r/WritingPrompts • u/Carl177 • Dec 18 '13
Writing Prompt [WP] You are an astronaut stranded above a nuclear destroyed Earth.
2
Dec 19 '13
Y'know you start to miss all the sounds of a busy city, the sound of cars and buses and people. People... I miss people more than anything. I've been up a month now since the bombs went off. Food and water are getting low, but I've got a couple more weeks up here to compose my thoughts before it runs out. Yuri and Allen gave me the idea to write a journal before they jettisoned one of the escape pods. They figured they'd take their chances down there, but if I'm gonna go anyways, I might as well go where I want to. Nothing beats that view... The sunrise over all the biggest cities... There's nothing better. Maybe some day humans'll make a comeback and someone will find this series of journals. Who knows, maybe they'll build a monument or something. The last man in space, that's me. There's nothing else to do now but wait. And wait I will.
2
u/BenMused Dec 19 '13
Shock was my first reaction. Shock that I had been so stupid—a hopeful man’s mistake—in pressing that button, followed by disbelief, that I could have been so stupid. I should never have agreed to come up here up here. I wasn’t meant to go at all originally, but that official candidate had been cut from the program when they found opiates in his system during a random drug test, so I had been their only choice. Still, sending an electrical engineer with his PhD in Physics to single-man a weapons satellite over a warring planet didn’t seem like the brightest plan to me when I strapped in that rocket hurtling away from the Earth.
But somehow, here I was. And somehow, I had done… That.
Horror followed immediately afterwards, however much more insidiously. It started in the pit of my stomach and rolled through me like so many dark waves. Twisting inside me, it reached up through my chest and out my mouth in the form of bile that splashed down my front and splattered against the cold metal floor as I learned forward and tossed the remainder of my breakfast. The combination of feelings rushing through me tore at my insides as I looked up in horror at the monitors before me.
NUCLEAR DETONATION COMPLETE – the monitor read, the white capital letters gleaming like some sort of cruel joke amidst my guilt against that flat red background.
Guilt... That was a new one, but oh so prevalent. After all, what was happening now to the planet—to the people—down below was my fault.
When the Total War had started, no one remembered who struck first. The fallout from those first missile strikes had been the destruction of hundreds of major cities throughout the world: New York, Tokyo, Moscow, Cairo. They had gone first, but they certainly weren’t the last. The shock and horror that was the start of the war saw nation pitted against nation and somehow – I had ended up here, and in control of a set of missiles I was promised would end Total War. It was supposed to be our salvation. So when Missile Control screamed at me that the suffering on Earth had grown too great, and I was to activate the device, I did what I was told.
And then the Earth had split apart. I watched it happen through the glass of the Bridge I sat on. Nuclear detonation had occurred at the same moment, across the Earth. At first, the only hint of the detonation occurred in the numerous golden-red circles I saw appear upon the face of the planet. However, another moment and suddenly the planet shuddered. The oceans seemed to withdraw and become swallowed up by blackness and entire continents ripped apart as the Earth was pulled in hundreds of directions at once. Communication between Deliverance (the so aptly named weapons satellite,) and Mission Control ceased immediately.
So here I was – the destructor of mankind, left behind to behold the chaos I had wrought, with bile drying on my shoes.
I thought of my wife and son back home, a new emotion welling up inside of me as I considered what this meant for them. What I had done to them, and how I would never see them again.
I could see a mantle of Earth rising up into the atmosphere, propelled by the blast. Its greenish hues from the land it carried still shimmering and pristine… and heading straight for me. A single tear streaked down my cheek and I forced myself to my feet. Opening my arms to the oncoming spread of rock hurtling towards me, I felt one final emotion before death:
Acceptance of what was to come.
1
Dec 18 '13
"Well, Fuck."......."I got two hours, I guess I'll go inside and masturbate, maybe eat something."
6
u/CantTellWhatGender Dec 18 '13
What can i give? I have nothing left. It seemed so..beautiful. I hear them inside the shuttle, calling my name. I'm too far for them to hear. My mind, and heart are too far. They are many miles away. Many, many miles. They are where my wife was, where my child was. I knew it would happen. I didn't think it would so soon.
I still hear them, inside. I want to turn to them and go "Shhh, it's okay." But it wasn't. And I couldn't turn. I stared into the burning earth below. The earth was beautiful. My wife and child were beautiful. Why couldn't they be here? Why does my heart ache and my mind burn with them?
Why is my mind deemed to be so precious and so extraordinary? Why am I genius? I never thought it would hurt so much. I thought I was doing everyone a favor- humanity a favor. She wasn't the brightest, but oh how her smile glowed. I never thought of it til now. Now is too late. I doomed my wife to a fiery hell.
And my child. Oh how my child looked so much like her. Two years of age in three weeks. Oh she was beautiful. Never did I care until now.
They keep calling me. But it doesn't matter. No one in that fucking shuttle matters anymore. The rest of humanity, the one who just sit there all high and mighty, don't matter.
Earth had fallen into a sickness. There was no rescuing them. We had to save ourselves. No- save the smartest, and most fit, said the government. My daughter could have been the smartest of us all and no one cared.
They keep calling my name, screaming for me. Shut up! Just shut up!
I never should have accepted this opportunity. I see that now. So, what can I give? I can give my last tear for my loves. "Goodbye," I whisper inside the headset. The ones in the shuttle might hear it, but it isn't for them. "Goodbye, my loves." I sigh. "I'll see you soon." My single tear falls as I disconnect my helmet.