Contrary to what you might be likely to suspect, I like people. And I like being with people. But I like people like I like Skittles. One at a time. Groups, crowds, riots, gaggles, I would rather leave off. But people, one at a time, I like.

But sometimes I go days without seeing people. Especially when I walk Murphy really late at night. So it’s perhaps no surprise that last night, while I was waiting to sail off to the land of Nod, this suddenly occurred to me: What if I wake up tomorrow and everything is exactly the same, all the artifacts of living remained just so, but there were no longer any people?

I wondered, first, how long it might take me to notice. No cars. No construction going on in my building. No phone calls. Radio stations would be gone because they are operated by people.

When I had realized what had happened, that there weren’t any people anywhere, I wonder if I would panic. I wonder if the phone would go dead immediately. If the phone wasn’t dead, perhaps I’d try calling random people all over the country. All over the world.

How long would electricity last? And not being able to discover any people what would I do in that first critical week? It occurred to me that cows and chickens and horses in farms would die without any caregivers. I thought I would start a farm to save the chickens and cows. And also because eggs are really useful. Perhaps I could raise chickens. But I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to kill a cow and I don’t think I could manage it even if I wanted to and knew how. So no more beef. How would I produce electricity? If the world were suddenly all mine, I could raid all the hardware stores and get all the generators I could get. There must be some generators that run on fuel.

I’d ransack a bunch of apartments and steal all their money and have a giant bonfire of bills. Money would be meaningless and I’d do a little happy dance.

No doubt there is enough fuel in all the gas stations across North America to help me fuel my generators. And of course I could help myself to any car that I wanted.

Zoo animals. Zoo animals would die. It occurs to me briefly that it would be awfully charitable to go to all the zoos and release the animals into the wild – well, into the immediate city, and then, perhaps into the wild. But I change my mind. Yes, it’s hard to imagine dying lions and hyenas and elephants and bears and tigers and giraffes, but letting them run free might have horrible consequences. Who knows what that might do to the environment?

I’d walk naked down the middle of the street. I’d walk naked in the middle of a mall. Just because.

Sure everything might be locked down. But it’s not like there would be any cops. And when electricity stopped, a lot of the electrically locked things would become unlocked.

I imagine that I’d like to go to Europe. Funny, I’ve never really wanted to go to Europe. But if Europe were suddenly vacant, that’s where I’d like to go. But I don’t think I’d be able to make it. Sure, there’d still be planes and fuel too but I wouldn’t know how to fly. And as with killing cows, even if I could figure out how to drive a plane, I don’t think I’d risk it. Which would be a crying shame. I wanted to move into the Vatican.

I consider the details of this Great Disappearance. I suppose all the mechanical things that were in motion when everybody disappeared would remain in motion. Cars would crash. Planes too. But I wouldn’t know. Unless one fell directly on me. In which case all of this hypothesizing wouldn’t matter. I might wonder, why is there a plane falling on me but that’s all the luxury this Last Man on Earth would get to enjoy before I too was dispatched just seconds after the others. Boats would continue to sail without their captains left to drift uselessly on the seas.

If I were quick enough, I could steal – stealing wouldn’t be stealing anymore since everything would belong to me – a whack of generators and find a giant freezer and ransack grocery stores and abattoirs for meat. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about raising cattle which I’m quite sure I wouldn’t want to do.

How long would the internet last? Remote servers would continue to work at least until electricity gave out. Google: Raising Chickens. Google: Giant Freezers. Google: So you want to be a pilot. Google: Manufacturing Insulin.

Yes. That’s a bad one. Insulin expires. Especially if it isn’t refrigerated. So one of the first things I’d have to do is go find a 10 years supply of insulin and set up my generators and refrigerate it. But even refrigerated, insulin expires. The packages say something like 2 or 3 years. I expect heaping doses of it might last me a few years more. I’d have perhaps 5 years to figure out how to manufacture insulin. But I’m not sure that would be very easy. I’d have to find out where it’s manufactured. And go there. And see if I couldn’t figure it out. If the world was mine and it was a glorious state of nature, it would suck to die of a lack of insulin.

I wonder if I would grieve. Grieving for the whole world would be unimaginable. But it’s not like people died. They just stopped being around. Where did they go? The Rapture? Aliens? A new whim of God? Would it plague the rest of my life? Why didn’t I go too? Perhaps it might be easier to rationalize that people hadn’t existed in the first place. That I had always been alone.

I’d have to set up a few homes with working generators. I could take any car and go anywhere, well, anywhere in North America. Maine? Vancouver? New York City? I could drive really, really fast because there wouldn’t be any laws and because there wouldn’t be any traffic. But, yes, it would suck to die of a car crash.

Would I get unimaginably lonely? There would still be books. There would still be music. I could find a bunch of mannequins and dress them up. I should like to keep my dog. How long would I look for survivors? How long before I have to assume I’m all alone? Maybe loneliness is relative. If I were all alone, truly all alone, would the word, would the feeling of loneliness stop having any meaning?

What would life be like without ambition, without money, without people? There would be no pride, no vanity, no fame, no fortune. But people instinctively struggle to survive. Instantly alone, I would still struggle to survive, wouldn’t I?

I would continue to write, I think. Even without an audience. Would I write out of habit? Would I write for just myself? Would I write just to keep myself company? Would I still want to write with the idea that I was recording some event even if that writing would never be read by anyone other than myself?

Given that I could manage to manufacture insulin, what untimely death would finally snatch me? Would my death, would my life count for anything? Do you die if there is nobody there to notice?

I at last drifted off to the land of Nod. When I woke up this morning — much earlier than expected — I knew immediately that everyone had lasted the night. The men outside and in the hallways were hammering, chipping, painting, sanding, drilling, and breaking glass. Well, maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m suddenly overcome with the desire to find out how to manufacture insulin.

SS