Punt. Slouched and his hands in his pocket, he aimlessly kicked a crushed, rusty can of beer, silently wishing it still held its contents as it may have in the not-too-distant past. As it skittered into a neglected classroom whose door weakly swung at the creaking hinges, screeching across the begrimed tile flooring and bouncing off the wobbly walls that once held happy-go-lucky finger paintings, memories flooded his wandering mind, jolting it awake. The sudden rush of feeling made him sit down on a discarded crate, disoriented and cross-legged like years ago in elementary. Criss-cross applesauce, said Mrs. Nadine, his then twenty-something second grade teacher. She’s probably dead now, even if it’s only been ten years. He loved school. Things clicked at school, doing worksheets and experiments, it all made sense. He remembers how passionate he was about science and math, feeling it was the only rhyme and reason in that chaotic world of his then. Calculus and algebra is what kept him going, even if life at home was rough. His parents died during the second grade, burning up with the rest of the crew on the ill-fated Frontier space launch. It was supposed to be a simple, routine repair of the new space telescope recently launched by NASA, Verge. At least that’s what his parents told him. Their bodies were never recovered, their ashes just spread by the jetstream high in the atmosphere, floating along with the clouds. Since then, he hadn’t really had anything solid to fall back on. His teachers considered him a genius, acing differential and integral calculus senior classes at age fifteen and skipping all of middle school, but what else could he do? Money was short when his twenty year-old brother Kane, who had to drop out of Harvard to take care of him, took him in.  Home was an old apartment building along the streets of Cape Canaveral, location of the Apollo 11 space launch and the death place of his parents. Kane loved him, but Kane could rarely spend more than a couple of hours with him, working two full-time jobs 24/7 just to raise him. Home was many lonely hours, only spent with constant studying, teaching himself physics while the rest of his fifth-grade classmates had fun with their friends. His friends were derivatives and the so far away stars, Polaris winking at him as he fell asleep, watching over him even if Polaris was thousands of light years away. This was the year he should’ve graduated. The year he would’ve gone to Harvard, as his brother had wished for him. That’s also the year the sun let out a solar flare that nearly scorched half the Earth’s atmosphere into space.  Half the world died that day, and luckily, Florida was opposite it in the beginning. Nonetheless, more minor, though still devastating, solar flares kept occurring, taking down the Internet and all communication in a matter of days, leaving everyone stranded. The Earth kept turning, a slow rotisserie, and humanity, the meal in the oven. Space flights to colonies on the Moon and Mars were evacuating the paying, while the less prosperous were left to fight it out in the anarchy of what was called the “living hemisphere.” The last thing he remembered of the apocalypse was Kane weakly shouting, “Run! Reach the bunker!” His brother had been shot by a desperate survivor, who was crushed in his wrecked car. He had run into an obsolete telephone pole. The solar flare alarm rang, a shrill tone that meant imminent death. The bunker doors slowly closed. You see, you can’t see a solar flare. He ran, ran like he never had before. His skin began to blister, so he jumped through the narrow opening between the welded iron bunker doors, blacking out on impact. Abruptly, a squeaking swing, desperate for some grease, woke him from his deep slumber down memory lane. Groggy, he found himself lying on the ground, the crate next to him. He had slept through the afternoon and now the night had crept upon him. 9:45, December 12, 3456, displayed his watch, which had been a gift from his parents in the second grade. His long brown hair was plastered to his face as he got up, and he looked around the ruins of his old elementary school, where just a decade ago Mrs. Nadine had taught him. No one, anywhere, just as it has been for the eight months. As usual. He slowly walked home, the bunker where Kane was killed.

Morning woke him from a fitful sleep, though he wasn’t worried about anything. He, from his constant heedless wanderings through Cape Canaveral, had safely assumed that he was the only living animal left on Earth. After the solar flares began to cease through the winter, Earth was left cracked, burnt, and basically dead. Only the hardiest of plants were left to stay in critical condition, and sometimes, he’d water them if he could spare some water. The city was ruined, the buildings’ supports left reaching for the sky for help, while the walls gradually crumbled away. The paved streets were fractured, sections rising above the rest and some sinking below, revealing the ground underneath the asphalt. Rusted, derelict vehicles were left askew amidst the silent turmoil, toppled and overturned, the windows shattered and looted by long gone thieves. The city’s razed resources all left to him, and just him. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about scavenging or surviving because the bunker housed a plethora of rations, which could supply a hundred people for five years. Except there wasn’t a hundred survivors. Just him. He recalled when he used to gorge on the ready-to-eat meals in the bunker’s supplies, when he wouldn’t have dared to leave the bunker. When common sense finally overpowered the trauma, he began a daily routine: Eat breakfast, wander around the town for anything useful, eat lunch, run errands like washing his clothes and making his bed, which consisted of a blanket and his one and only jacket for a pillow, eat dinner,  have free-time, then sleep. It kept him from going insane, a structure to fall back on like school. Home was his small bed and a makeshift radio with parts from a small radio store, though the solar flares probably shattered any chances of communicating with anybody, if there was anybody at all. Though the odds were against him, he still hoped. Hoped that maybe that radio would resuscitate and tell him that help was coming. That someone would save him. Every day, the sun turned round the sky, and the radio was still be there. Dead. Taunting him with closed lips. He’d get angry, shout and fret, but he wouldn’t dare touch the radio. It held hope for him. Hope for a life he always wanted. The radio was still dead. As the city slowly rotted away, his will diminished, and his thoughts began receding to a much darker place. Why am I still here? Why am I alive? Why does my life even matter? All of these questions held him captive. Only him. And the radio never answered. Finally, one day, he broke. Snatching up the radio, solemnly marching to the coast, he took off his shoes, his only pair of socks, and touched the fine, white sand with his feet, letting it flow through the dips in his toes. He sighed, ready to chuck the radio into the ocean, let go of it. Be free of his problems. But before he could follow through with his plan, the speaker, the singular operating speaker, crackled.

“Hello? Anybody there?” spoke a voice, gentle and clear, like a choir of heavenly hosts.
“Yes! I’m here! Help!” he yelped, in stupefied euphoria.

Static.

He cursed himself, kicked himself, and screamed in frustration. You fool! Why did you ruin your only chance? What is wrong with you? WHY!?

“Hey, you still there? If you want out, listen to me. We don’t have much time,” stated the voice, again gentle and clear but with slight urgency in his tone.

“Yes, what do you need me to do?” he replied without a moment’s hesitation, careful to not shout this time to prevent blowing out the feeble speakers.

“Okay, lemme introduce myself. Just call me Toby. Listen to what I say, and you’ll have a fighting chance at finally leaving that wretched planet,” ordered Toby, his savior.

“Cool, whatever you say, Toby,” he responded, though he felt odd. His name…but, before he could finish his thought, he heard what sounded like an altercation in the background, a quick shuffle ending with a swift, sick-sounding punch and crack. Toby cursed. Something mechanical.

“Okay, we have less time than I thought, so you’re gonna have to hurry, okay?” declared Toby.
“Will do,” he answered.
“Find Cape Canaveral Launch Pad 3,” commanded Toby.

“Yes, will get there,” he replied. He ran, ran like never before. Something rose within him, a feeling he hadn’t had in a long time. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he smiled for the first time in a long time. It was easy to find Cape Canaveral Launch Pad 3. His parents worked for NASA and had been on several space missions, including a six month long expedition, utilizing the most recent breakthrough in the science community: faster-than-light travel with warp drive. His dad described space as a brutal place, but where beauty was boundless. Ironic that he died in the upper atmosphere.

He arrived at Launch Pad 3, which had been there since 1969, eons ago when Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. Some things never died. He continued to hear fighting in the background and traces of another friendly voice. Female, he thought.

“You there?” Toby asked. He seemed to be breathing harder, straining to breathe regularly, “I’ll assume you are. Jump the fence and get on the pad itself.” What? That launch pad is sacred ground to the world! It’s probably one of the most valued relics of the old world, when humanity was at its infancy, reaching space and inventing computers. The Great Pyramids had collapsed in the past one thousand years and the Eiffel Tower was sold for scrap metal during The Black Depression, when money literally had no value.

Toby seemed to have read his mind and barked, “You’re the only one left on that scorched rock! Jump the fence already!” Toby’s agitation flared more every time he spoke, sounding desperate.

“Fine,” he answered, “I’ll do it.” He jumped the fence, landing on the launch pad with a deafening thud that echoed through the silent air.

“Okay, now go to corner pointing to the coast and stomp on it five times, pause for ten seconds, then stomp on it five times,” instructed Toby, whose breathing was becoming shallower, “then the pad should open.” He did so, and it happened as Toby described. The launch pad began vibrating, a low hum increasing in intensity, then the center began to open, the thick, burnt gray walls closing it off, opening like a camera aperture, a faint, glowing light emanating from within until nearly blinded him.

“Now, go down the revealed stairs and you should see an elliptically-shaped pod, and that’s your…oh shoot. Get…*thud*...in!” screamed Toby. Fighting ensued and he could hear a distant whirring of possibly- machinery? A robot? In glossy print, the word “Hope” was imprinted upon the pearly, white surface of the vehicle. He couldn’t figure out where the door was because there was no obvious door. He began tapping the outside, then, in a smooth fashion, an opening appeared out of nowhere as a section of the exterior slid away. He slid in, sitting in the horizontal, padded plastic seat facing a control panel of four buttons and a luminescent, blue holographic keyboard floating.

Toby came back. “Okay, initiate launch by pressing the blue button. The directions are already pre-programmed in the craft. You’ll be okay, kid,” Toby whispered quietly. Though he couldn’t see Toby, he could hear Toby grimacing in pain. The craft started to vibrate. It started shaking violently, rattling his teeth and knocking every bone in his body loose. A small window revealed the sky above him, which was clear and blue. Finally, the spacecraft began to rise off the ground, though he saw no thrusters on the outside. His ear popped and then…

Shoom.

The sky transformed to a black swathe of vast, empty expanse. Stars twinkled in the distance. He was in space, and he agreed with his dad. Space was beautiful. He looked at his watch; time stood still.

“Okay, press the green button and you’ll activate warp drive, but, before you do that, what’s your name, kid?” Toby questioned as if it were his dying breath.

“Toby,” he replied, smiling, his finger hovering over warp drive, “Just Toby.” And he pressed the button, the stars zooming by. He could hear a smile on the other end, then no more. As he passed, Polaris waved goodbye out the window. Alone, he thought. Alone again. He smiled.