Dream CII

My wife received a postcard in the mail from her doctor, giving the results of some recent tests. I thought, as I took the card from the mailbox, that this didn't seem like a very private way of communicating health issues, but then I took a closer look at the card. It was a mass of intersecting grids containing codes I couldn't understand.

My wife couldn't understand it either, so we took it to the doctor's office and one of his assistants offered to explain it to us. There was one notation in red text that concerned us, but the assistant explained that while it was normally bad, it did not intersect with a corresponding red text, so it meant it was only a possibility.

Both my wife and I were pleased with the result, and were ready to leave when the assistant stopped us. "What about this?" he said, pointing to a small area on the card. When we squinted to try and make out what he meant, he told us to wait a moment. Then he projected the card onto a giant wall screen.

He pointed to a small green dot in a white j-shaped tunnel. We could see that it looked like a man who had fallen down. We asked the assistant what the symbol meant.

"It means the certainty of total nuclear war," he said grimly. "That is when we will all die."

I was transported, then, to a time several months in the future. My wife gasped her last breath, and I opened a door to see people dying in similar ways. Alongside those people were aliens, around twelve feet tall, dressed in robes, with large bulbous heads. They were also dying, and lying down next to the humans as they expired.

I knew then what had happened. The aliens had attacked us, and both sides had used nuclear weapons. Somewhere during the war, both sides had realized that the end for everyone was at hand, and a sad peace was formed as both sides tried to undo the damage. In the end, though, both sides died.

Except for me. I closed the door, gave my wife a final kiss, and prepared to live as the last person on earth.