The Last Scientist on Earth

The rockets left in waves, carving streaks of fire through the sky. Each departure was a wound across the heavens. Humanity, desperate and disillusioned, had turned its eyes away from Earth toward a new beginning among the stars. Mars. Titan. Europa. The names of salvation. The names of escape.

But not for Dr. Elias Wren.

He stood beneath the last launch, watching the boosters burn until they were nothing but fading stars. He had no intention of leaving. Not because he couldn’t. He had clearance. A place was reserved for him on the Exodus V shuttle. His credentials were impeccable: lead planetary ecologist, architect of the Terraforming Protocols, laureate of the Global Environmental Initiative. The scientific community called him indispensable.

And yet, here he was. Alone.

Chapter One: The Silence that Followed

In the weeks after the final rocket vanished, the world fell into a hush unlike anything Elias had known. No more drone traffic, no more hum of distant cities. No broadcasts. No advertisements. No human noise.

The animals returned first. Foxes nosed through the empty streets. Birds nested in traffic lights. Nature began her reclamation slowly, cautiously, as though checking if the coast was truly clear.

Elias watched from the window of his tower laboratory in New Seattle. The city was a jungle of steel and glass, now overgrown and untamed. Ivy crept up the sides of buildings. Trees burst through cracked asphalt. His lab was one of the last functioning structures, kept alive by solar arrays and wind turbines he had retrofitted himself.

He was not idle.

Every day, Elias recorded data. Temperature, moisture, carbon levels. He tracked the regrowth of flora, the migration of fauna. Earth, abandoned by its children, was healing. Slowly. Miraculously. Tragically.

Chapter Two: Echoes of the Past

Sometimes, he would walk the city in silence. Not out of necessity, but to remember. To witness.

He passed playgrounds with swings still swaying in the wind, stores with mannequins staring blankly into the void. He would stop at the university, sit in the lecture hall, and imagine the students who once filled the seats.

He spoke to them, out loud.

"You must always account for system feedback. Introduce one species into a closed loop, and the entire system can collapse."

There was no one to correct him. No one to question. But he taught anyway. The lecture was as much for him as for the ghosts.

He sometimes checked the Exodus transmission band. Just static. The colony had gone dark a month after departure. No messages. No updates. Just silence. Maybe the new world had welcomed them. Or maybe it hadn’t.

He feared the latter more than he admitted.

Chapter Three: The Archive

In his solitude, Elias took on a new mission.

He began compiling an archive.

Not just data. Not just numbers.

He collected music, literature, history. Voices of poets, philosophers, revolutionaries. He uploaded it all into the Central Repository—a satellite link that still orbited Earth, once used for emergency communications. Now it served a different purpose.

A time capsule.

"If they ever return," he wrote in his journal, "they must know what we were. Not just our failures. But our beauty."

He read Shakespeare under the stars. Played Mozart over the empty streets. Recorded his own memories into audio logs.

Sometimes, he cried.

Chapter Four: The Visitor

On the 408th day of isolation, Elias saw a light in the sky.

Not a star.

It blinked.

He raced to the observatory, heart hammering. Tracked the trajectory. It was entering Earth's orbit. Controlled descent.

It landed thirty miles south, in the ruins of Old Tacoma.

He packed his rover with supplies, drove all night. When he arrived, he found the ship still warm, its surface glinting in the dawn.

And from it emerged... a child.

Chapter Five: The Girl Named Nova

She was ten, maybe eleven. Pale, with white-blond hair and eyes too old for her face. She spoke little at first. Just said her name: Nova.

Elias brought her back to the lab. Fed her. Let her rest.

It took days, but the truth unfolded. The Exodus colony had failed. Not all at once. Slowly. Crops spoiled. The atmosphere was unstable. People turned on each other. Some escaped. Some perished.

Nova had been placed in a stasis pod by her mother, launched back toward Earth as the colony fell into chaos.

Elias listened in silence.

She looked at him one night and asked, "Why didn’t you come with them?"

He answered simply. "Someone had to stay."

Chapter Six: The Work Resumes

Nova changed everything.

Elias resumed his research, now with a purpose beyond documentation. He began designing new biospheres, training Nova in the basics of ecology and systems thinking.

They worked together. Planting. Testing. Building. Laughing.

She called him "Professor," and he didn’t correct her.

He found recordings of lullabies, bedtime stories. He built her a telescope. They watched meteor showers, made lists of constellations.

The lab became a home.

Hope returned.

Chapter Seven: The Signal

One evening, while scanning the old emergency band, Elias heard a sound. A tone. Rhythmic.

He triangulated the source. Deep in the Amazon basin.

It was a signal. Repeating.

With Nova by his side, they set out. It took weeks. Rivers, overgrown roads, jungle. But they reached it:

A second lab. Forgotten. Automated.

And inside: four more stasis pods.

Three occupied.

Chapter Eight: The Others

They revived the survivors. Two women, one man. Scientists like Elias. Hidden away in the final days, preserving themselves until it was safe to return.

Together, they formed a council. Shared knowledge. Built a new plan.

A sustainable Earth.

No corporations. No nations. Just stewards.

Nova, now 13, helped lead the effort. She understood both the past and the promise of the future.

They called it Project Eden.

Chapter Nine: The First Garden

In what was once Central Park, they planted the First Garden.

Hundreds of species. Native, restored, and hybrid. A symbol of rebirth.

They invited animals back, let rivers flow unblocked, skies free of smog. Cities were no longer monuments of dominion but shelters of knowledge.

Elias, now old and slower, watched it all unfold.

He spoke to the mirror one morning and said, "It was worth it."

Chapter Ten: The Last Lecture

He recorded one final message for the archive:

"To whomever finds this: We broke our world not through hate, but through neglect. We chased new beginnings before finishing what we started. But Earth is patient. She forgives. If you choose to return, come not as conquerors. Come as caretakers. Come home."

He died that winter. Peacefully. In his sleep.

Nova buried him beneath the First Garden, beneath a stone that read:

"He stayed behind, so we had something to return to."