An abrupt jolt woke me up from my slumber. The last thing I remember was going into the cryo drive and activating stasis for my journey home. I was sure I had followed the pre-stasis check list to the T, so nothing should have gone wrong. The ship should have safely landed at the space port-0o5 at sector-z on earth, just the way it was programmed to. The violent tremors rocking my ship currently, was completely out of my calculations. I opened the cryo chamber and ran to the captain's column to analyse what had gone wrong. The sight out of the wind shields of the captain's column shook my whole being. It was earth, but everything was in ruins. I felt a strange sense of deja vu, but I couldn't figure out what was happening. The once pristene atmosphere was littered by flying debries, which explained the tremors the ship was experiencing. I looked down and saw concrete structures, that once were majestic sky scrapers, towers of mankind's hubris, all fallen down, left in state of disrepair, with wild flora all over. The ship finally landed on a concrete block, which I realised was the landing strip at space port-005. I wouldn't have recognised the landing strip, if not for the faint markings on the block, since the entire superstructure of the space port was no where to be seen. As I got out of my ship, an intense feeling of melencholy caught hold of me. Was I all alone here? What happened to earth, my home? Everything was fine 3 years back, when I left for the galactic station in Andromeda. How could everything have gone to ruins in just 3 years? All kinds of questions kept wipping through my mind. The first thing I need to do is to find someone, or to find out what happened here. I searched everywhere, entered the ruins of buildings past, crept under and climbed over fallen trees and rubble, but civilisation was no where to be found. Not a life stirred anywhere, wild weeds and thorny vines taking over concrete ruins were the only living things I encountered in my search, even after a month. In the past one month after landing on this ruined earth, I have travelled for miles on, and a feeling of gloom and doom has firmly planted its roots in me. I have managed to survive so far on the food reserves from my ship, but those are also running over. I am out of ideas at this point and am fast running out of hope. I was even thinking of rummaging for some jet fuel, near the area that was the military space complex before I left the planet, to fill up my ship and take off back to the Galactic station in Andromeda. I know that I am just a pilot and I don't have a clue on how to recalibrate the ship for flying out of earth, but at this point any silver of hope is appreciated. The pensive silence and loneliness is affecting me on a deep level. I have started to wonder If I have gone mad. I have survived for the past 2 months on the weeds that grow on the ruins, since my food rations have run dry, only a month and half after landing. I don't know how long I can go on like this, being alone, with nothing to eat, nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to... Now it's been over a year since I landed, or it could have been more, I have lost track of time. My left leg hurts a lot, I think it has gotten infected after I broke it last week. I might end up dying if the infection becomes serious. As I laid wincing in pain, I knew my end was nearing me, but I felt an eerie calm, instead of panic. Death would be an escape for me now, an escape from this abyss of forlornness. I felt a wave of serinity wash over me as I fell out of consciousness and embraced my demise...

An abrupt jolt woke me up from my slumber. The last thing I remember was going into the cryo drive and activating stasis for my journey home. I was sure I had followed the pre-stasis check list to the T, so nothing should have gone wrong. The ship should have safely landed at the space port-0o5 at sector-z on earth, just the way it was programmed to. The violent tremors rocking my ship currently, was completely out of my calculations. I opened the cryo chamber and ran to the captain's column to analyse what had gone wrong. The sight out of the wind shields of the captain's column shook my whole being. It was earth, but everything was in ruins. I felt a strange sense of deja vu, but I couldn't figure out what was happening...
© ElemenOP