After the Event: first page of a newly completed novel

I recently completed the final draft of my new science fiction novel, After the Event, which I started writing back in 2021. Actually, apart from the first few chapters, I wrote the entire thing in two months this summer, working flat out after an encouraging response from a Sci-Fi competition judged by a couple of literary agents. Now I’m waiting to hear back on the full manuscript. Some background to the story can be found in my earlier posts in the Sci-Fi category, such as Before the Event; Humanity Version 2; Upgrade Yourself; Trump That; and Why We Love Zombies.

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Chapter One: Before and After

Some cheery philosopher once said, “In the end, we’re all alone” and I used to think to myself, “Yes but some of us are more alone than others”.

Did my sense of isolation make Enlightenment more or less painful? I’m still not sure. My difficulty connecting with others may have made me more resistant to the virus; and for sure it intensified the contrast between before and after. But I also had the mixed blessing of what Terri despairingly called my Mr Spock tendency. Did putting logic ahead of feeling make it easier, or harder?

Not that I have any complaint. I know how lucky I am. So many on both sides didn’t make it and so many more suffered torment, often at the diktat of their leaders.

Thank the Originators, that’s all behind us.

I suspect that despite any social disability, my desperate desire to connect made me more open than some who were more “normal”. The irony of that still makes me smile. It’s as if I jumped clean off the autism spectrum and landed as the best-adjusted person on the planet: a veritable Apostle of Enlightenment.

Of course, my joy is qualified by the knowledge that there are barely half as many people on the planet now as there were before. Evolution can be cruel; and Enlightenment came at a terrible cost.

I know that Terri would go further. She’d say that the price of Enlightenment was giving up a key part of what made us human.

There was no other way, though: not if we were to survive as a species. We can all see that clearly now.

I need to revise my opening statement.

We were all alone; but now we’re all connected.

Yes, that’s better. Despite everything, it’s so much better now.

This is the story of how it came to be.