“And no resident will say: ‘I am sick.’ The people that are dwelling in [the land] will be those pardoned for their error.”
–Isaiah 33:24
The Stillness of a Dying World
The stillness was unnerving. Hospital beds lined the long corridors, each occupied by a figure in a seemingly endless sleep. For over 500 years, humanity had clung to false prophecies, predicting the end of civilization. The proclamations of 1914, 2012, and every prediction in between were proven wrong as the true end came much later—an apocalypse of humanity’s own making. Earth’s natural resources had been stripped bare by the greed of corporations and the wealthy elite. The air was still breathable, but everything else had withered, leaving the planet sick.
The hospital where Daryl worked was silent. A few monitors hummed, but there were no voices, no footsteps. The smell of antiseptic barely masked the stench of bodies stacked in corners, their lifeless forms slowly decaying. The epidemic was gender-specific: men died within hours of showing symptoms, while women entered a coma, never to reawaken. Daryl stood over a patient, gently adjusting an IV that dripped nutrients into her veins. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically, as if she were in a peaceful sleep. But the truth was harsher—she, like countless others, would never wake.
The Last Caretaker
He wasn’t a doctor, not really. Before the epidemic swept through humanity, taking millions in its wake, he had been an assistant, just another cog in the vast machine of the medical world. But when the doctors began to succumb to the disease, one by one, he had been left behind to care for the unconscious, learning what he could by necessity. He wasn’t immune to the tragedy of it all, but unlike the rest, his body had resisted the mysterious illness. A few other men, scattered in far-flung regions of the globe, shared this strange immunity. They were alone in a dying world.
Months passed in a blur of survival. Feeding the unconscious, trying to keep the remaining equipment functional, and hoping, above all, to find a way to reverse the sickness. It was a futile hope, but one he couldn’t shake. Research became his only solace. One day, while pouring over old genetic studies, he found a sliver of hope. The answer, he thought, could lie within the dormant bodies of these women—specifically their unborn children.
There was a biological thread, a genetic marker passed from mother to child, that hinted at an immunity.
A Glimmer of Hope in Genetic Threads
If I can find a way to unlock it… He pressed on, desperate, feeling the crushing weight of time.
He had no choice. If he were to save humanity, he would need to artificially inseminate the comatose women, coaxing life into a future that was hanging by a thread. Every procedure felt like a violation, but it was the only path left. Before each attempt, he whispered apologies to the mothers who couldn’t hear him, tears welling up in his eyes as he reasoned with himself. This is for the future. For a world where no one will say, “I am sick.”
The process was a long and arduous one. Most of the attempts failed. The disease claimed the mothers before the children could be born, or worse, the artificial insemination itself killed them. He felt each failure deeply. The weight of his decisions crushed him nightly, but giving up wasn’t an option.
The First New Life
It took years. The first successful birth came without ceremony. A quiet night, like any other, where one of the women simply gave birth without warning, the child slipping into the world as if nature had decided to intervene. No cries, no pain. Just life, where before there had only been silence.
More children followed. Slowly, over time, his failures became less frequent, and more lives entered the world. By the end of the fifth year, over a hundred children roamed the hospital’s empty halls, growing under his watchful eye. The older ones helped care for the younger, learning from him the skills necessary to survive in a world without anyone else to rely on.
Raising a Generation of Survivors
He taught them everything—how to plant food, how to tend to their wounds, how to hunt and gather. They absorbed knowledge like sponges, their sharp young minds untouched by the disease that had ravaged the world before them.
The children were different, and he knew why. They were the fulfillment of a prophecy he had clung to all his life. Immune to all disease, they were the future. He taught them not only survival but stories of the past, of the world that was lost. The Bible, its promises of a new world, resonated with him as he saw the proof before his eyes. These children, immune to sickness, were living the prophecy: no one would ever say, “I am sick.”
As the years wore on, the man aged. The children grew stronger, more independent, needing him less with each passing day. His hands, once steady and sure, began to tremble with age. He watched them from a distance now, more a spectator than a caregiver.
The day came when he knew his time was nearing its end. He gathered the children around him, their faces somber as they sensed the change in him. “You are the future,” he whispered to them, his voice thin but filled with hope. “A world without sickness, as was promised. Live for that.”
He died with the peace that his work had not been in vain. The last of the immune men had passed on, but his legacy—the children—would thrive in a world where sickness no longer had power.
A New Beginning
As the sun set over the horizon, the children stood together in silence, watching as their world began anew, without sickness, without death.
And the earth was beautiful again.
The idea for this short short story came to me in 2013. I wrote out notes to complete this as a short story but like the hundreds of other short story notes that pop up… this one too sat on a hard drive. Well, today I chose to publish the story. It is what it is. Do NOT try to develop any kind of faith behind this fiction. Read your Bible instead. That’s where you will find truth. This is just one fiction short story idea that popped into my head and I decided to publish on my site. If you like sci-fi check out my first published novella.
