All Man

A man’s solitary existence on Earth is about to change

WHEN ZEPHANIAH KOFI WOKE up, he was lying in a field with daisies and foxgloves wrapping him like a burrito. Thousands of other similarly wrapped shapes littered the ground. Looking up at blue sky, he wondered vaguely if this had been another one of his suicides.

Were these all his other bodies? Had the Scientitians finally ceased their experiments and dumped him in his personal graveyard? He knew he hadn’t fallen and knocked himself out running from danger. Running was exercise—something he had little need of.

He recalled being a 240lb 27-year-old from Peckham with a life that revolved around pizza and Pepsi. Then one day, he’d fallen asleep on his mum’s sofa watching Match of the Day. When he’d woken up, he was thin and alone.

Zeph blamed Earth’s visitors, the Scientitians. They just flew in, stuck their business card in his neck and announced in a language he now understood perfectly, “Experiment: Planet Earth Human. Major genetic functions: Conflict and Procreation. Stage One: Conflict. Let the species continue living safely as one. The experiment may do as it pleases. We observe.”

Actually, Zeph had never seen the invisible Scientitians observing anything. He’d given them that name and assumed his neck tag/cipher/chip thing to be some sort of mind or population control device. But after 200 years of thinking about it, he figured his theory was right on the money. Because they’d zapped everyone else off the planet, leaving him as the last man on Earth. All ten billion of him.

They’d really meant it when they said let the species continue as one.

The first thing he did on seeing himself everywhere was to give a little sigh, then faint. Later on, with his medical degree from Cambridge University, he understood that his gentle swoon had been, in fact, a massive, fatal coronary infarction. After that, while studying psychology at Oxford, Zeph discovered the one thing the visitors couldn’t alter. Conflict with the self. He was lonely. He wanted to die. But whenever he jumped off a cliff or hung himself, the Scientitians repaired him, tweaking his personality anew each time but keeping some things constant. Namely his weight (135lbs), his supreme fitness, and sadly, his inability to stay dead.

In 200 years, Earth’s population hadn’t budged an inch.

It was tough too, being a frustrated 227-year-old adolescent. As the world’s best psychiatrist, he’d nursed himself back from insanity countless times. His sexual relationships were too weird to enjoy, and even if he’d been an animal lover, the only cows, and sheep he ever saw arrived as pre-cooked meats on his table or in the pizza takeouts he ordered from his own global Pizza Cake franchise.

Still, he enjoyed his careers, from President to Pope to Popcorn Taster. And for what it was worth, he spoke every language in the world. He’d walked through the Amazon naked, trekked the Sahara very slowly on foot, and finished off a bottle of bourbon from the front pew, smack in the middle of a Seventh Day Adventist sermon. But he supposed life was better than when humans used to decimate each other. At least he’d never had to witness his loved ones dying. Instead, he could—

Beside him, something rustled, breaking his contemplation. Turning his head, he realised the other burrito petals were beginning to open. He sat up abruptly, then froze. Thoughts skittered around his brain like ants on a food hunt.

Were the Scientitians finally going to reveal themselves?

The burritos opened completely. And as he looked at their features, Zeph’s pulse  ricocheted all around his chest. Because these weren’t Scientitians at all. They weren’t little bald aliens with green skin. They weren’t obsidian-eyed elongated visitors that looked like the discarded appendage of an octopus. No, these slowly unwrapping petals contained women. Human women. Women of infinite shapes, colours, and variety. All women.

And he was still the only man.

Zeph threw his head back and laughed like a maniac. He would probably end up certifiable again and end himself a few times over, mainly from exhaustion. But he didn’t care. Because the Scientitians were speaking again. And even though he was once clueless about their language, two centuries of Me-time had honed his linguistic abilities into something quite exceptional. Still laughing, he translated for his own delight the rapid clicks and beeps he could hear. “Experiment Planet Earth: Human. Stage Two: Procreation.”

Word count: 735

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