Science fiction short story by BW Derge written in 2025 about the last civilization of mankind and how it became ultimately doomed. Was the demise inevitable, or could Earth have been saved?
Humanity's Last Gasp
by BW Derge
Part One: The Dimming Request
The farmer walked across the field of artificial soul seeing if the seeds had started to sprout. Appeared to barren, how were they to survive another season with little food? He walked over to a shed housing some electronic communication device. “Field to cockpit, come in.”
There was a pause and some slight static. The artificial fluorescent sunlight buzzed and heated the already baked land below. “This is the cockpit. Over.”
“Going to need another rain request,” the agriculturist said. “Over.”
“Another one? We’re still waiting on the next resource delivery.” There was an agitated tone in the man’s voice. “Over.”
“These crops are going to need relief from this heat if we want them grow. Is there enough for a small shower and a dimming sequence? Over.”
The city had been designed so that the leaders in the top and front sections would have to receive their rations from the heart of the city, which was in the middle structure. The farm, which supplied the entire place with food resources, sat in the basement. It was lonelier than the other two factions occupying this remnant of civilization, but that’s how the farmer preferred life in this era of mankind. Better to be alone than surrounded by the crazed occupants of the township or, even worse, the indulgent and arrogant commanders who ruled from the cockpit.
Nonetheless, the militant leaders knew there would be no food for the royalty at the top if the townsfolk did not receive a decent share of resources first. There was no way a shipment of food could bypass the bulk of the citizens. Reluctantly, the voice replied over the communication system, “Dimming request and brief shower has been granted. Standby. Over and out.”
The farmer looked out over the plot of soil as the replicated sunlight lost a fraction of its brightness and a small amount of rain began to trickle down from the ceiling. Below his feet, beneath a layer of thick deteriorating steel, a toxic smog filled the atmosphere of the old dying planet. The giant flying city, known once as the Arc Plane, continued to soar through the skies, carrying what remained of life on Earth.
Part Two: As Above, So Robots Below
Although the only life that remained from the planet existed solely on the floating city and grew from the farm aboard the giant plane, there were thousands of robots and drones below. Controlled by workers who lived in the middle village, there were thousands of machines roaming the dying frozen surface to extract what resources were left below. The only way to obtain water that wasn’t toxic was to drain the ocean and put the liquid through a costly desalination process.
There were robots for maintaining the factories, others served the function of repairing machines in need of maintenance. While the Arc Plane housing humanity’s last gasp at existence was powered by a combination of solar light, electricity, and jet fuel, most the mechanical contraptions below were fueled by electricity that was produced by wind power from turbines feeding off the constant hurricane consuming the Atlantic. There was not enough sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface for solar panels to work down there. And only the cargo drones that delivered payloads to the mothership required gasoline and rocket fuel.
Mining operations were sprawled across the globe to extract what elemental compounds were needed to keep the whole species alive atop a flying city that had not landed since takeoff over a hundred years ago. Massive armies of self-driving transport vehicles would traverse the Earth to compile carefully packed shipments upon the cargo drone, driven remotely by one of the Commanders. The job came with the privilege of living in the top castle of the Arc Plane known as the cockpit.
With freshly cleaned water from the oceans, jet fuel, and minerals, along with relics of interest such as ancient books or works of art, the cargo drone was loaded. A failed mission would put the entirety of mankind’s survival in jeopardy. The Commander pilot pushed the button and the spaceship blasted off from the frozen lifeless globe beneath…
Part Three: The Captain of the Arc Plane
When all satellites were launched into the sky, it was known that they would fall back down into the Earth. Unless in a ridiculously high orbit, the gravitational pull of the planet was to pull all of these metal objects back down to their source, to most likely crash into the ocean.
The farmer was watching his crops get misted with the slightest amount of water when, unbeknownst to him, the cargo drone exploded. There was a faint bang heard but nothing that caused the man any alarm. Several thousand feet above his head though, the cockpit became consumed by chaos. The Commander steering the ship immediately seized a firearm and turn it on himself, knowing how drastic of a mistake he just made.
But there was, in fact, no error on his part, it was caused by a rogue satellite that had crashed into the vessel by improbable chance. Originally launched by a cell phone company centuries earlier, a large free falling metallic object simply smashed into the drone that was delivering vital resources to the last surviving humans.
“If we launch the back-up ship, it will be the last one. It will take years to restock another reserve of resources,” one commander told the mothership’s captain.
“There would be no other time to use it besides now,” the supreme emperor declared. “Isn’t that what it is there for?”
“We launch that ship of reserve resources and it could very well doom the Arc,” one of the other Commanders said.
“I fear if we don’t… then we are already doomed.” He turned to another man aboard the cockpit. “Run the calculations. See if we can survive without the reserves. Can anything from the transport drone be salvaged?”
The person nodded. “I’m on it, Sir.” Then they scurried away.
From the radio room, another Royal Commander emerged. He whispered into the leader’s ear, “The farms need water, Sir. Desperately. We may not have time to deliberate sending the reserves. They are needed.”
The Captain of the Arc Plane grumbled with frustration. “Okay. Give me but a moment to think…”
Part Four: With All Due Respect
A century plus a few decades prior to the incident with the cargo drone, a general for the Global Government’s Armed Forces was overseeing the final stages of the mega-ship’s construction. It was being built with absolute secrecy in the dark snowy deserts of what had once been named Nevada. “When will it be ready to onboard?”
“We’ve got to do some tests,” the General answered over the phone. “But we should be on schedule to allow passengers in the upcoming weeks. How is the selection process going? It’s not all elitist rich jerks, is it?”
“No,” replied the voice on the other end of the phoneline. “Many of them are opting to stay in their underground bunkers.”
“They think they can build a better self-sustaining closed loop system better than NASA can?”
After a brief pause, the General received the following response, “I think everyone is hopeless and scared and would rather die at home with their families instead of on an endless flight aboard a massive airplane.”
“With all due respect, sir,” the man said. “This is no airplane. This is a floating city and if I’m to believe all these scientists, it’s humanity’s last shot at getting out of this alive.”
He was met with another pause, this one longer, before the other person replied, “The idea that wind powered robots are going to operate on this toxic snowball to feed a flying city in the sky when all of life below has drawn it’s last breath is just too much for people to wrap their heads around, General.”
“Well it’s the last idea we’ve with Mars and the Moon no longer being viable options. The Arc Plane will buy us some time…”
“No, General Barnes. It will simply prolong the inevitable. With no Earth, there’s no hope.”
“Only one way to find out,” he growled back. “Just do your job and find me a healthy population to put on this airship. We’ll have it flying in a few weeks, with or without you on board.”
The other gentleman sighed. “Oh, I’ll be on there. I’m not expecting it to last long, though.”
Part Five: The Last Gasp
The reserve supplies eventually arrived and the farmer was able to water the crops again. Despite this, the soaring remnants of humanity and all of Earth’s life lasted just another couple of years. There were three main causes that contributed to the crash. The first was the eventual deterioration of the fortress airship. It had only been designed to sustain continuous flight for a century, in that time the humans on board were supposed to figure out a more sustainable escape from the planetary collapse, but this was never solved. Although it outlasted it’s presumed timeline, the Arc Plane was falling apart at a rate too fast to fix.
The second contributing factor to the plane’s demise was constant flight had negatively impacted human biology. From weaker bones to deadened senses, what remained of the human population had become too damaged to effectively keep ground and sky operations active.
The third cause for the city’s eventual fall pertained to a plot from the main village at the ship’s center to overthrow the throne in the above cockpit.
This occurred at the very moment the plane’s chain of command had been disturbed by the attempted uprising. With a Captain too preoccupied with keeping his grip on power, any chance at rectifying the situation had been lost.
Instead of a peaceful goodbye, with gratitude for existence, the final day of human life was spent plummeting down from heaven, in a chaotic and fearful panic for survival, before ending in a violent fiery explosion, colliding into the dark, cold, death Earth.
Read another vision of the future about an A.I. takeover - Your Automated Death Sentence
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2025
© USA
This was a short story composed in 2025 called Humanity's Last Gasp
