February 29, 2128, 20:37

Inter-PIC conversation recorded from Personal Identification Card #75-0021-8681 to # 52-4812-1304:

Carlton: We’re recording. Now, Colonel Joseph Berko, do you wish to be a part of my history?

Berko: Part of your what? What are you planning to do, Joseph?

C: I’m sending the truth into the void, so to speak.

B: You can’t be serious. Why the wasted effort?

C: It would only be wasted if I didn’t expect it to reach its mark.

B: Explain yourself.

C: I’m sending it to Novitellus using the coordinates used by the H.P.P. space shuttle. They have to know. He has to know.

B: You’re mad. I don’t have time for this.

C: You’re right, you don’t. No one does. But then again, we don’t have much of anything else, either. The best you can hope for now is remembrance, so do as I’ve told you.

B: So you think it's over too, huh? Let me guess, it’ll happen a week from today?

C: Yes, Sunday, March 7th, 2128, exactly seven years after this all began. That’s when it’ll happen. However, I plan to free my story from this living hell on Saturday, so if you want to be a part of the legacy of our people, then you’ll listen to me.

B: …Fine. What do you want to hear, Carlton?

C: The truth, nothing more. What do you think is really happening here? Where did it all go wrong?

B: Honestly, it doesn’t matter what I think. We’ve all seen enough to make up our own minds, the few of us still left.

C: You mean, those who managed to survive the drought, the earthquake, the meteors, the war, the blood, famine, pestilence, plagues, demon-

B: Quiet! We all lived it, okay. We’re still living it. I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve been through.

C: Yes, but when you hear it out loud, it sounds quite, well, Biblical, doesn’t it? I’ll take your silence as a yes. So, why do you think we were spared?

B: Spared? You’ve got to be kidding me. You call this spared? Those taken by the Raptus were spared. The rest of us we left at the mercy of this nightmare. No one will be spared. Unlike you, I don’t presume to know when it’ll be over, but for me, it can’t come soon enough.

C: Do you really think dying, at this point, will offer you any relief...Colonel?

B: …Colonel. Yes, I remember when that meant something to me. I was important. People listened to me.

C: Colonel, do you have anything you wish to say to the people of Novitellus, the last of our people, before we end this interview?

B: I wish I were sorry. I wish I could believe what I’ve done has somehow caused all of this, and I could be sorry for it. I wish I didn’t hate everything and everyone for tearing away everything from me and leaving me for dead. My family, my career, my home, it’s all gone. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll pull out of it. Maybe I can still get my life back. Mankind can do anything, right?

C: Goodbye, Colonel. [transmission ended]