I have a theory.

It’s a theory as to why this place is completely deserted, and to why the ship abandoned me here. It’s not a very reassuring one.

It goes like this:

One day, the people living here found something wrong with the planet. They thought, oh shit, we’re screwed. We’ve got to get out of here before we die.

And so they left. They took with them everything they could lift, but there wasn’t time to dismantle the base completely. When someone crashed a ship in the hills, they didn’t have time to salvage it. They just left. And they left standing orders for any ship that showed up to leave, immediately.

And then along I come, in a ship retrofitted for a total technopeasant (no offence, Calvin). It lands. I get off. It receives the new instructions and heads out like a bat out of hell, not stopping to consult me. Which leaves me on this doomed island.

You see, when I woke up this morning, the storm had gone. The Hotel was no longer shaking, the sky was blue again, there were no longer tonnes of water falling out of the sky every second. I could venture outside without being killed instantly.

(Although I will admit to a certain amount of worry as to whether another megastorm would come along before I could get under cover. I think I’m safe; there can’t be enough energy to sustain many of those… although I will admit that I do not understand one iota of what’s going on.)

This island is trashed.

Those orchards that fed me the first few days? Gone. They’re just—missing.

The sandy beaches? Gone.

The forest on the hills? The good news is that it’s not all gone. It may have been flattened, completely, but there are only a few patches where the plant cover has been ripped away completely, leaving bare mud and rock.

Those manicured, exquisite lawns covering the lowlands? Churned up into mud.

Everything is strewn by odd-looking seaweed, like marine parsley. I think it grows in huge masses somewhere, but it’s so chopped up that the largest piece I found was only twenty centimetres or so across. There’s debris everywhere, packed into every corner, ground into the soil. On the downwind side of the island, the mud is packed solid with fragments of twig and leaf. The seas themselves have changed colour; instead of the old tropical blue, they’ve gone a threatening grey.

Under the surface grime, though, the buildings are all perfect. Even the Invisible Fountain is still running.

The Generator is crackling away happily, although it might be a little more subdued. It’s hard to tell.

The Pit is half-full of water, which is violently agitated. Something must be happening at the bottom.

The air smells sharp and clear, with a slightly acidic overtone. Perhaps that’s what the sea smells like here?

I wondered briefly about climbing up to look at the lake. One glance at the remains of the forest dissuaded me. It was hard enough to get through when it was still standing, and now it’s been pounded flat and filled with mud. There’s no way I could get up there. Besides, I’m not too happy about leaving the safety of the buildings, just in case another storm comes along.

You see, it all comes back to my theory. This island has never had a storm like this before. It would have left marks, traces that I would have spotted. This storm is new, and unexpected. Something has gone wrong somewhere. And, terrifying as it may have been, this isn’t the catastrophe that the builders ran away from. The buildings here easily stood up to the storm; there was no need to flee it. The inhabitants could have just taken shelter.

Which means there’s something else coming along that the buildings won’t protect me from.

I really, really hope that whereever my ship went, there are people who will be interested enough to come and find out where the vacant spacecraft came from…

I spent the rest of the day wandering around the wreckage of the island, learning very little more, and eventually retired back to the Hotel. I suppose while it still works I may as well use it—it’s not as if I have any other options.

Interestingly, as the suns set, I spotted a small school of some kind of sea creatures arcing through the water in the bay. I couldn’t get a good look at them, but they’re vaguely dolphin-shaped, although appear to be longer and thinner.

I wonder if they’ll be safe when the apocalypse comes?

[transmit]

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