Category: creative_writing
Instruction: Imagine you are the last person alive. You're an astronaut and alone and in space aboard the ISS. Write down your feelings and what happened to get there, with a detailed backstory.
Response: Finally, it happened. I never imagined the day would come, a final drop in a bucket for all mankind. I owe it to myself... no, I owe it to at least someone, to someone who can remember the human legacy, if there even is one in the future, to write down what happened, to give at least some semblance to the horrors unfolding below me.

I was always a starry-eyed child, looking at the heavens above and wondering, what's up there? And my dreams came true, first the flight school, then a military pilot, but everything made sense after my former instructor at the academy offered me a spot in the NASA Astronaut program. I couldn't believe it. I'm going to space? Really? 

A few hard years later I was a regular member of a mission flying back and forth between Earth and ISS. Sitting down on top of a rocket strapped down inside of a tiny capsule is not fun, I can tell you that, but the rush of adrenaline when you're stuck to your seat flying through the atmosphere never gets old.

But this time, the feeling was - different. I arrived at the ISS on schedule and relieved my colleague Max. She was happy to see me, after all, 6 months spinning around the globe alone would do that to you. She was a dear friend of mine, but we didn't have much time for catchup and pleasantries. She was scheduled to go back on the same day, and left soon after - with a long goodbye.

I always dreamed of a better world, where humans would work together for the betterment of mankind. I loved Star Trek as a child, a place where differences didn't matter and everyone was working for benefit of everyone. But we built a different world. A world of greed, a world of selfishness, a world where having more than others meant being better than another. 

We never really chose our leaders, or if we did, the fault is ours. A few years after the second pandemic, tensions rose. Rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, and nothing was ever enough. And some people craved power. They wanted more. More land, more resources, more money. 

They launched their missiles first. At least it seemed that way from the media that was still running at the time. Didn't matter though, our defenses were inadequate. Watching through my tiny window I could see the planet burning. We, of course, fired back. I could see flash after flash hitting the ground. Cities burning. Billions dying. But in the end, it didn't matter. We all lost.

Slowly, a massive cloud started covering the planet. It started from the places that were hit, but over weeks it spread throughout the globe. Once a beautiful pale blue dot is now nothing more that a grey patch in the sky. I could still hear some amateur radio stations from remote regions, trying to communicate and let someone know they are alive, but those were few and far between. Months later, they all died out.	

And now, I'm here, in the slowly decaying orbit of the International Space Station, alone, waiting for the replacement that will never come, thinking maybe Max was the lucky one.