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As I set down these notes on paper, I'm obsessed by the thought that I
may be the last
living man on earth. I have been hiding in this empty house near
Grovers
Mill -- a
small island of daylight cut off by the black smoke from the rest of the
world. All
that happened before the arrival of these monstrous creatures in the world
now seems
part of another life. . . a life that has no continuity with the present,
furtive
existence of the lonely derelict who pencils these words on the back of
some
astornomical notes bearing the signature of  .
I look down at my
blackened hands, my torn shoes, my tattered clothes, and I try to connect
them with a
professor who lives at Princeton, and who on the night of
October
30, glimpsed through
his telescope an orange splash of light on a distant planet. My wife, my
colleagues,
my students, my books, my observatory, my. . . my world. . . where are
they? Did they
ever exist? Am I ?
What day is it? Do days exist without calendars?
Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks? .
. .In writing
down my daily life I tell myself I shall preserve human history between
the dark
covers of this little book that was meant to record the movements of the
stars. . .
But to write I must live, and to live, I must eat . . . I find moldy bread
in the
kitchen, and an orange not too spoiled to swallow. I keep watch at the
window. From
time to time I catch sight of a Martian above the black smoke. The smoke
still holds
the house in its black coil. . . but at length there is a hissing sound
and suddenly I
see a Martian mounted on his machine, spraying the air with a jet of steam,
as if to
dissipate the smoke. I watch in a corner as his huge metal legs nearly
brush against
the house. Exhausted by terror, I fall asleep. . .it's morning. . . |
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