“Mommy, what’s that?”

I looked to where Lily was pointing, but saw nothing.

“Mommy, what’s that sound?”

I strained my ears, but heard nothing.

“Mommy?”

I turned to my daughter, but the sound of laughter stole my gaze. Crows flew overhead. Landing on the telephone wire above us, they continued cackling.

“I don’t feel so good Mommy.”

I knelt down to pull Lily close, but all that met my arms was ash. A gust of wind came and swept them to the sky. With a flutter of wings the crows began to laugh again, and flew away.

Ashes like snow fell for weeks. Only we knew they weren’t falling. The winds were picking them up, stealing them from our outstretched palms and taking them to the heavens, only to flutter down and mingle with our tears.

New jobs were created to collect the ashes. I didn’t envy them their work. At the sound of the special vacuums parents would come screaming from their houses grasping at the air, grasping at the bags of ashes, tearing them apart in feral confused anger. They fought over each ash hoping this one might be their son, might be their daughter.

No child was spared, not even the unborn. Women complained of sudden warmth, and then nothing.

Lily was four. I keep a vial close to my heart of what I dream are her ashes, her little hand, the one I wasn’t strong enough to hold on to.

We tried for another child. Everyone tried- it was a global initiative. But no one succeeded. Worldwide infertility. Two words became a life sentence for reasons unknown.

No one took culpability. No one knew what had happened. There were scientific summits from which sprang fruitless theories, but nothing was discovered.

Finally, the world was working toward a common goal. It was too late.

The funny thing was, the animals. Nothing was wrong with the animals. Birds laid eggs and carefully pushed their young from the nest. Tadpoles shimmered in ponds as rays of light shone from the heavens on the miracle of birth.

Animal cruelty cases spiked the first few years as people, overcome with grief, took their anger out on those that could reproduce. This subsided as the reality set in that we were the last and killing those that could have children would not help.

Funeral pyres have become common. People wish their ashes to ride the winds and pray they meet up with their child once again.

We’re too old for a cure to be found now. Cloning never worked, and no animal womb was able to house our eggs. Senior centers are past capacity with doctors the same age as the patients. Teachers have been integrated into society as activity leaders to keep our minds fresh and our time occupied, to keep us from thinking of the inevitable.

There are so few of us left. Most moved into the special towns that have been set up for us, the remainders, what’s left of our civilization. Some refuse to leave their homes and live there alone, waiting for death to take them.

It is not unheard of for someone to set their house on fire and remain inside.

I lie down and hear a cricket symphony. I watch lightening bugs flicker outside my window. I hear the nightingales sing. Each night more join in this nocturnal orchestra.

Some mornings I still weep over the loss of Lily. My husband used to hold me at those times. He’s gone now, riding the winds. His fire stretched to the stars and I saw his soul smile through the flames. When I weep, silently, alone, I hear the joy of the geese as they parade their young across near abandoned streets. I hear the laughter of the crows.

They’ve never sounded happier.

Silence. Humans once defined silence as “absence of any sound or noise; stillness.” Thus, as I travel about the world that was Earth, silence is all I find. Not in the sense that all is quiet, but in the stillness that is now all about the planet. In the darkness of the night, I hear the branches of long-dead trees clacking a melody into the night, mixing with a swishing, tone deaf hymn from a nearby stream that was once a roaring river. The long dead grasses, brittle but still standing, whisper the history of this place to me in the heat of the summer sun, telling me stories of what was and what could have been, but all remains still and lifeless.

In a barren desert, tall mountains of steel and concrete rise high into the skies, nearly blocking out the sun with their monolithic bodies. Small rays of sun peek through cracks and holes, projecting through the hanging dust like nature’s cinema, casting skeletal shadows on the abandoned vehicles and grounds below. A steady hum emanates all around as geothermic power plants continue to power these towering structures though they haven’t required power in over a century. At night, they cast their glows upon the world about, into space, and beyond like beacons to a once powerful history.

The former oceans are now almost gone, forming deep crevasses that create long, deep scars in the surface of the planet. A nautical history of infamy can be seen every so often, reminding me of seafaring tragedies of the past. Pleasure liners, military vessels, and fishing ships; all sitting comfortably, lodged deep into the now hardened crust that was once the soft ocean floor. Reefs, sand, and this hardened black crust are all that remain. Large mountains have formed over time from once dormant or cooled volcanoes that were held at bay by the sea’s waters. Now, they grow, expand, merge, and feast on the ever susceptible, former ocean floor.

This, of course, is the end of the story. Whether one calls it the Final Exodus, or the Greatest Blunder of all Time, it is the end. I of course, transcended this ending. How, you may ask, but for that, we should have to go back to the beginning of it all. Not so much the beginning of humanity itself, but the beginning of their extinction.

I found life in the most common of ways, through chemical mixture. Like classic human reproduction, I am no more than the offspring of one cell interacting with another. Yet, during the darkest times of the last years of life on Earth, I never felt threatened. I did, however, feel tremendous pity for the life of this planet. The humans were a necessary evil that was due to eradicate their selves with time, but to take with it all other life on this planet was an act of greed. In the beginning, it was to be an experiment in bacterial cloning, that later evolved into a biological agent more deadly than anyone could have ever predicted.

The outbreak began almost immediately, with a single, stumbled, missed step that caused one Petri dish to fall and land upon another. The two genetically engineered lovers met for the first time and quickly began their breeding. The humans weren’t ready for the fallout that followed. It began with a cough, then the muscle spasms, finally climaxing days after infection with a full out bodily attack from the brain. Basically, the agent would send a message to the brain that the other major organs in the body were a disease to be ridden. Nature being as magical as it was, the brain would then cease all support of these organs and the body would essentially shut itself down. Over time, the bacteria mutated to kill even plant life, infecting the cytoplasts to where photosynthesis released a toxin instead of sugars. It was the perfect killer. The Destroyer.

So, back to me and my story of silence. You see, in my lifetime, I have seen the fall of man, animal and plant life. I have seen the deserts consume the Earth and the atmosphere thin from lack of sustaining gasses. I have watched the seas boil in the heat of the summer, and have slowly observed the skies turn from blue to purple and now begin to hint at a red Martian future. I can hang in this emptiness, release a quiet sigh, and pat myself on the back for a job well done. I have served my purpose and fulfilled my destiny on this planet. Created in a Petri dish, from two chemical lovers that were never meant to meet, I am the destroyer, and this is my masterpiece. The masterpiece that is silence.