Chapter Text
The end of the world happened around 17:30 Accord Standard Time.
I didn’t really notice anything to start; I’d just gotten back from work and I’d been debating what to make for dinner. Then, a landmass appeared in the sky.
Or, it looked like land. It looked like a flower if a flower was also a land mass. It looked like nothing humanity could ever make. Greenery abounded on the thing outside my window which was either a landmass or a flower. Maybe both at once. Yellowknife specifically was not known for its greenery any longer, and all I could see was a green sky above me.
Trailing vines and lush greenery on the enormous ship floated impudently above the city, a blindingly colorful sight against the white buildings and grey skies that made up my life.
By rights, even ignoring the fact that it floated in mid-air, it was not remotely space-worthy. It was a floating forest upon a wood platform, at least from my vantage point gazing up at what was only a small portion of the thing.
It was a blooming flower that was dozens of kilometers wide. Perhaps it closed when it flew, I thought wildly. How many freight containers could such a thing carry? A million? Ten million? I’d worked with freight liners that were kilometers long and this didn’t dwarf them so much as it atomized them.
They had come for them. The affini were going to take them now. The planetary defense force had fallen, their surrender ratified and my grim little life was as good as over. Just like the subnet broadcasts said, there would be no bang, or even a whimper. They simply came.
And then they’d take us onto that impossible flower-forest-ship to our new lives in the mines, or whatever was the truth past all the propaganda.
So, as the vines whipped downwards mooring the floating island to the earth, I decided against dinner.
I went upstairs and opened my closet. Then, the box holding my most precious garments. The garments that fit me best.
I put on my finest underwear, silken and black; soft as a lover’s touch.
I put on my black stockings, possessing the illusion of laces crisscrossing and leaving artful slashes of my pale skin from toes all up my thighs as negative space.
I put on my dress, cute and pleasant and sleeveless. Black and white rabbits frolicked along the skirt and bodice on a white background, limned with a black lace trim. Well-ironed, without wrinkles or creases just like I’d learned. When you didn’t get many chances to show off, you made them count.
I put on my favorite necklace, and then my rings. Jingling bangles and pretty bracelets. My embroidered headband. I took the time to repaint my nails black and red, alternating between each finger. I brushed hair and did my make-up.
Finally, I put on a pair of heeled sandals strapped at the ankles.
I refused to go to my grave poorly dressed.
I thought of men and women dressed in their finest garments for those first commercial airplane flights 600 years ago.
I went to the cabinet above my fridge and then sat down by the window with a stout glass bottle. I poured myself a stiff drink from the top shelf as I watched the ship. I wondered, were those vines also transfer lines? No one was flying out of the ship.
I savored the drink. Delicately sweet and sour beneath the bitterness. I hated food, but when I committed to tasting it, I was told I had a good palate for it. One of the few pleasures of my work was the ability to occasionally afford such things. Aged in oak from one of the few botanical planets that could still sustain them, this was actually good liquor. Not karmotrine like most of the stuff my fellow proles drank. Earth certainly couldn’t spare any oak barrels to flavor liquor locally. The whiskey was smooth and mysterious. It was probably the nicest thing I owned.
It’s not like I could afford much in the way of earthly pleasures; I was a freight specialist at a space port. That said I did well enough for myself, I guess. I had an apartment, clothing that wasn’t pure polyester and a bottle of fine whiskey. That’s more than most got these days on Earth.
The sun was setting in earnest when the ship spoke, voice echoing across the city from the landmass above us. “Attention human sophont cuties! The Terran Accord has officially surrendered to the Affini Compact! We’re here to perform a wellness check on your region! You will be safe! You will be cared for! We come in peace, and we love you!”
If anything, I was mostly shocked at the alien’s shockingly clear, understandable accent and diction. The affini were plants, how did they speak? I’d sort of assumed through some form of pheromone, or perhaps a spore. I’m no xenobiologist.
Maybe it was just a human pet parroting a script. Maybe that’s what I was going to be.
I knew that it had been coming. I’m no fool; I worked on shipping manifests for the spaceport in the capital. I saw who was leaving, what was shipping where. Even the the lowbie quadrillionaires were jumping ship and using their pleasure barges for hauling. It was history repeating. I studied the humanities my whole life before reality demanded I find a ‘real’ job. I knew an empire in collapse when I saw it.
All that was missing was a prime minister smuggling credit chits under his suit jacket. I’d bet money that’d probably already happened on some border world on the edge of Accord space.
They were being sacked, as surely as the Romans had. At least these affini were not barbarians. By most measures they were our betters, even; technologically superior, more physically capable and bearing a larger empire. By those metrics there were no surprises to be found in our total defeat.
And so, with thoughts of burning cities thousands of years ago I sat in my chair and steadily grew drunker as I waited for the end. As I waited for the affini to take me. It wasn’t like it was going to be too different from this. The only real difference was at least I got whiskey. I’d been saving that bottle for a grand occasion. The end of human dominance seemed suitably grand.
If there was anything I knew how to drink to, it was the end of things.
I’d heard of the affini and their predilections to all manner of mind-altering substances; I doubt sincerely they were laid back on the use of recreational intoxicants. May as well have a last hurrah. Start my new life of slavery on a hungover foot, or something. A last fuck-you, love, Earth.
It was all pointless, anyway.
I’d been so good. I’d worked so hard, stayed so disciplined for the sake of humanity and the people who mattered to me. Even as they slowly faded away. Until I didn’t even remember why I was fighting to keep to my path. And now I was nothing. All of my schooling, all of my knowledge… useless. They wouldn’t care about human history, the human heart or soul.
It was with those thoughts and half a bottle of fine amber liquor that I fell into my arms on the table. I nestled more deeply into my chair. When they take me I could at least be comfortable before they lugged me off like a sack of synthcubes.
I wish I was brave enough to off myself. This was all too cruel. Life was already more than I could bear, and now…
Now there wouldn't anything at all left for me.