There Was No-One Else There

The woman poured out her third Martini and sat back for the last time to watch the world, or what remained of the world, out of her unique window. She was quite probably now the last human being alive.

When it had been determined that the Moore asteroid was on a collision course with

Earth, the ISS authorities had offered to take all the occupants back home to be with their loved ones. She had no loved ones, that was why she had volunteered for space duty in the first place, so she had elected to stay behind. Only for a few weeks though; her food, water and oxygen would all run out shortly thereafter without resupply from Earth.

The world had panicked after the news; humans are like that, she thought. Thousands,

millions all over the world had packed up their cars, created gridlock and tried to leave cities for high ground, or low ground, or wherever they imagined might be safer. Others went deeper - to caves or abandoned mines, or started digging their own bunkers. Some simply sat at home to wait, and others went to quiet hillside retreats with their friends and family just waiting for the inevitable end.

It was inevitable; as after reviewing the evidence the best scientific minds on the planet

generally agreed that an alien body the size and composition of Moore hitting the Earth at such a speed would generate an ELE, an Extinction Level Event.

After a few days of a Biblical confluence of floods, earthquakes, Tsunamis and Earthwide

dust-clouds leading to rapid global freezing there would be no life left on the home planet,

apart from bacteria, viruses and a few other microorganisms. Whilst the ISS was only in low-

Earth orbit, it was far enough to avoid these terrestrial events. The final irony was that it had

been Jerzy, one of her Russian colleagues on the ISS, who had spotted the new course of the Moore asteroid, and had alerted NASA in the first place.

She could have gone back with the others. She could have got together with some old

friends and waited with them; she could have met the end in her own home surrounded with her own stuff and her photographs and her memories. In the final analysis, none of that appealed – there would be no peace and quiet down there, it would be mayhem, if not Sodom and Gomorrah. Whilst her 18 month sojourn in orbit had only elevated her impression of the wondrous blue planet to close on adoration, it had done nothing to improve her low opinion on the nature and worthiness of mankind.

She had been entreated, in the end she had been begged, to return to Earth with the

others - first by the ISS team, then by her few remaining friends on Earth, and finally by Jerzy

and the others as they prepared for departure – Jerzy back to his wife and children. But she took the view that this pressure was more to assuage their various consciences about abandoning her up there rather than for her sake, and she had determined to stay.

She had only asked one favour of them – she had asked the recovery crew to bring with

them a lemon. She had a fancy about the way that she would like to witness the end of the

world, and the lemon was a crucial element. They had brought her two just to be on the safe

side, and she had received them reverently and put them in the ISS fridge – they should last long enough for her purpose.

She had given some thought to her program of events. Two years earlier the Americans

had installed an Italian engineered observation dome in the Tranquillity module of the ISS.

Known by the designers as the cupola it had a large central circular window surrounded by six rectangular ones - it was described by the press as ‘a bay window on the world’. It would be the perfect viewing platform for the only witness to the end of humanity. She would relax in the reclinable docking operations seat – move the other equipment out of the way, open the surrounding windows’ shutters, put her feet up and relax.

She had eschewed most Earthly pleasures years ago; for example, she was now pretty

much what it was fashionable to call asexual, but she had two remaining weaknesses that she

was going to be able to indulge, and which were already forming an integral part of her final plan. The first was Wagner. She had never developed much of an interest in classical music

when she was younger, but the first time she had seen Robert Duvall invading a Vietnamese

beach-side village in Apocalypse Now to the amplified helicopter-borne strains of The Ride of the Valkyries she had been a devotee of Wagner. It was true that given her views on most of humanity, Wagner’s racism and anti-Semitism and the adoption of his ethos and music by the Nazis grated somewhat. But hell, if it was good enough for Stephen Fry, it was good enough for her. In fact, she reckoned that if you straightened up Stephen Fry’s nose, he would have ended up looking a lot like Wagner before too long, if it were not for forthcoming events. Perhaps they were related.

So – she had her iPod with her, which included all of Wagner’s music – and Jerzy had

kindly left his prized Bluetooth sound box for her to use, which projected a soundstage of

bewildering stereo separation and fidelity that belied its actual size. She had yet to work out the precise playlist, but she knew that she wanted Ride of the Valkyries to coincide with the initial impact, and – of course – Götterdämmerung would be perfect as the ensuing apocalypse actually unfolded. She had enough time remaining to work out the precise running order.

Another thing that was going to take time was the preparation of the other key

accompaniment to the big event; and her other worldly vice – the ultimate Martini - the Vesper. The Vesper was the Martini apparently concocted ad hoc by James Bond in Casino

Royale half way through his ailing baccarat game with the villain, Le Chiffre, at the casino.

Legend had it that the drink, named by Bond after the book’s heroine Vesper Lynd, was actually designed by Ian Fleming in collaboration with a friend. Allessandro, the chief mixologist at Dukes Hotel bar in St James, would claim that it was invented right there in that very bar where Fleming wrote Casino Royale, in association with the Dukes’ bartender. Whatever the truth was, there was no doubt that Alessandro was the current world expert on the Vesper.

The recipe itself was no mystery; it is described in the book itself: “Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel.”

The first problem, even on planet Earth, is that Kina Lillet Vermouth has not been made

in anything like that formulation since 1953. Alessandro had a personalised way of

approximating a Vesper with a number of ‘secret’ ingredients, including Angostura Bitters, and it is this version of the Vesper that our woman had got to know and love over the years. However, Allessandro had also developed a relationship with Lillet, and had worked with them to reproduce a version of the original Kina Lillet – of which there were only five bottles in existence – and, courtesy of Allesandro, one of those bottles was in the ISS fridge.

Gordon’s gin was also easy, courtesy of her American colleagues, one of whom liked a

gin and tonic after a hard day’s work. There was a mostly full half-bottle of that already in the

fridge. Then there was the vodka. You would have thought that in a space-station populated

with many Russians, there would be some vodka on hand. In fact, there had been, but she had allowed them to take it back with them. Preparing a Vesper for the end of the world should not be that easy – she had determined to make the vodka by hand. This was feasible because the other thing the Russians had done, was to construct an illicit alcohol still in the laboratory. After a number of late night sessions being instructed by Jerzy as to how to operate it; she now had three weeks to use the small remaining supply of ISS potatoes to make her own vodka.

She had kicked off her first batch. She wasn’t expecting that one to be perfect, but she

had time to experiment and adjust and – if necessary - try again a few times before the event.

She had built a gallery in the cupola; a series of photographs and illustrations of those

she regarded to be the more 'choice' human specimens - in order to remind herself what the

genus was capable of producing, and perhaps to inspire the spirit of Darwinism next time around.

She had what could be described as an idiosyncratic and catholic selection of ‘worthies’: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Charles Darwin, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, José Mujica, John Lilburne, Shami Chakrabarti, Ada Lovelace, Karl Popper, Socrates, Rosa Parks, Einstein, Noam Chomksy, Danie Ellsberg, Joni Mitchell, Frida Kahlo, David Attenborough, PG Wodehouse and yes, Stephen Fry as well.

She spent the intervening weeks tidying up the living quarters and reading some books

that she had always meant to read, but had never found the time. She whiled away many hours reading in the cupola, every now and again pausing and taking in the ever-changing view of the different parts of her home planet.

The ISS also had a complete copy of Wikipedia and that also provided a welcome and

interesting distraction. She wandered through the pages linking through from one to the next finding numerous examples of the cupidity – and praiseworthiness – of the human race. Her previous prejudices only being confirmed by the fact that there were many, many more examples of the former than there were of the latter: o tempora, o mores.

She also listened to music; but no Wagner, she was saving that for the dénouement.

Instead she put her iPod on shuffle and forced herself to listen to whatever came up – no

skipping tracks. There was nothing really awful, it was her music collection after all, but there

some less favoured songs. She had always hated Octopus’s Garden – but forced herself to sit

through it, and was then rewarded by Tom Lehrer Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, which

produced a rare smile.

Time passed. She had a few radio conversations with Earth: with the ISS about some

housekeeping issues; with her last few remaining friends, and with Jerzy, safely back in the

bosom of his family. Jerzy had turned out to be the love of her life – but she had not enlightened him, and now he would never know.

She nursed the still and after three days or so was rewarded by a most satisfying vodkalike

liqueur that she felt would not do injustice to her final round of Vespers. She moved the gin and the vodka to the freezer so that they would be as cold as possible when the time came. The vermouth had to stay in the fridge, the bottle would freeze and break in the freezer, but turned the fridge thermostat down as low as would go. She wanted to make her Vespers ‘Dukes style’ - neat – with no added melted water, so all the ingredients had to be as

cold as possible.

After all, as she recalled, James Bond had also of the Vesper: “I never have more than

one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made.” She was confident that her Vespers would satisfy all four of these conditions. When the time came she almost missed it; she had been distracted reading about the death of Alexander the Great, and the subsequent break-up of the Seleucid Empire. She then had to rush around and get everything ready – but soon she had a thermos full of icy-cold Vesper mix, plus some shaved lemon peel and a frozen Martini glass next to the chair. She hit the play button and her tailored apocalypse playlist began. She poured out a drink, added some peel and sat back to the strains of Wagner. Unfortunately, Moore was scheduled to hit the other side of the planet, so she did not see it directly, but to her astonishment only several minutes later she saw an enormous wave of water, debris and dust appear from all sides of the globe and move rapidly to cover it completely. She knew she would never see the blue planet again.

She raised up her last drink and held it out to her worthies. Several minutes later she felt her feet starting to go numb; she knew from Socrates’ description in Plato's Phaedo that the numbness would start to rise through her body until it reached her heart, and then she would join the rest of the human race – but under her own terms. She had originally thought that she would wait to see who would win the bet she had with Jerzy as to whether the food, water or oxygen would give out first; but had changed her mind – neither of them would collect on the debt. In the end, for her, it was about being in control.

So she had added one more ingredient to her final Vesper, one that was not detailed by

Ian Fleming - essence of hemlock from some plants in the ISS hydroponic garden that had been brought up by the French team the previous year for some biology experiment. Fortunately it did not seem to affect the taste.

Her last thoughts as her consciousness slowly drained from her was that whilst human

life would be rendered extinct, the planet itself would survive. It had survived similar events

before. The higher forms of life had been extinguished at each such event, but sufficient lower life forms had always survived for evolution to restart its agonisingly slow process of perfecting and developing more complex organisms.

Maybe this next iteration would produce a better form of so-called ‘intelligent’ life; she earnestly hoped so … ‘womankind’ maybe?

A last smile formed on her face, and would remain there, forever…