End of the World Broadcast

“Wow, a message really came again! It seems they’re coming steadily now, about one every 30 minutes.”
Once the controller started speaking, it began to deliver messages to me periodically.
Of course, given the significant gap of a day, the conversation couldn’t flow naturally.
But for me, who had been thirsting for traces of people, even these messages were nothing but grateful.

“Seeing the message saying [I can’t see anything.], I wonder if it was sent when the snowfall intensified yesterday, it was definitely to the point where I couldn’t see an inch ahead.”
While it’s disappointing that we can’t exchange information and chat in real-time, it’s not all bad.
Like now, when I see messages that are hard to understand just by words, and try to guess what situation they were written in.
It felt like solving a quiz that suddenly appeared in a world where there was nothing to play with.

Of course, it’s not as fun as exchanging information in real-time and sharing thoughts… but in this reality, isn’t it something that I can turn my eyes to?

“By the way… if there’s a difference of about a day, why didn’t messages come until now?”
Life in a city where it snows all day long had to be regular.
When the sun sets, the entire city becomes so dark that you can’t walk without a flashlight, so I find a place to sleep early.
After spending the night there, I set out on the streets around dawn.
So if there really is a ‘day’ gap… these messages should have come as soon as I woke up, at 30-minute intervals.
But the drone was silent throughout the morning and afternoon, and only began to send the accumulated messages sequentially when evening came.
And that started from the moment I complained about why there were no incoming messages.

“Come to think of it, did it send a message this morning too when I grumbled about the silent drone…?”
Could it be that the drone has some kind of voice recognition function, and only sends collected messages when spoken to?
Judging this possibility not entirely impossible, I immediately blurted out various words to the drone.
Stupid tin can that doesn’t send messages properly. I feel like I’ll die of loneliness if a message doesn’t come right now. Words like that.

“…This doesn’t seem to be it.”
But regardless of what I did, the drone only sent messages once at regular intervals, and nothing special happened.

“It must have been my imagination. Of course, unless there’s a person inhabiting the drone, it wouldn’t send or not send messages based on words.”
From a common-sense approach, it would be reasonable to think that due to unstable connections or technical issues, messages that couldn’t be delivered immediately might come in bunches or sporadically.
But so many amazing things have happened in the past few days that I unconsciously made a leap in my thinking.

“By the way… I wonder if people watching the video without knowing anything might have seen me suddenly calling it a ‘stupid tin can’ and saying ‘I’ll die of loneliness’?”
If someone who was just laughing and chatting until now suddenly does that… yeah, it would definitely make me look mentally unstable.

“It’s not entirely wrong… but it’s a bit embarrassing. I don’t know how you saw me, but I’m really normal. I swear to God!”
To clear up any possible misunderstanding, I hurriedly denied my previous behavior.
Some people often say that strong denial is affirmation, but if you reverse that, it also means that affirmation includes denial.
Such people would live anxiously in their own distrust, unable to believe all people and information in this world.
Hoping that the people watching my video weren’t such unstable people, I denied my previous strange behavior with all my might.

“…By the way, this surely isn’t being controlled by a real person, right?”
But, while I was enthusiastically explaining the situation.
The drone capturing my image on camera began to circle around me, moving slightly up and down.
It seems like it’s mocking me… but that’s just my imagination, right?

“[Wow, I’m surprised!] I can easily understand what moment this message was left yesterday without thinking deeply. It’s when I first entered the house to sleep yesterday, right? I’ll bet a week’s worth of canned food on it… no, on second thought, a week seems too much. Let’s make it seven cans. And I can give you ones with mint pineapple flavor, right?”
Just like yesterday, I found a relatively undamaged house near the supermarket, picked the lock, and entered.
The process of wrapping the homeowner, who had ended their life in a different way than yesterday, in a blanket, and cleaning the dirty floor was arduous and difficult.
Nevertheless, a smile never left my face.
Because even in the dark situation, the controller’s window was glowing blue.

“Ugh, I think this is the first time I’ve laughed and talked so much. Especially since becoming this body. My cheeks and throat are painfully sore… but I still don’t want to turn off the drone. I have so many questions for you. I guarantee they’re far more important and numerous than questions you ask me like ‘What is that mint pineapple rosé flavored chicken canned food?'”
Just like yesterday, I turned on the heater and crouched in front of the dim light to take out tonight’s dinner.
It’s ham canned food that I’ve been saving and treasuring to celebrate good occasions.
Just slightly opening the lid makes my mouth water; I place the can on the fire and take out paper and pencil from my bag.

“From now on, I’m going to ask you various questions. Since I don’t expect the answers I want to come quickly anyway, I hope you remember the questions I’m asking now and answer them even much later.”
Since learning that there are other people living in this world besides me, I’ve been curious about many things.
But if I say such things while walking around or sifting through corpses, people wouldn’t take me seriously.
So I wanted to create a situation where I could have a serious conversation.

“…First, the most obvious one would be this. Where do you live? And are you all living together? In many ways, it doesn’t seem to be near here.”
If people were living near this city where I am, the city wouldn’t be maintained in this form.
Setting aside not cleaning up the corpses scattered on the floor, they would have collected the remaining food or items in stores, including large supermarkets.

“Surely you’re not living on the opposite side of the Earth? If that’s the case, I don’t know how to find you. Maybe if I load food onto something like a sled and follow the undersea tunnel all the way, I could eventually arrive…?”
If the undersea tunnels connecting continents are still intact, it wouldn’t be physically impossible.
The question is how long it would take to cross the sea without any means of transportation.
Alone in an undersea tunnel without a single point of light for several years… even though I’ve become accustomed to living alone, that seems impossible.
The batteries of flashlights or drones wouldn’t last for such a long time…

“Let’s think about this problem later, later. Anyway, I don’t even know where I am now, so I can’t find the undersea tunnel.”
Setting aside negative stories that don’t show answers even if I imagine them, I ask questions that are enjoyable by my standards, writing them on paper.

“Is the place where you live livable? Are electricity and water properly supplied? I hope it’s at least an environment where livestock like pigs or cows can live. I sometimes want to eat real meat grilled on a grill, not just meat flavor additives or what’s in these canned foods.”
The ham canned food truly has a fragrance that brings tears to my eyes from the smell alone, but it can’t compare to the smell of real meat being grilled or various other foods.
I wanted to taste the old foods that now remain only as memories of when I ate and was happy.

“By the way… [terrible] or [scary], it seems you’re not used to these kinds of scenes.”

Here, weapons that can kill someone with just the twitch of a finger can be found more easily than food.
But looking at the messages coming to me, the people beyond the drone seem unfamiliar with these scenes.

“It seems the place where you live is at least much more peaceful than this city.”
Living alone in a world that holds its own cruelty and horror wherever I go, I’ve become accustomed to negative emotions.
Terrible, dirty, scary. How long has it been since such emotions faded?
The fantasy towards what’s beyond the drone inflates with these pure reactions that couldn’t come from someone like me. Hope swells along with it.

“Maybe only this city, this country became like this, and other places still maintain civilization and people are living there.”
Then if I go there, would I be able to live a normal life again?
Just last week, I thought it was a dream that would never come true, a vain wish that I tried to erase from my mind many times, but now I wonder if I can reach it.
Is it okay to believe?

“Ahem, good. I’ll stop the questions for today. I’m a bit tired, and if I send too many questions at once, you might get confused too.”
I rub my stinging eyes with my wrists and place my hand on the controller’s power button.

“Today, and tomorrow too. I hope you’ll send messages even if they’re meaningless words, after watching my video. Thank you.”
With those final words, I press the button.
With a beep, the drone slowly descends.

“…If I could have my way, I’d like to keep it on even while I’m sleeping.”
But the battery wouldn’t last if I did that.
The battery, which was at four bars this morning, had already decreased to one bar.

“Right, you need to eat too in order to move.”
Neither machines nor people can move properly without eating anything.
If it breaks down from overuse, it would be troublesome… I should be moderately greedy.

“It’s really fortunate to have a charger.”

Fortunately, the house where this drone’s blueprint and parts were found had a portable battery.
Without it, my heart would have sunk each time the drone’s battery decreased by one bar.
Finding a charger for this drone in a world where machines supplied power without wires or batteries would have been like picking stars from the sky.
If I couldn’t charge the drone and lost connection with people, I might have stopped moving forward, thinking someone might come looking for me.

“I hope the sun comes out at least once in the next few days.”
After confirming that the drone and controller were charging well, I sighed in relief and looked up at the sky beyond the window.
Even the portable battery needs to have something stored to feed others, and currently, the only way I could charge the battery was through the small solar panel attached to it.
Probably compared to panels used in the distant past, the efficiency of producing electricity would be higher, so there’s no big worry, but that’s only when the sun is out.

“When was the last time the sun came out?”
Thinking that I hope it comes out at least while I can charge the drone and controller, I place the drone on my leg.

“The more I think about it, the more amazing it is, how can this connect to people?”
I mutter while wiping off the moisture that formed from flying around the cold city with my clothes.
A drone that looks like it could only be used for personal hobbies.
Beyond just working perfectly even after tens or hundreds of years, it connects with people living who knows where, even when broadcasting equipment has gone dead—it was simply amazing.
No matter how I think about it, I can only call it a miracle.
The sudden desire to enter a collapsing building that I would normally have passed by, and finding this drone among numerous objects there—it all felt like miracles.
Or maybe, destiny.

“Yawn…”
Destiny and miracles.
If such things really exist, who decides them?
As I finished wiping off the moisture while thinking about such miscellaneous thoughts, suddenly sleepiness began to overwhelm me.
Yes, I did move around diligently today.
In the current situation where I can’t eat or rest properly, sleep was the only way to relieve fatigue and replenish energy.
So I decided to go to sleep right away and lay down on the floor using my outer clothes as a blanket.

And before falling asleep, I put my hands together and prayed earnestly.

That I could talk with them tomorrow too.