MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

My name is William Harrison Ferris III. My friends called me Billy. And as far as I know I’m the last human being left alive.

I ran into the second to the last survivor just last week. Her name was Sarah. She tasted just like chicken.

Oh sure, there may be an odd billionaire left in a bunker in New Zealand. But I wouldn’t bet on it. The rest of the rich kids, Trump, Putin, Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Musk himself, burned up in a blaze of of billionaires on the launchpad of the Elon Express. Serves ‘em right. We fucked up Earth and they were gonna fuck up Mars.

So how did I end up here all alone on the beach in Barstow? Good question. Jeanie and Junior, my parents, had such high hopes for me. I was no accident. I was planned. I wasn’t the result of a slam bam thank you ma’am passion fuck at a drunken frat party. I was cooly conceived through the modern medical miracle of IVF at the Palos Verdes Medical Center.

And upon my birthday, February 4th, 2025, Junior told anybody who would listen that I was the best baby money could buy. Selfish bastard.

What in God’s name had they been thinking? That things would get better? Based on what? Social Fuckin’ Media!?

We were all fucked from the get-go.

Think about it. It’s 2025. Not one of the 9 billion of us stood a chance. Every last thing that was going to bring our species to an untimely end had already started. Trump’s in the White House for the second time, and despite his claims to the contrary, climate change was already in full bloom. We’re drowning in garbage. The Doomsday Clock had just been reset to 89 seconds to midnight and this little minor thing called Bird Flu was just on the horizon and oh yeah, Trump’s in the White House.

What could possibly go wrong?  

All things considered; I’m surprised we lasted as long as we did. Bird Flu was always going to be a bitch anyway, but by the time Trump admitted it was real, there was almost a billion dead right there.

Then there were the wars. Israeli/ Iran, US/Denmark, and A.I./U.N., all nuclear, of course. And who knew you could melt the entire island of Greenland with a couple of nukes? Certainly not Der Donald. Surf’s up in Santa Fe! Oops! Five billion more dead.

Then there was the Siberian Methane Fiasco, The Great African Drought and Famine of ’36, The Australian Big Burn of ‘40, and, last but not least, the coup du grace, Bird Flu Two. That was three billion,easy.

200,000 years of Homo Sapiens reduced to one burned, balding, bitter, bastard who will never see 50, writing a message, by hand, no less, that, if it’s ever read at all, it will probably be by a cockroach with a PhD in Human Studies.

Dear Mom and Dad. . . Thanks for nothing.

Billy