After the Truth (Book Two)

Seven

All things must run their course. Everything must end.

All the death had to end eventually.

After forty years, humanity has finally learnt to live with the burden of the Word. The greatest pandemic in human history is over.

What we have come through has stopped being called a disease, or an infection, or even a plague. Recent history is now referred to as, The first Human Mass Extinction.

Geologists and Paleontologists say there have been five mass extinctions in Earth's history. During the worst of these extinctions ninety five percent of all species on the planet became extinct.

Perhaps we have been lucky. Only half the human population has been lost. Our reluctance to the truth cost three and a half billion souls.

Everything faces the end eventually. Even me.

I was diagnosed four years ago. From the beginning, I was told treatment could only delay the inevitable. For my final weeks, I have been allowed to stay at home, by the lake. A nursing team attends when I need.

The pain is only just manageable now.

Writing this is taking all my strength.

Only a few words before I must rest again.

When not at my desk I lied down and take in the view. The medical team have set up by bed in the study, so I spend many hours staring out over the lakeshore. It is just as beautiful as when I first saw it. I gorge myself on the changing beauty as the Sun travels the sky each day.

I can only look back now. I recall my first moments with the view and remember that I thought, even though humanity might not survive its mass extinction, the Sun would still rise and set, the birds would still sing and the waters of the lake would always gently lap at the shore.

A lot has been written about me, and no doubt more will in the future.

It is hard not to let my ego get the better of me when I see all the outpouring of sentiment and sympathy once the world knew of my condition.

I did the right thing that night with the head of state. I have saved lives.

Did I save humanity? I refuse to go there and think on such grand scales. I am a doctor. My job has always been to try and save lives. Whether I saved one, a hundred, a thousand, a million, or a billion, I was only ever doing my job. Circumstances dictated the numbers I saved. That is all.

And what of all those lives I didn't save? Should I have spoken out louder? Should I have realized sooner the importance of a sanctuary for those who knew the Word?

How many more deaths could I have prevented? How many more loved ones would be living and breathing today?

Questions that have grown in my mind these last few months.

Soon I will no longer need to ask them.

Will this be the last time millions of people are sacrificed for others' mistakes and hubris? I hope so. At least the changes I have seen take place these last few years appear to be for the good.

It has been good to see this sanctuary has expanded and is far from being an isolated experiment. After the Word was broadcast it had a domino effect on neighboring nations. Such was the influx of people who knew the Word, the economy of this country was able to begin to recover quicker than the surrounding lands, all of whom were crippled by devastated populations. It did not take long before these countries realized the good that could come from everyone knowing the Word.

A block of countries has grown and pulled in more people and so, as has happened throughout our mass extinction, another record was established, this time for the greatest mass movement of people in human history.