This was really the end of the world. I stood there, on the shattered ruins of what had once been the tallest tower ever built, now no more than ten feet of broken glass and stone spread out for miles around me. Fires tinted the dust-filled air with the colors of blood and sunshine, and the sun was nowhere to be seen behind dark clouds. Everything just looked red, or gray.
      
      This was really the end of the world... and I was there to see it all.
      
      This was really the end of the world... and I was alone.
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      Prologue
      
      Michael was telling me about the video game he'd bought on the weekend. I nodded numbly, not really hearing a word he said as I dribbled the ball. I jumped up and threw it into the net, hoots and cheers trickled from my little group of friends.
      
      “So then you get this dog,” he said, “and it listens to voice commands, of course. But also body language. You can gesture or nod and it does what you want. It's really helpful too, I mean I was sneaking into this bandit camp with Renee and I wanted to keep quiet, right?”
      
      I nodded again, the ball fell into the basket. I was getting pretty good at this kind of shot. Eric ran up and told me to adjust my hand a bit differently. Considering he was the team captain, I listened. The next four shots all went in. Michael didn't even care I wasn't listening, and continued his explanation for Meno. Meno almost always wore headphones under his hair, so I'm sure he heard about as much of it as I did.
      
      Renee stood up and came over to latch onto my arm after another shot. I glanced down at her and she gave me a pleading look, “Come on, you practiced enough, Matti. Let's go to Wito's! Everyone's starving.”
      
      I laughed and finally agreed, tapping my key to the ball and letting it deflate itself before I threw it back into the shed. I hit the button on the back of the net and it sank into the ground while my wooden floor slid back into it's place under the deck. Then I joined Mike and Renee, who were more or less my siblings with all the time we'd spent together through all of our years, and Eric and Meno- the twins who had moved in to be our downstairs neighbors only a few months ago. We all got along just fine, and we all shared a few common interests.
      
      First would have to be videogames. They were the most popular form of entertainment of the twenty-third century, of course everyone played them, but we were all fans of at least the fantasy role playing games. Mike and Eric liked shooters too, but that was their prerogative. In either case, we all played one game online together a good part of the time.
      
      Second was sports. We each had our own, but we all played some real sport- which was pretty rare, all things considered. With the invention of the DNTGT, exercise had pretty much become worthless. The machine that most people- including us- wore as wristbands and anklets had many ways I don't feel the need to explain which helped us all stay in shape. Almost every human on the planet wore them and stayed to a healthy weight. They wouldn't give you sports muscles, but nobody was really concerned with that anyway.
      
      In accordance with that, we didn't take the bus. We all jogged together over to Wito's, the best pizza place with the strangest name. We ordered a pie to share and everyone started chattering on about the latest and greatest in anything we cared about. For some reason I couldn't pay attention that day, I just stared into my soda at the bubbles. Mike tried to catch my attention about six times and lost it five.
      
      Then again, the sixth time it wasn't necessarily just him.
      
      Gasps erupted by the windows and everyone on the third floor of the building ran to see what the commotion was. With the large single-pane window at the front of the store, it wasn't hard to figure it out. A large, glowing, blue line on the horizon caused a wave of panic throughout the room, and cries of “It's real! It wasn't a hoax!” from numerous people.
      
      I didn't understand that until, in the middle of the gasping and the panic, Eric dragged me away from the window over to the radio set into the wall. Japan, in response to the provocation from the United States, has launched a missile. If you're anywhere in the south and you haven't been fried, consider yourself lucky! If you're in the north, then you should probably find a bomb shelter. The new weapons are untested, but from the looks of things on the satellites it's pretty damn effective! The guy went on, but I wasn't listening. I was white as a ghost.
      
      Three seconds later our entire group shot out the door. We hadn't paid for our pizza, and nobody had asked us to. We tore down the street towards Mike's house in silence, hearing the panicked screams all around us.
      
      I was numb inside. Somehow that panic just wouldn't come. The realization that the war had come, that war that everyone said couldn't happen, because it would destroy the entire planet... It wouldn't filter into my head. I just wanted to stay with my friends.
      
      The house came into view, little pewter statues and ornaments on and around the house the first thing I always noticed. Mike's dad was a pewter smith, and he displayed his pieces around his house until they could be sold. We saw many more as we went in and ran to the basement. There I curled up on the pewter chair in the corner, Mike turned on the TV, and we all sat together in silence while the reporter, from her safe point somewhere in Europe, spoke about the bomb and the reason it was launched.
      
      Meno looked over at me apologetically. “You know Matt... I'm really sorry about that time I put my stash in your locker at school.”
      
      I sighed. “That was you? ... Whatever. It doesn't matter now. I forgive ya, man, they figured out it was planted anyway...”
      
      “They did?”
      
      “Yep. Just didn't know who.”
      
      We all locked our eyes on the pretty reporter as she went on. Renee told her big brother Mike she loved him, and she apologized for all of the times she'd said otherwise. Eric started talking to Renee, then, but my eyes were locked onto the television screen on the wall. They were showing a satellite feed of the Earth, and flicking between the eight continents.
      
      On that map there were a few things I wasn't very familiar with. Five massive blue circles that were slowly blossoming across the continents. I stared at the point on the United states that had, as the time lapse video they were now showing demonstrated, grown from a pinpoint to cover almost a quarter of the country in twenty minutes.
      
      There was no hiding from it. The whole world was going to end.
      
      ***
      
      I opened my eyes tiredly and saw nothing but gray. For a second I thought it was my blankets- they must have fallen over my head or something- but then I realized that the ground underneath me was solid, and too hard to be the bed I remembered so well. I set my hands against whatever it was that was so hard and pushed myself up to see the same mess from my dream.
      
      But... that meant it wasn't a dream, didn't it. I stared at the ash-strewn world for a few minutes in silence, trying to piece together this lonely new existence in my mind. The first thing that registered in my mind now that I was seemingly safe was to try to find another survivor, or help anyone I could find, trapped in the debris.
      
      Slowly I got to my feet, looking myself over to make sure there weren't any injuries I had missed the day before. Running, in the middle of the chaos all around the city, I hadn't known what to do. I might have tripped and scraped something. But, no, I realized as I finished my inspection. I'd managed to avoid anything but a few small bruises. According to this first-aid course I'd taken only a few weeks ago – mandatory during my eleventh grade gym class – that was a good thing. Bruises were fine with no special treatment, but if I'd cut myself I would have to try and prevent an infection.
      
      So my body was in great shape. That worry off of my mind, I found the best way through the rubble without getting glass in my feet, and soon found the clearest available route to get anywhere- the road. It snaked between the shattered remnants of old buildings, some were completely obliterated in the disaster, and others stood with shattered windows and hole-y walls. As I walked I tried to identify some of the buildings, and to figure out just where in Soleil I'd ended up.
      
      I also marveled at the damage the new technology had wrought on the city. Everyone was gone. Here and there I would spot someone, undeniably dead, in the rubble. They were charred beyond recognition, which I was thankful for; if they were less burned and less mutilated, I'd probably be more sick. As it was, I was pretty numb. This was a shock. The end of the world would be a shock for any sixteen year old. It would probably be a while before it occurred to me that the life I'd had planned out was gone. Just like everything else. Which was odd, considering I'd just thought of it... but that was just because it wasn't real to me yet.
      
      Still, I understood what had happened, in this dream world. We'd launched one. The government had thrown one of their new bombs, whatever it was that they'd discovered that was more powerful than a nuke. Then, Japan had inevitably launched one of theirs. By this point everyone had developed the same disaster weapon. It was supposed to create such a large blast that it could radiate half of a continent to death, and enough of an initial blast that it could wipe NewYork clean. Wherever it had landed was certainly not Soleil, considering we still had things standing. Although the radiation would probably kill me soon, I distantly mused.
      
      All that mattered right now, as I carefully picked my way along what I now saw to be the main street, was surviving. If that meant distracting myself like I was now, I could do it. I just needed to live, and to try to find someone else to keep alive. I could remember my initial thought the night before... Alone. I didn't want to be alone in this world that was shaping up before me. Yet... everyone was gone. Dead. All of them. I frowned and thought about why this was odd. Oh yes, because I was alive.
      
      How exactly had I survived then? The thought popped into my head even as I grasped another stone. How had I made it when nobody else had? Yesterday was such a normal day, before the big bang that lit up the horizon... for almost thirty minutes people had stared at the wave of blue fire that swept up towards us along the horizon, and then in an instant the world had changed. But why had I survived? I was with my friends, staring at the blue fire for only five minutes before we'd made to hide.
      
      We hid in Michael's basement. Everyone had been afraid, and somehow we all felt we were going to die. We'd confessed our worst secrets to each other, and Eric had confessed to Mike's sister that he was in love with her, too. I'd been sitting in the corner, in the pewter chair that had been the pinnacle of Mike's father's work sculpting the soft alloy. The guys were on the couch. Mike's sister was beside me, sitting in the lazy boy.
      
      Then there was blue fire, and I felt everything burn. I'd closed my eyes, and for a while just been afraid... but I could remember it ending. The bright light went away, and everything was on fire... I'd escaped. I'd found the end of the world, and stumbled and run a few blocks in this place before passing out from all of the smoke and the dust in the air- or that was my theory. Everything about the part around and after the explosion was a bit fuzzy.
      
      I was at the park now. There, I noticed something more disturbing than anything I'd seen yet. “Trees,” I murmured, struck for a moment even further into shock. I thought I might be hallucinating. Once I reached the nearest tree I stuck my arm out and touched it. It shocked my arm slightly, like static, but it was there. It was certainly a living tree, living on as if it hadn't been engulfed by hot blue flames.
      
      And at the base of that surprisingly unburned tree was a lot of surprisingly unburned grass. It made me stop to stare, once again. I looked more intently at the ground as I scanned the area, from the scorched sidewalk to the ashes that I knew were once a bench, and I realized something very very strange.
      
      All of the plants had remained untouched.
      
      So, plants were immune to the blue-fire-bomb? That was weird... but, I noted as I forced my feet into motion once more, not especially important. The only significance I could see to it, looking through my numb glass onto life, was that it meant there was still food. There were still gardens somewhere, so the plants should be alive there, too.
      
      As I passed through the trees along the blackened cement path that had been put there, once, for bikers, I thought about how surprised I was. I was thinking pretty clearly for someone in shock. Granted, the thoughts had a kind of floaty narration-in-my-head kind of quality, but I was still being practical. I knew what I was trying to do, and I'd figured out the thing with the plants. Actually, I was pretty proud of myself. I wore what I imagine must have been a giddy, stupid, smile.
      
      All through the day I wandered through the park, with only one stop to relieve myself. I started to feel hungry at one point or another; I'm not sure what time of day it was, because there was still a lingering cloud of dust and, well, clouds around the city that made it hard to tell the time of day. My stomach was grumbling, and I'd considered eating some kind of plant. I decided, however, that with how little I knew about wild plants I'd be more likely to poison myself than anything.
      
      Then, night came. The light from the sky changed to the glare of light pollution I was familiar with rather than lighting from behind the clouds, and I tamed fire from a still-burning building to make myself a camp for the night. After a while staring into the flames, I sat back against a tree and let myself drift off to sleep. I knew it was dangerous to do so, but I hadn't met any other survivors during the day, and I was simply too tired to go on.
      
      Before I'd gotten very deep into my slumber, I was jarred awake by a sudden sound. A loud, keening, screech of a bird of prey. Some distance away, in the farthest reaches of the light from my campfire, I could see a large bird. Its wings were skeletal, most of the feathers seeming to have burned away, and its screeches were faint and pained. With the kind of morbid curiosity that lingers in the hearts of all men, I moved slowly towards it to see the reason for its pained squawks.
      
      It paid me no heed as I drew nearer, for a reason that I soon enough understood. While the adult was clearly dying, the bird had been resourceful enough to find a way- a bucket actually, which led me for a few minutes to wonder at the intelligence of birds- to carry an egg. An egg that looked just as healthy as I was. I felt a pang of regret as I realized that, with its mother gone, the egg might not hatch, or would die alone with no way to get food.
      
      As the bird didn't seem to have any intention, or even really the ability, to harm me, I moved to the farthest point from it beside my fire and went back to sleep.
      
      *
      
      When I woke up, the bird was dead. The egg lay in its bucket- in a nest, I now realized. Perhaps that was where the nest had been built and the mother had simply carried it, but in any case, it didn't concern me. I turned and walked away.
      
      ...Okay, I started to walk away, but the egg just drew my attention and wouldn't leave me alone. I slowed to a stop, glancing more and more back over my shoulder by the minute. The egg... Little, lost, and alone; just like me.
      
      A while later I found myself walking through the forest again. This time, there was an egg in the front pouch of my hoodie, and I was mentally berating myself for being so sentimental. First, no matter how hard I tried, I knew I wasn't going to be able to feed the thing. I wasn't even sure what it was. Second, it would probably just peck at me and run off. Third... well, whatever, it was just a stupid idea all around.
      
      I just had that same obsessive thought running through the back of my mind and becoming that much more urgent as the smoke and the shock about what was happening began to clear: I didn't want to be alone. For now, I had the egg to be a traveling buddy, and to give me a goal. I would try to take care of it, and I could talk to it without feeling like I was crazy.
      
      “So what are you anyway?” I wondered aloud as I walked, my little egg friend nestled in the warmth of my pocket and one of my hands rubbing it gently. “You must be a big bird. Your mom was.” I chattered on like this idly as I went. It was a nice way to pass the time, and when I remembered I was wearing a watch I realized it was passing the hours rather quickly.
      
      By nightfall of the second day I'd reached the other side of the park, and with it a downtown street full of restaurants and convenience stores. Hoping beyond hope that I would find something to eat, I investigated the few of these that were more intact. My hopes were fulfilled when I discovered a convenience store cooler that, while slightly smashed, had remained intact and had insulated its contents against the first wave of fire. A few half-melted ice-cream sandwiches and three dollar-bags of slightly burnt chips later, I felt better about my food situation. I found a few glass bottles and filled one with water, as well as using a table cloth and a broom handle to make myself what I affectionately like to call a 'hobo bag'. I filled it with the food that seemed more or less okay, and whatever practical supplies I could find (a lighter, postcards for kindling, a swiss army knife from a nick-nack shop). All of this took me until nine PM.
      
      Again stealing from the now dying fires to save my lighter fuel, I set camp for the night, and fell asleep cradling my little egg friend and telling it a story. I felt somewhat foolish- like that guy in the movie with a ball and a bloody hand print he spoke to- but it didn't matter. It was like talking to a dog, I told myself. It was just a baby bird, it hadn't hatched yet. Those thoughts carried into dreams of the egg talking back. Only dreams.
      
      Those were the same kinds of dreams I was having two weeks later. In a fresh set of clothes and with a proper backpack and water bottle, all salvaged from a destroyed Floormart, I walked across the ruined city. I'd only found one survivor; a man who was trapped beneath a fallen ceiling and whose legs were both irreparably broken, as well as one arm, and it was obvious his injuries weren't going to be fixed with the world the way it was. He'd begged me to kill him, and with an effort of will, I gave him his mercy.
      
      The numbness had long since worn off, and I had spent a night or two crying to myself and my egg. My family was gone, and my friends were gone. I was just glad that I'd been a boyscout, a basketball player, and rather independent for my age. The wilderness training, fitness, and independence had been valuable skills. While my family was gone, and my friends were gone, my classes now meant nothing, I had nobody to talk to, and life had become all but meaningless, I was concerned with only two things:
      
      Surviving,
      and finding someone else to give me meaning.
      
      The egg was still fulfilling most of the second requirement, but at the same time I was growing concerned it wasn't going to hatch. It had been a long time, was I not good enough? Had it been fried during the blast, too? I didn't want to think about it, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that was a distinct possibility. In the interest of my sanity, I marched on and tried not to think about it.
      
      One morning began the end of the helpless march, and the start of the rest of my life.
      
      I was refilling my water bottle from some rainwater I'd gathered in a bowl I found. It was from the house where we'd spend the night, my egg and I, hiding from the same rain that would make us sick. Of  course I'd boiled the water to purify it, and I was just about finished filling my water bottle when I looked up to see something big running towards me and the bowl slipped out of my hand. The water bottle I managed to keep a hold on and hastily screw on the lid.
      
      As the bigger thing coming I realized it was another person emerging through the early morning mist. My heart leapt as I made out the standard human form, and when they waved to me I jumped up and waved back. Soon enough they were completely visible, and I drank in the sight of another human being – alive - like a man who'd spent my two and a half weeks in the desert with no water.  
      
      He was just a bit taller than me with short blond hair, and he wore a gray sweatshirt as though he wanted to blend into the dust and smoke that still plagued the air. Dirty but clearly new jeans covered his legs, and on his back he wore a pack like mine; he must have raided the stores as well. He approached me more cautiously now that he was closer, but his face seemed to light up.
      
      “Hey! You-you over there! Are you alone?” he called, his voice sounding thin through the hole in the wall of the house.
      
      “Yes!” My call wasn't anything amazing, but it amazed me. Yes. An answer to a question. It'd been two weeks since I'd had anyone ask me something to answer, I'd only been talking to myself. “Yes, I am. Are you?”
      
      “Nope.” He'd gotten close enough that we could talk now, instead of yelling. “Well, out here I am, but I have a group.” A group? More people? A smile slid over my face, and I reached out to him and accepted his offer for me to join him. Together, me, my egg, and the boy who I came to know as Leo, headed towards the people who would become our new family.  
      
      That was almost six months ago.