In Paradisum (more Kaspar stuff)

Life as we would now understand it came to a choking end over the spring of 2044. The underground paramilitary wing of a pressure group lobbying for a decrease in the global population, despairing of progress through political means, released a virus targeted at removing all those with a blood type other than AB- - thereby destroying more than 99% of the world’s population and leaving as many people across the globe as had existed in Germany at the time of the virus’ release. By a staggering oversight, this virus happened to decimate the group itself, leaving the world short both of humans generally and of homicidal lunatics specifically.

Kaspar reflected on this as he sat, smoking his pipe, on Hampstead Heath; June 17, 2044, was his 62^nd Birthday.

Aleanna had perished in those horrible days, expiring toward the end of April, and Kaspar had wept for her for a time, wept sorely. Summer came, though, and quiet started to settle around him, and Kaspar found a peace that surprised and pleased him. He pictured Aleanna without sadness now, fond memories tinged with pain only in their last days together. She had tolerated him, and come to love him, and he would remain grateful for that to the end of his days.

The thing, however, that most appealed to Kaspar about his brave new world, apart from that lovely quiet, was that he no longer needed to be tolerated. He sought understanding from no-one, not least because he saw no-one from whom to seek it. He had spend the last four days walking to London, just so as to see this view on his birthday, and could count on fingers and toes the people he had seen. Armed in anticipation of greater numbers, he had instead found the capital deserted; as the worst came, many had crawled away from the city in the hope of escaping the disease, only to die instead in Romford, Norwich, Reading, or a smaller place, Colne Engaine or Shere. So there was almost no-one here to sully the summer-holiday school hall of London.

Looting, a perilous activity in March, was commonplace and peaceful now that so few remained; Kaspar still left some change in each abandoned store as he topped up his tobacco stockpile, reasoning that he was unlikely to have much use for the British Pound before his erupting cells claimed his life. A barter culture, he supposed, would spring up when things returned to something like normal.

He was not worried about who would run things, because no-one had shown much aptitude for it before. Kaspar assumed that the protected blood type would be spread evenly across the populace, hopefully preserving enough engineers and so forth to prevent nuclear meltdowns, but he didn’t find himself particularly troubled by the possibility that this was not the case. The tobacco and the sunshine and Aleanna

s memory and the skyline, some plumes of smoke rising darkly but unthreateningly, like a child’s Halloween mask, absorbed his whole world. Kaspar smiled.

Bartering what? Tinned goods, he guessed, at least until some industrious folk revived agricultural practices. The livestock still seemed healthy; animals seemed largely unaffected by the socially conscious plague. Each thing, thought Kaspar, carries its own end with it; perhaps the whole race had had this close encoded in it from the start. Kaspar wondered whether that was his thought, or someone else’s. Maybe Aleanna’s. Oh well. He puffed, found the embers out, and slowly tapped out, refilled, relit his pipe, enjoying the each stage and the smell and good god the tie, the ease of it all. Winter would be harder, he thought, and took a long, calming breath.