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Orange beams of waning sunlight reached out across the tattered skyline of the once inhabited metropolis. The sea water had previously crept up onto the land so the buildings near the shoreline had mostly collapsed and flooded. The buildings that evaded the flooding didn’t fare well either. Many of them caught fire due to electrical and gas systems left unattended when everyone evacuated and abandoned normal life completely. Most people stayed in groups with close friends and family, scraping together the little resources they could find to survive. No one really knew what happened to all the other people they had once known. Professor Wiseman gazed out of the window on the 4th floor of the somewhat intact apartment building as the sun set over the scorched and collapsed city. Ted, George, and herself had been a good team. Ted had a lot of experience with camping and travel so his survival skills were extensive. Professor Wiseman had a lot of knowledge in various fields from her old museum job, which helped them handle many scenarios safely and effectively. George was not the brightest, as he is a monkey, but his agility, especially after his cyborg transformation, was very important to collecting resources. Before the earthquakes and tsunamis that caused all of this happened, Professor Wiseman, George, and Ted were all at the museum. George and Ted had volunteered to help the Professor with cyborg research, so they were all busy with work. They planned to turn George into a cyborg. Professor Wiseman worked on mechanisms and prosthetics to replace biological components while Ted took measurements of George’s still fully monkey form. Ted and Professor Wiseman had just finished integrating mechanical structures into George’s body when the first earthquake hit. Part of the museum’s walls and ceiling collapsed onto Professor Wiseman’s lower leg. Ted and George rushed over to pull her leg out from under the rubble. The bones in her lower leg and foot were completely fractured, but they had nowhere to go to get help. It had been almost two years since the first earthquake, and society had not recuperated. The freak scenario had only escalated. More earthquakes and tsunamis came in the weeks after the first, which further destroyed any remaining infrastructure. The seismological events had since stopped, but nothing had gone back. Professor Wiseman was now left with gray hairs, a dirtied lab coat, and some makeshift crutches for her crippled leg. Ted had also seen the effects of aging; he had grown a graying and scruffy beard and wrinkles had formed on his face. He still had his yellow hat, albeit torn and soiled. George was no longer an adolescent monkey, he was now an adult monkey cyborg. He had less energy and mischief in him, but he had become much more strong. This post-apocalyptic world had become their reality. The past was merely a dream at this point.
Professor Wiseman awoke and got up from her sleeping bag in the corner of the room. George and Ted were still asleep. She grabbed a box of matches and went out to the front of the building. She dragged the garbage bag they had filled with rabbits they hunted closer and swept together a pile of sticks. She lit the fire and impaled the corpse with a stick and began roasting them over the fire. She shoveled some dirt on top of the fire to extinguish it and went back up to their room with the meat. Everyday they ate a breakfast of rabbit meat and freeze dried fruits they had taken from the convenience store. Later in the day they snacked on assorted packaged food items they found from abandoned stores. They didn’t have enough resources for a full three meals but they had enough to escape hunger. George and Ted woke up and the three of them ate together in silence while watching the sunrise. After finishing they rinsed their hands with rain water they collected and headed to search stores for more food. Pretty much all the shelves were bare. Store stocks are finite after all. Professor Wiseman and Ted discussed and came to the conclusion that they would need to head out and look for new places to find resources.
They packed everything they had into their backpacks and put them into a rusting shopping cart, along with Professor Wiseman, then headed out along the highway to search. George scouted straight ahead, and Professor Wiseman scanned the entire field of vision from her position in the cart while Ted pushed it. They traveled along the highway, their only reference to the time being the sun. Without its movement across the sky, they would have thought it had been days. There were occasional stores and buildings situated off the side of the highway, and they would peek in through shattered glass and mangled plywood only to find empty shelves. When the sun set, they slept underneath a dusty tarp, taking turns watching the environment to make sure they were safe. In the morning, they ate some of their last stale crackers and a can of beans, then proceeded to do the same thing they did the day before. The mundane trek numbed their minds so they were impervious to boredom at this point. Every time they checked a building they expected it to be empty, so when they finally found a store with some things left it almost felt unreal. They began stocking their bags with boxes of cereal, canned goods, granola bars, first aid supplies, and whatever else they could find that wouldn’t be a waste of space. George alerted Ted and Professor Wiseman to the sound of shoes against gravel but before they could react, they were dead.
They would never know what had killed them, or maybe they did. No one knows what happens to people after they die. Two men with long, dirty beards, accompanied by a dog and armed with guns, military boots, camouflage clothing, and hiking backpacks filled with supplies entered the building. One of them glanced at the bodies of a part robot monkey, a man with a yellow hat, and a woman in a shopping cart wearing a labcoat, then looked back at his comrade. They both shrugged, then snatched the abandoned bags and left, continuing on with no regards. If humanity is not in hypothetical agreement or order, those with a particular tenacity and bloodlust will just pick off those who have not the resilience or moral deficit to harm others if they must do so to survive. The remains of Professor Wiseman, Ted, and George were eventually worn away to skeletons and metal. The men that looted them went on to also die eventually, as did all of anything recognisable to their time. New life forms came into existence over billions of years on what was now essentially a different planet. That didn’t last either. The universe still moves. Time continues. All of existence can be burned and frozen yet the past still stands as if it were a constant value. Professor Wiseman, Ted, and George exist with no change, in a definite position.