The Last City on Earth
By Patrick Gillespie

               The warm air that gently blew over the city’s glass-like dome was crisp and clear, something it had not been in many years.  Its daunting gusts usually brought with it clouds of menacing orange dust or dense blinding fog, but tonight it carried with it nothing, giving the world below a full and un-obscured view of the beauty above.  Revealing to it an ocean of glittering white stars, stars that hung calmly and peacefully in the night sky, watching silently over the sleeping city.

Beneath the dome that covered the city rested what appeared to be, in the shadows of the moon light, an abandoned and forgotten 21st century city, complete with motorcycles parked along the curbs, traffic lights at the intersections, and fast food restaurants spread sporadically throughout the districts; but something was different about this city.  Its newly paved streets and dark alleyways lay vacant and void of any human activity.  The towering business and residential buildings that littered the city's downtown area sat dormant, with not a single light coming from any of the windows.  In fact, there was not a single light on anywhere in the city.  Even the smallest signs of human life, a candy wrapper or grocery bag left carelessly on the ground, could not be found anywhere.

But the city was not abandoned or even close to being forgotten.  It was a newer, more "perfect," city, one of a few that had been constructed by the NewWave Technology Corporation.  Decades ago the company had invested in three such cities.  They had had the vision to foresee the decaying state of the planet and had quietly had the protective structures built.  Though their construction was for the benefit of man, it was not long after their existence was made public that controversy was sparked. 

After years of toxic abuse to the environment, temperatures were steadily starting to rise around the globe.  The world's governments feared that soon the planet would become unlivable and collectively organized in an effort to try and find a solution, but their petty self-interest and squabbling led to no final resolution being reached. 

It would only be a few months after these global meetings that tensions would start to escalate.  Why hadn’t the governments of the world constructed such domes?  Who would be let into the NewWave domes?  The questions haunted a fearful public.

The wheels of the green house effect had now been put into fast motion and there was no quick solution to stopping the planet's temperatures from soaring.  Soon crops around the world began to whither and die.  Rivers and oceans became un-fishable as the creatures that inhabited them fell victim to the temperature increase.  Famines ensued and many governments tried to build their own "safety domes," but their efforts were fruitless, they had simply waited too long.  The planet was baking in an unlivable heat and there was neither the time nor the money to spend on such structures.

Riots soon erupted over who would be chosen to live in the domes that the NewWave Corporation had constructed so many years ago.  The company claimed that after it allowed in its employees and their families, it would hold a lottery that would decide who got to fill the remaining spaces available.  But this simply was not good enough for some people.  Why should the company employees get to live and they die?  How could they trust the company to be honest in holding its own lottery?  Two of the domes, one that resided in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and one that resided outside of Dallas, Texas, were destroyed in selfish acts of terrorism.  Only the third dome, the one whose location had been kept a secret, had survived.

It now stood quiet and alone, somewhere in the vast and vacant desert of Western Australia.  In a rush of chaos and paranoia, only NewWave's top executives, scientists, and researchers had made it to the dome.  It was simply too risky to let anyone else in on its location, and once inside the dome, they would have no way of contacting the outside world.  They knew the media would go ballistic, but they, at least most of them, simply did not care.  In less than a year the rest of civilization would be dead, and only the officials that lay safely inside of the dome, would live to see the future.

But tonight, as the stars twinkled in the night sky, little of this mattered to a young man that silently stood staring out his window, gazing at the heavens above.  His face was sad, and sagged with the weariness of a lonely heart.  The red tie he had put on a few days ago hung loosely from his neck.  It had been days since he last slept, and weeks since he had had a full night's sleep.  His name was Milton Hathaway, and he had been the engineering genius behind NewWave's safety domes.

Suddenly the sound of his computer alarm going off caught his ears.  His body felt as if it was about to explode with excitement.  Yes!  It's finally ready! He gleefully thought to himself.  He quickly turned and rushed over to his desk, where he hastily typed in the needed completion information.  After 54 hours, the computer was finally done writing all of the needed memory and behavioral files to the android's "brain."

"It's finally going to happen!  I'll finally going to have my chance!" the words burst from his lips.  It had been so long since he had been around someone he loved that the loneliness of the city had started to itch at his sanity.  Sure there were the other captives, but he had never really gotten along well with them.  In fact, no one had really gotten along with each other since they had taken shelter in the dome so many years ago. 

Stress and fear had taken its toll on everyone.  There was a certain uneasiness with living in the city the executive board had at first proudly exclaimed to be “the last city on Earth.”  Even after the first few months it was hard to find someone whose heart had not grown cold and hardened with fear.  It was because of these very reasons that George Finin, the company CEO, had early on ordered everyone into their own specific building.  No one was to room together or be even remotely close after night hour.  This was to keep the number of fights down and to make it harder for one to take “in the moment frustration” out on the others.  George had also made it a rule that no one was to have lights on after dark.  This was so no one, if anyone else still existed, could easily find the dome at night.

George had an intense fear that renegades would find the dome and destroy it.  He had told many members of the group, including Milton, about the dreams he had of the mutate humans, the de-evolved savages, coming in the night, smashing the dome’s protective layer and laying waste to all that lay protected inside.

Milton had nodded and acted concerned like most others in the group, but on the inside he knew George was loosing it.  Everyone was loosing it.  There was literally nothing to do in the city except work on your newly assigned projects and let your mind play tricks on you.  What were the others thinking?  Does George really have the sanity to lead the group into the future?  Did the world really end?  Were there still others out there?  It was only a matter of time before someone cracked and took their madness out on the others.

But it was because of George's fears that Milton had been assigned the android project, a project he had been working on for the past two years.  It was George’s idea that these robot creatures would live to serve and protect the society.  If such a horrific attack did occur, the creatures would act swiftly and without remorse to alleviate the problem.  In Milton’s mind the project took on a different angle.  With the aid of such a creation he knew could be saved from his madness.  The past may have been dead and gone, but there was still a flicker of hope in the present world, a flicker that both haunted and gave hope to Milton, one that he often thought about as he stared out his window.

Before he had been scurried aboard the company jet to fly to the last remaining dome, he had phoned his wife and daughter and informed them of its location, a location he had kept secret for years, a location that was so precious that it had even been kept a secret from those who constructed his towering structures.  Its workers had been flown in and out blind folded and unconscious, so that they could not disclose its location to others when the dome was finally needed. 

On his cell phone, in the few brief moments that Milton had been able to spare, he had told them of its location and of how to get there.   He had instructed that they immediately leave the house and buy plane tickets to Western Australia.  There was no time to lose.  Each second was a grain of sand falling through the hourglass.  If they waited too long, their time alive would be up.  It was the last time he had talked to his wife and daughter.

Everyday since then he had awoken praying he would see them at his side or at the entrance to the dome, his daughter gently smiling, clutching her favorite doll, Cindy.  His wife, her face warm but strong, her eyes sad but confident, her arms ready and willing to wrap around her other half.  But they were never there.  They know the location of the dome, where can they be?  Are they still alive?  Did something happen to them?  The thoughts haunted him, and that is where the android project came in.