Whither The Only One?

Years later, it was 2083 & a lot had changed.  The only human being left on the planet walked up & down the street, in-between the smoldering volcanoes, which was her morning constitutional.  To the abandoned surveillance cameras she would wave.  There were so many fatty insect worms to eat, she could just reach out & grab them, but she had to keep her eyes closed - they had begun to evolve faces, specifically her face, as a coloring to keep themselves alive.  Stupid radiation!  It would have taken centuries for that to happen before!

The aliens came after she had managed to get an old VCR to work, & was trying to remember a time when people with "white" skin had existed in such numbers.  She tried to explain to the aliens that this had once been a vibrant planet, with billions of people more or less like her (with only two eyes, though), that this had been a giant city, the biggest & best city on the planet - at least to her.  She had really never made it out of Indianapolis.  The aliens had come to meet the people who had been broadcasting "Hogan's Heroes" at them for so many years.

An alien doctor - it could've been a doctor - it might also have been a little frisky - took some blood & let her know what they'd discovered.  One, she might live forever, which made her both happy & sad.  Happy because she had so many videotapes to watch.  Sad because she missed her computer.  It also told her that she could reproduce with any one of them, but that their children would be approximately 76% alien & the smaller percentage human.  This made her sad because she felt her children would therefore be at a disadvantage at the good alien schools.

She asked if she could think about it, & also if she could have a ride around on their flying rectangle spaceship.  They showed her the ruins of her planet.  Everywhere human constructs like nuclear plants & oil refineries had, without anyone to mind them, exploded & poisoned the world  Strange creatures were born & died quickly in the volatile oceans, while plate tectonics changed the landscape which she might have remembered from the time or two she actually looked at a globe.  When asked by the aliens if she were too affected by the trip, she said no, she just wanted to see if the mall in Plainfield was still there & maybe open.

The aliens were nice but she was glad to see them go.  They said they might return in three hundred years when they fly back this way, but she didn't think they were the sort of aliens she needed to be hanging out with.  Mate with them!  That's absurd!  You might be the only one here, she thought to herself, but you have to have some kind of standards!  Anyway, she found the complete series of Matlock on VHS & that would keep her busy till volcano season was over.