Mr Drake's Proposal

When the sky tore open and the pre-entry vapour clouds billowed out all pink and orange, it was like a psychedelic sunset. Olafur Olafursson assumed it was the end of times. How he prayed for the end of times. It had been thirteen long arduous years since his last conversation with a living human. If his faith had not forbidden the practice, he would have taken his own life long ago. Even when the alien craft descended into the frigid valley before him, Olafur believed it to be the work of his God. The hand of the mighty one had come to offer him salvation.

Designed for sub-light speeds and atmospheric entries, the craft was thin and muscular with strangely contoured black surfaces that appear more organic than mechanical. Its elliptical cigar shape might have appeared cliché had it not suddenly shot out stabilising wings and rotated to its vertical position. When the tip met the black sandy Icelandic soils, further stabilisers emerged from the body of the ship to anchor it in place.

After a moment of perfect stillness and silence, it was as if it had always been here, buried in this landscape. It was pure grace and utter symmetry standing impossibly in front of a raggedy man in torn clothes and wavy grey hair.

Olafur fell to his knees and spoke mantras of his own creation, for he had long forgotten the prayers of any church. When he took a breath and looked up, he saw the most confounding sight. The being sat, apparently naked, in front of him. Two legs neatly crossed. Two arms held against its torso with the hands touching palms. Long sinewy fingers, intertwined. A bald elongated head bowed in reverence. To Olafur, the being was beauty personified. He knew now that he was not talking to God. It may not even be of His creation.

Olafur began to speak with a trembling voice.

‘I’m sorry.’ he said with great sorrow. ‘I’m so sorry for what we have done.’

‘Greetings’, it said as it raised its head. Olafur studied the genderless slate grey face and dark marble eyes.

‘I didn’t catch your name, sir?’ it said politely. Olafur was not prepared for such a civil welcome. And in English.

‘I am Olafur... Olafursson. I am a man. Human.’

‘Nice to meet you, Olafur. Would you like to know my name?’ it said hauntingly.

Olafur froze as he wondered what it would call itself.

‘I am not a man. But, for your comfort, you may call me Mr Drake.’

‘Mr Drake? From where, exactly?’ Olafur asked curiously.

‘For your comfort, I would describe my home as near Eta Piscium in your in Pisces constellation. It is some distance, I can tell you. Quite a long ride, as you might say.’

‘How… are you speaking to me? Like this?’ asked Olafur.

‘I had a lot of spare time on the voyage, and our study of your communications methods was comprehensive.’ said Mr Drake.

‘We’ve come to learn so much of your Planet Earth. It is I who is sorry we arrived so late. Once we began to detect your apparently inevitable collapse, we raced here... Relatively speaking, given the vast cosmic distances and the limitation of sub lightspeed travels. But here I am.' he said. ‘And just in time. As far as I can tell Olafur, you are the last human alive.’

Olafur cried. It was the sorrow he felt for the dystopian state of the world combined with the relief of being rescued in the most improbable of ways.

‘Take me with you. Please.’ pleaded the last human in the cosmos.

Mr Drake got to his feet with a minimum of effort and went to comfort Olafur.

‘I'm afraid you’ve rather misread the circumstances of our meeting, my friend.’ said Mr Drake.

‘Are you not my salvation?’ Olafur pined.

‘No, sir. I come to you, in this, humanity’s final moments…’

‘Yes?’

‘To offer you…’

‘Yes?’

‘A second chance.’ said Mr Drake plainly.

-

The red sun was setting as the pair sat in the shadow of the ship. Mr Drake offered his host a nourishing drink from a bowl he’d retrieved from the pendulum shaped craft. While Olafur sipped, Mr Drake’s spoke of how his civilisation detected our first sojourns beyond our magnetosphere with the Apollo missions. This prompted his astronomers to train their highly advanced instruments toward us and begin a full analysis of our proficiency for life.

Mr Drake’s people were surprised by our lack of foresight when, only decades later, signs of our collapse were beginning to reveal themselves. Shortly after the new millennium, they foresaw the tipping point for survival had been reached. The Eta Pisceans, as he referred to them, had done this before. Other planets had been visited and their primary genus saved from extinction.

‘You see, Olafur. I have with me, in this vessel, the means by which I can bring human life back to these forgotten shores.’ said Mr Drake as he leaned forward.

‘Through you, I can create and simulate the very seeds of human propagation.’

‘Just me? One man’s DNA?’ puzzled Olafur.

‘Yes. It’s really quite straightforward to engineer a sufficient number of mutations to expand the gene pool. Humanity would be diverse and grow ever more iterations in a natural albeit curated evolutionary process.’

‘Not me. It can’t be me.’ Olafur confessed.

‘Why not?’ Mr Drake asked.

‘I'm not worthy. None of us were! We poisoned the air and the water. We created power systems designed to thrive on destruction and chaos, then went to war, time and time again. Humanity never learned from our mistakes and we got worse with every generation. We are not worthy.’

Olafur started weeping again. Mr Drake watched as Olafur reached inside the collar of his faded green linen shirt and pulled a leather neckband out. In his fingers was a pendant. He held it out for Mr Drake to see.

‘See this?’ he said.

Mr Drake loomed a little closer to observe a small scuffed rusty gold locket. The celestial being understood its shape to represent the human heart. A sentimental symbol for human love.

‘This… this gift reminds me every day of the things I’ve lost. The person I betrayed. The punishment that I must endure. I am definitely not worthy, Mr Drake.’

‘But you are. You can be better. I can give you that honour.’

‘I’m an old man. With too many faults and far too many regrets. I’d be a poor candidate.’

‘For your comfort, let me just say your age is not an issue, Olafur. Nor is your obvious assortment of genetic defects.’

‘Hey! Watch it, buddy!’ joked Olafur as he waved the now empty drinking bowl at his antagonist.

‘I mean no offence, sir. It’s simply a clinical determination. You have an affliction you have likely determined to be osteoarthritis, correct?’ asked Mr Drake.

Before Olafur could straighten his left hip, where much pain resided, Mr Drake stood up.

‘Tell me, Olafur. How does it feel right now?’

Olafur put his bowl down beside him and shuffled his weight to one side preparing to stand. To his wonderment, he was able to stand quickly without a single pinch of his chronic pain.

‘What did you do?’ he exclaimed.

‘Your body healed itself through the elixir you just consumed.’

Olafur lifted his leg, then walked around a little before trying a little jig.

‘Just the beginning, my friend. As we speak, your DNA is rejuvenating itself. Isn’t that remarkable?’

Mr Drake was enjoying himself. As enlightened as he may have been, there was a great deal of pride in his motivation. A satisfaction he derived from the sheer godlike power of creation. He detected a very different reaction from Olafur.

‘My dear friend. Are you feeling okay?’ Mr Drake enquired.

Olafur was not okay. He was madder than he’d ever been.

‘How dare you! Turn it back!” he said, holding his hip and shaking his fist.

‘Do you not comprehend the enormous gift I am proposing to you? Won’t you think of the millions of lives, eventually billions of lives, you can forge as a god on Earth.’ pleaded Mr Drake.

‘You can’t have me. It’s not right. I do not consent!’

Mr Drake moved quickly toward Olafur. He was so swift, Olafur leapt backwards and fell over a rock. He tumbled over and struck his head on some sharp smaller rocks beside the outcrop.

‘Damn it!’ he said, mopping his brow and seeing his red blood over his pale fingers.

‘Oh, dear. I am so sorry for that. Please accept my medical assistance, sir’ begged Mr Drake.

Olafur recoiled. It was then, with blood flowing into his eye and down his cheek, he realised he might have some kind of leverage in this confrontation.

‘Get back. Or… or I’ll kill myself.’

It was a torturous thought for Olafur after decades of loneliness that might have been cured by jumping into one of Iceland’s volcanoes or diving into a raging sea. He had imagined the most creative and outlandish methods of his own demise. He could not remember the tenets of his faith, but he knew suicide was not permitted. Olafur also knew that denying himself that release was his own penance. Now, faced with potential immortality, the only compulsion he had was to taste death.

Olafur stumbled to his feet and reached into his tattered leather satchel.

‘What are you doing, Olafur?’ Mr Drake asked politely.

‘You’re not a god, Mr Drake. I know who you are!’ he spat.

Olafur pulled a vintage handgun from within the satchel and brandished it at Mr Drake.

‘You know what this is, huh? Did your research tell you that?’ Olafur blurted. The spittle shooting from his mouth.

‘It’s a weapon. I insist you put it down before you injure yourself.’

‘That’s the point, dickhead!’ laughed Olafur.

His eyes met with Mr Drake’s black marbles. Olafur raised his arm and placed the muzzle of the magnetic induction pistol to his temple.

‘You are the devil. I know.’ he said as his finger found the trigger.

As quick as a flash, and far quicker than a human could react to, the alien parted the air and materialised right in front of Olafur, snatching the weapon and raising him high into the air by his throat.

Mr Drake’s veins, if that’s what they were, pulsed with an unnerving glow of interstellar energy. His form seemed to elongate to more than double human height. Olafur dangled from his impossibly strong left arm.

The alien extended its right arm and moped Olafur’s bloody brow with a sinewy finger. The helpless human watched as his blood was absorbed into Mr Drakes semi-transparent layer of skin where it would likely be transferred to the alien ships’ colonisation apparatus.

‘For you comfort, I must incapacitate you. Thank you for your contribution.’

The last thing Olafur saw was Mr Drake shaking his head disappointedly.

Deprived of oxygen for long enough to starve the human brain of consciousness, Olafur Olafursson of Iceland, Earth’s last original inhabitant, died.

Mr Drake entered the dimly lit vestibule of his spacecraft. Its interior matched the sleek muscular exterior although there were instrumentation panels at various intersections within the contours. Mr Drake placed his finger on some kind of scanning button and it chimed to signal a successful transfer of a viable genome for cultivation.

‘It’s so much more satisfying when they volunteer.’ the collector of doomed species mused to himself.

In Mr Drake’s other hand was a heart-shaped locket. Olafur's precious penance. The alien held it closer to his face to admire its imperfections. After a regretful sigh, he placed it on a jewellery collector’s stand. On it was several other trinkets containing unidentified stones, glowing gems and other curious pieces of woven alien fibres.

It was an admired collection gathered from across the galaxy over eons of time.