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The Last Girl
Autor: Fialin () - publikováno 7.12.2000 (21:31:12), v časopise 8.12.2000
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The Last Girl
A man woke up. He looked around and found himself lying in a coffin-like thing with a glass lid. He felt quite uncomfortable and could not remember anything. Suddenly, the lid opened. Two other men started leaning over him and examining his body with strange instruments.
'He seems all right,' said one.
'Probably,' murmured the other. 'But this indicates some memory recovery problems.'
Then they stepped aside and debated something for a while.
At last the lying man spoke: 'Where am I?' His voice was weak and shaky.
For a while, the other men were quiet. Then one of them said: 'Well, he can speak.'
'You've been "hibernated",' continued the other. 'We've had some problems bringing you back to life, but it seems that everything's in order except for your memory. I'm afraid we can't do anything about it. From what you learned and remembered only your language centre remains.'
'Which is quite good, if you consider the case of losing the ability to speak and understand the spoken word,' added the first scientist.
The man in the glass sarcophagus sat up and looked around the room he was in. It was small with white painted walls. There was nothing else except a strange looking panel with many blinking lights in the right corner of the room.
'What the hell happened to me?' cried the man.
'That's exactly the thing we don't know,' replied the scientist. 'We're not sure which period you come from. Probably the world has changed a lot since the time you last saw it. But as you lost your memory, it may not be so troubling.'
The man looked desperately. 'So, what will happen to me now?'
'You'll be accommodated in temporary quarters and then we'll see,' said the second scientist. 'But now, we have to leave you. We've got a lot of work today.'
The man was named John. The scientists said they had found it in some old records. For some time he lived in a small room with a bed and a table. His room was situated in a big complex of many rooms and other facilities like dining rooms, fitness centres and libraries. He was not able to compare his new lifestyle with the former one so he could not say whether it was good or bad. Generally he felt quite satisfied.
John had to learn many things. No one was able to say, if he once knew that things or if they are new for him. Getting knowledge about new things was interesting, but in few weeks John was well informed about everything important in his new environment. Soon after that, his daily routine started to seem little boring to him. He felt he was missing something and he could neither find it nor think out, what it was.
One month later, John was really surprised when one scientist showed him the Earth's surface. All the time before he had lived in a big subterranean complex and so he could not see the open sky or plants except for a few flowers in the main dining room. They travelled with a large elevator to the surface. When they reached the top, a view of a dense forest opened around them. According to the scientist, John was supposed to get some kind of shock from realising that what he expected to be the whole world was only a small dot when compared with everything around. This did not happen. John was surprised, but not shocked.
'What you see around here is a small reservation. Beyond it there is only a desert. We're not sure what happened. When we returned to Earth, nearly everything was devastated and dead,' said the scientist.
John did not understand his words, but he did not dare to ask what they meant.
In the following days John often visited the forest. He walked under big trees and sat in the grass on the ground. When the sun shone gently through thousands of leaves above his head, he though he found the thing he had been looking for. He was wrong.
Another day John sat in a library. It was a big room with many chairs around the walls. In front of every chair there was a panel with a large screen. On this, many texts and pictures could be displayed. They were mostly about the important things that had happened in the underground complex but also many scientific texts could be found there. John learned a lot from these texts but that day he found something more than just interesting information.
He was searching in one of the oldest files available in the library when he found one text that looked different than others. It was written in a language he did not understand. But the text itself was not important. Under it, there was a picture. A picture of a person that looked completely different from all the people he saw in the complex. The person had long brown hair, big blue eyes, nice smile and very slim body. The person was really beautiful. Under the picture 'Honey' was written.
It took some time but a little piece of John's memory returned. Maybe it was not a memory but only a natural part of man's brain. He realised that the word 'woman' that was in his head described the lovely human being on the picture.
'Why aren't there any women in the complex?' he though. He asked his colleges the same question, but no one gave him a satisfying answer. It almost seemed as if they were not interested in that problem at all.
The next day John looked for the scientist who had taken him to the surface and he asked him. The scientist looked suspicious at first, but then he spoke: 'Many years ago a huge spaceship leaved the solar system and continued towards some nearby stars. All the astronauts were "hibernated" because the journey lasted for many years. They only woke up for short periods to explore and research the planetary systems of other stars. When everything that they were supposed to do was finished, they returned to Earth. But a strange thing happened on our spaceship. I said 'our' because I was there like everyone living in this complex. We woke up and found out that all hibernators in which women lain had broken down. By that time only bones remained of their bodies. Also, data that we collected on our expedition - and it was an incredible amount - were completely deleted. No one has any idea what could have happened.
Then we came to Earth only to find that it was completely deserted except for some plants and animals that survived. Again, no one knows what happened.
In one ruined city, we found a few people in hibernators. You are the only one of them who survived. We believed you could help us in our historical research, but, unfortunately, you have lost all we needed.'
Then the scientist stopped speaking and walked away.
After that, John didn't stay in the complex for long. The same day he packed some food and water, he took a knife from a kitchen and went up to the surface. He spent half an hour by walking through the forest. Then a large dry plain appeared in front of him. He went on.
John left the complex because he already knew what he was looking for. It was the girl from the picture, and after he couldn't find her, he decided to look for her outside, even though it was the craziest thing he could do. Maybe somewhere outside an answer to all that had happened is to be found.
John walked for many days. He saw ruins of human cities, large rivers and lakes, high mountains on the horizon and also many plants and animals - especially small rodents. It seemed that life is always able to find some way and form for surviving. He drank water from springs, ate fruit from trees and bushes and nothing bad happened to him.
Many more days passed. One morning John walked up a wide bush-covered slope. After an hour he came to the edge of a large hollow. In fact, he was standing on a top of a cliff that rose steeply from a valley of a brook. He stood for a while and looked down on green grass and trees that were gradually lighted by the rising sun. Suddenly he saw some slight movement among trees near the brook. It could have been a rabbit or rat but after a while he saw the movement again and the thing that caused it was surely bigger than a rabbit. For next few seconds nothing happened. Then a tall and slim girl walked slowly to a grass-covered open space surrounded by many trees. John stood as if hypnotised. From the top of the cliff she looked exactly like the girl in the picture. 'Honey!' he shouted and he tried to walk forward. Because he was standing on the very edge of the cliff, he suddenly fell down. For a short time he flew though the air and then he felt a heavy crash. He hurtled down the slope like a big toboggan and a dust-cloud rose behind him. In a short time he reached the end of the slope. He landed in a grassy hollow, just few meters away from the brook.
When John came back to his senses, which took him few seconds, he felt terrible pain in his left leg. He looked at it and found his thigh impaled with a sharp-ended branch. Blood was pouring all around. He tried to climb up the hollow but it was very hard as he was only able to crawl. Suddenly John saw two boot clad legs just in front of his eyes. He raised his head and saw the girl standing in front of him and looking down.
'Turn onto your back,' she said with soft voice.
John did as the girl said. She knelt down by his side and looked at his wound.
'You're bleeding heavily,' she continued. 'Now I'll try to cure you. It may hurt a bit more.'
'OK...' answered John in a hissing voice.
The girl grasped the branch and with a quick jerk she pulled it out the wound. John gave an inarticulate cry. Then the girl drew out a large knife. She held it in one arm and she cut her second forearm just behind her wrist. No blood came out of the wound. She plunged two fingers into the wound and pulled out one end of a thin tube. She held this tube just in front of the hole in John's leg. A colourless fluid poured out. John stared at this in painful amazement. Then his sight faded. He fell asleep.
When John woke up again, he was lying on a thing that could be called a bed. He was in a ruined house and next to him there sat the girl.
'Hello,' she sad.
'Hello,' replied John.
She smiled. 'I'm glad you're all right now.'
John started to think about all that happened to him. 'Who are you? And what are you doing here?' he asked.
The girl smiled again. 'You humans just still keep asking... I'm a Cyborg. And don't worry about my hand. This is not the first time I have done it. One of my body fluids is a really good disinfectant.'
John's face expressed amazement. 'Thank you for rescuing me,' he said.
'I've followed you for many days because I wanted to know, what one of your kind is doing so far away from your shelter,' she explained.
'What I was doing so far... Believe it or not, I was looking for you. I saw you in a picture,' said John.
'It is the first time someone looked for me. I'm pleased. Probably you saw a picture of a woman who looked like me,' said the girl.
'I've never heard of Cyborgs. Are there more of you?' asked John.
'No,' she replied. 'I'm the last one left. But I don't know what happened to the others. Many years ago, this planet was a friendlier place. You may even say crowded. But it has looked like this since I started to sense. '
John looked little desperate. 'All this seems crazy to me and I don't understand it.'
'Nor do I,' replied the girl. 'But I'm very curious, you would say, and I love talking.'
'You said you love talking? I apologise for asking you like this, but I can't help myself. Are you alive?' said John.
'I should have expected this question,' said the girl quietly. 'Well. I don't meet all the criteria of the old definition you might know, but I'm afraid of a total end as all living and thinking creatures. In human words - I'm afraid of death. I have feelings like you and inside of me I feel something more than just the material I was made from.'
'Fantastic... but I'm not sure I fully understand all have you told me,' said John.
'As far as I know humans, I think they like talking too. So if you're interested, you can stay here with me and we can talk and think about all that we want to know. I used to get quite bored,' said the girl. 'I also think that your leg is still not fully functional and walking anywhere would be dangerous.'
John smiled. 'Now you have made me really happy. I think I've found what I've been looking for.'
Then he added: 'What is your name? I'm John.'
'I don't have a real name,' replied the girl. 'But some people called me Honey.'
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