out there? This is Margaret calling from Ranier Tower Three. Calling any survivors.”
“Hello, Hello, is there anyone out there? This is Margaret calling from Ranier Tower Three. Calling any survivors.”
“Hello, Hello, is there anyone out there? This is Margaret calling from Ranier Tower Three. Calling any survivors.”
This went on at regular intervals for the next several hours. Finally, at about midday, she made a note that there was no response of this channel. She reached up and twisted the dial to tune the radio to the next frequency she wanted to check and so the methodical searching for other survivors continued.
Three years ago, while Margaret had been undergoing a sleep study, most of the population had just. . .disappeared. There were no bodies, not evidence of anything amiss happening, they were just gone. After searching for several weeks, she stumbled upon this remote radio tower, and heard from other survivors. It seems that a select few people, all of them asleep and in some form of isolation from others, now remained.
At first, they had fun talking to each other and debating what had happened to everyone else. They were all separated by distances difficult to travel but they even started making plans to find a way to make it together. And then, one by one, more and more of the others had stopped responding. Most just stopped responding, and it had taken them a while to notice. The only hint as to what was going on was a garbled message about a year previously about a voice from all around. The sender, a Jimmy who was somewhere up in the wilderness of Alaska, never transmitted anything further.
For about six months now, it had just been Margaret. So, that was her life, every day checking frequencies one by one to see if there was anything else. It was tiring and lonely work, but she was well supplied with a town nearby to get more if she needed to and she had plenty of books to read to pass the time.
It was getting into Late Afternoon when Margaret decided to take a break, as she was shutting down the equipment and making final notes in her journal, Margaret heard, for the first time in six months, the voice of another.
“Hey, I found another pocket of sentience. Let me get it cleared.”
Margaret excitedly ran back to her desk, snatched up the transmitter, and pressed the button.
“Hello!! Hello!! Who is the. . .”
****************************************************************
At a desk, behind a wall of computer monitors, a figure leaned back and took his fingers off of the ‘Delete’ key. Staring at one of his monitors, now blank aside from a few lines of code he mused, half to himself, “I wonder what they think their existence is like?”
Another figure sauntered over and leaned over the first’s desks, they were sipping a coffee and rubbing their temple vigorously, after a moment they simply shrugged his shoulder.
The first person nodded at this and said, “make you wonder if we are living in a simulation too.”
The second grumbled, “don’t start with that, I’ve already got a bad enough headache, just keeping clearing out those pockets of life out of the program. The boss wants to see how everything runs for a bit without all the randomness life brings.”
The first waived the second away with a sigh and look of disappointment: “I know, I know, I am on it, I’ll make sure everything is cleared for the boss’s test and then I’ll start getting started on the things we are updating for the Beta.”
I hope that you enjoyed! I would love to read your response to this prompt as well and also what you think of what I wrote!
I hope you all have a wonderful day, get the chance to do or experience something creative, and I’ll catch you on the next one.
-Jon
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