The Last Pianist on Earth

As much as I’ve tried, I still can’t help but squint as the light flashes through the window and into my eyes. This high up the windows aren’t tinted. Far enough above the city lights, and expensive enough when it was built that the rich tenants wanted as much sunlight coming in as possible. Like Icarus, I think as I watch the ship shoot straight up through the sky followed by a trail of fire, they can never get quite close enough to the Sun. I wonder if they know that Mars is further away from the Sun.

The flames follow the ship up into the stars, and before the burning flash stops reappearing behind my eyes when I blink, the ship is already out of sight. The wonder still hasn’t worn off, even though it’s been almost twelve years of these weekly flights. I take a deep breath and turn my head away from the window, back to the piano. My right foot finds its place on the damper pedal. I hover my hands over the keys, realizing my other foot is already shoving down the left pedal. I release it and the metal jumps back up, sending an echo of vibrations through the open lid and against the windows. Nearly two years since the Drop. I guess two years isn’t enough to undo the twenty years in my old apartment of having to play quieter, quieter, quieter. I curl my toes under and tuck my left foot under the bench, pressing down gently on the damper pedal so that it doesn’t echo, so that the penthouse stays as deathly quiet as it was when I first arrived. I raise my arms up like a dramatic composer, and drop them down into the first chord of Moonlight Sonata with equal force and precision, sending a vivid boom of life back into the stillness just in time to drown out the sound of the ship breaking the sound barrier. Funny, how I still care so much about moonlight when the light of Mars is all anyone else can see.

I wake to the sunlight bleeding from between the two adjacent buildings. Against the sun I can see the dust particles swimming through the air and threatening to land on the glossy black lid of the piano. The house is cold, and I pull the blanket up over me that I leave on the sofa for the nights I am unwilling to make the trek down the impossibly long hallway to the bedroom. I can’t even remember the last time I slept in that room, its wide walls and sprawling bed making it the loneliest place in the penthouse. At least when I sit here, by the piano, I can see the ships departing, to remind me that I’m not the only one left here.

My chip flashes with a message, and I tap my temple to wake it from the sleep setting I put it on before I started practice last night. When the message flashes over my eyes my heart sinks, realizing that I will have to make the trip down the hall after all.

I keep my eyes pointed at the ground as I walk toward the bedroom, but as I get closer I can no longer avoid the mirrors that cover the front sides of its French doors. Even with a short glance I am reminded of the effects my reclusion. I am thinner than I was before the Drop, even though I am out of breath just from walking the length of the hall. My skin is sallow, though my lips are as bright red as ever from my unbreakable habit of biting them while I play. My chest burns at the thought of Dorian seeing me this way, so utterly dulled compared to who I was before he was selected as a Musician. Before he left me here to go up there.

“Pointless to worry about that,” I say aloud to myself as I swing open the doors and go into the bedroom. “Why would he be at the audition? Why would he ever come back from Mars?”

The closet is even more pathetic than I remembered. At the beginning of the Drop so people moved fast enough to snatch up the Upper East Side apartments of the wealthiest Voyagers, who left everything behind when they went to Mars, including swaths of designer clothes. But, after waiting a week for the chaos to subside and a few more spent searching the Upper West Side for an available apartment that had a piano, I wasn’t so lucky with the clothes. But at least I have the freezer still half-full of food, and at least I have the piano. Though bigger than my old apartment, the closet is empty except for a few pairs of work boots and dirty sneakers, an old empty hat box that I have since filled with sheet music, and the two outfits I brought with me, the only two that didn’t have moth holes, because I stupidly believed I might somehow bring the moths with me. I stand and stare at my one proper audition outfit, draped sadly over the wooden hanger. For a moment I think to myself, why didn’t I use my last bit of savings that were leftover beyond the cost of this apartment to buy a new dress? And then I remember the pretty penny I had to shell out for the only piano tuner I could find in Manhattan, who spent a few hours hunched over the strings to bring it back to life after years of neglect. When I remember the joy that surged through me the first time I hit those perfectly-tuned keys, suddenly the old and worn black dress on the hanger doesn’t look so bad.

The water comes out black for a moment when I turn on the tap in the shower. Once it runs clear, I jump in before it has enough time to heat up. Having grown up with a hit-or-miss water heater, the cold is a strange source of comfort, nostalgia for the world before everyone started leaving. To my pleasant surprise, the cold has brought some of the color back to my cheeks. I twist my hair back into a slick bun, and slip on the dress once my body is dry. As good as it’s going to get.

After grabbing my sheet music from the piano, plus two spare songs from the hat box, I walk to the elevator. Though within arm’s distance, the button seems too far to reach. When is the last time I left? I shake my head, unable to find the memory in my mind of the last time I walked the streets since I moved here. Focus on the task at hand, Artemis. Focus on the goal.

As the elevator drops slowly to the ground level and the doors ding open, I force my mind to replace the anxiety of leaving with the thought of telling Dorian that I’ve made it, that I’ve been accepted to go to Mars as a musician just like him. My mind floats in this fantasy, blurring out the eerie emptiness of the once-overcrowded streets. But when I reach the bottom step of the entrance to the concert hall, the fantasy dissolves back into reality. What if I fail, again? What if these last two years of practice and skipping the auditions, didn’t change anything? What if there are just too many pianists, and there is always someone better? Why didn’t I learn the cello, something that’s smaller and less-common and easier to bring to Mars? What if I’m never good enough to be sent as a musician, and I’ll never have enough money to pay my own way, and I just live out my days here, alone, while the world crumbles around me under the weight of the Red Planet?

And then, like a ship bursting through the atmosphere, a sound cuts through the air and makes my hair stand on end.

“Artemis?”

My body stiffens, my head unwilling to lift my gaze up to the top steps where I already know, without having to look, stands Dorian.

“Oh good, you’re here!” a woman’s voice calls out over him. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it, since we moved up the audition so last-minute.”

“I wasn’t busy,” I say.

“Come on, let’s get you off the street. Who knows what kind of people are lurking around here looking to snatch up someone as talented as yourself?”

I look up just enough to see the moderator standing there with an open hand, as if to help me up the stairs. She looks much older than I remember, but her welcoming smile draws me up to put my hand in hers as I reach the top step. As I pass by Dorian I keep my eyes straight ahead and pretend that I’m not aware of his gaze, though I feel it boring into the back of my head as I walk inside the concert hall.

It is a shell of what it once was, the last twelve years of being shut up 364 days of the year having turned it into something worlds away from the grand, glistening venue I always dreamt of playing in when I’d pass by on my way to the train. The moderator leads me through the foyer to a side door instead of the main entrance, taking me backstage. When we get to stage left, I expect to see a lineup of other musicians on the tarnished gold stage, ready to give their best performance, but all I see is a piano, and a cello. I pause, and the moderator’s hand pulls out of mine.

“I thought you moved up the auditions,” I say.

“We did, for the piano section.”

“Then where is everyone?” I ask.

“You are everyone,” Dorian says as he passes me on his way to the stage.

I scoff and look to the moderator who is nodding in agreement as she waves at me to follow Dorian. “Am I the only one who saw the updated audition time?”

“You’re the only one who’s auditioning,” she says. I cock my head to the side in confusion, and a smile breaks across her face. “Honey, you’re the last pianist on Earth.”

I stand frozen, finally realizing that this is not an audition, but a formality. That they need me, me. That no matter how I play, I am finally going to be able to go to Mars. The moderator grabs my hand and drags me out onto the bright stage. She pulls me further, where in the blaring lights I can just make out Dorian grabbing his cello next to the grand piano that sits, gleaming, in the center. She plops me down on the bench and grabs the sheet music out of my hand, doing her best to arrange it on the music rack. For a moment I just sit there staring at Moonlight Sonata, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Suddenly a noise catches my attention, and I turn to look out at the audience. I blink a few times to break through the light, and instead of seeing an sea of empty, tattered seats like the first two auditions, for a moment I think that the red fabric has faded so much that the seats have turned different shades of black and gray and tan. But after a few more blinks and another sound, a cough, I realize all the seats are filled with people waiting to hear me play. I gasp. There are still people here who want to hear this? I glance at Dorian, who nods in reassurance, then back at my sheet music, afraid to look at the crowd again.

“Let’s go!” someone calls out. A few soft cheers echo, and I take a deep breath. I raise my hand to align the pages of Moonlight Sonata, but instead find myself turning them around backwards. My fingers find their place on the keys, worn far more than my keys at home. And they begin, almost without my consent, playing Chopin’s Nocturne in C# Minor. I close my eyes, leaning into the music that flows from deep recesses in my memory.

As I play, time speeds by and yet stand completely still. When my fingers work up to the last notes, a tension rises in my chest. But before the last note can finish ringing out, the tension fades as the audience erupts into cheers as loud as the ships to Mars. Emotion rises in me, filling up all the spaces that have been empty for so long. Through watery eyes, I look back at Dorian, who, instead of looking at me, is looking at the moderator as she walks back onto the stage.

“Thank you, everyone,” she says to the crowd. “Thank you.” She motions for them to quiet down, and, reluctantly, they do. “Now I know this was quite a treat, to be here for the very last Earth performance, but this very talented girl is needed up there.” She looks up at the ceiling, beyond which sits the Red Planet. “Let’s hear one last round of applause for Artemis, our next,” she turns back to whisper to me, “and final,” then turns back to the crowd, “Martian Musician!”

No cheers come from the crowd at this announcement, only a few slow claps and murmurs of incoherent commentary. Maybe it’s the ceiling or the lack of windows in the theater or the weight of all the eyes on me from the crowd, but somehow the gravity of Mars doesn’t seem to have such a pull now as it has for the past twelve years. I find myself standing up, the screeching of the bench on the old wooden stage echoing in the quiet auditorium.

“No,” I say so softly that Dorian stands up and moves closer to hear me.

“What?”

“No,” I say louder. “I won’t be going to Mars.”

Dorian and the moderator gasp in unison with the crowd. “Of course you will,” Dorian says, moving up and grabbing my arm tightly. “This is what we’ve been fighting for the last twelve years,” he whispers.

“No.” I yank my arm away. “This is what I’ve been fighting for. You gave up the second you left me here.”

“Artemis, wait,” I hear him start to say, but his voice fades as I step forward into the glow of the bulbs that line the edge of the stage.

“If you’ll have me,” I say to the crowd, “I’d like to keep my title, indefinitely, as the Last Pianist on Earth.” This time the crowd cheers, and I smile.