So my glasses broke, which was cool. I explored the dusty remains of a Warby Parker quite pointlessly - of course they didn't make the glasses on site. In fact I had no idea where or how glasses had once been made. It was never something I'd given much thought. Same with lightbulbs, canned food, microwaves, toothpaste - these were things that had just appeared out of the mysterious capitalist ether, back then. I could live without most of that stuff. Two years into wiping my ass with leaves, I'd more or less stopped pining after toilet paper. But without glasses, I couldn't see more than a foot in front of my face.
I tried to count my blessings. After all, I was the only human who'd been spared by the Event. What were those odds? One in eight billion?
That was a mystery I'd given up solving. One morning, three years ago, I'd woken up and everyone was gone. Every human had simply ceased to exist. It took me a while to notice. The silence tipped me off: no cars, no pedestrians chattering, no glompfing around from the neighbors upstairs. Just birds.
The internet worked for three days. Then it stopped. In those three days, I'd visited the website of every news outlet I could imagine; nowhere had updated. Every forum was dead. The power lasted for a week; the water, three weeks. Then I set out in my Camry, loaded with provisions, siphoning gasoline from abandoned automobiles as I went. I drove from California to New York City.
The shapes started two days after my glasses broke. They were large, and black as the abyss - unignorable. I tried to touch one and it moved. Naturally this reduced my desire to touch it substantially.
To maintain my sanity in the endless quiet, I'd become something of a self-talker.
"Okay, Josh," I said. "You're hallucinating. Your mind is trying to compensate for the lack of visual clarity pursuant to your jettisoned spectacles."
I nodded satisfactorily and considered the shapes once more. The nearest one appeared to be pulsating somewhat.
"Or perhaps it is a group of wildlife, wandered into Times Square in search of forage," I hypothesized. "Certainly the dimensions could suggest a tallish steer."
The shapes remained. Again I tried to touch one. Again it moved and I lost my courage.
"Excuse me," said the shape. "Are you a human?"
I decided to have a good firm sit, and to rub my eyes vigorously, before considering the possibility that the shape had actually spoken an English sentence. Perhaps I was going crazier from the solitude than I thought. Perhaps the mushrooms I'd had for breakfast had been the wrong kind of mushrooms.
"Hello?" said the shape.
"Oh dear," said another shape.
"Quite an oversight," said the first.
I decided to have a bit of fun with the hallucinations. "No," I said. "I am not a human."
"Oh," said the first shape. "Marvelous. What are you, then?"
"I am an angel," I said. "What are you?"
"An angel," said the first shape. "What's that?"
"A being of immense power," I said. "In my true form, I wear a crown of light and carry a sword that shines with all the majesty of the infinite heavens."
"But not a human," said the second shape. "Okay. Because we were tasked, our company was, with removing all humans from this planet. And we had thought, maybe a clerical error, something to that effect, had allowed a single human to be missed. Which of course would be a disaster of considerable proportion."
"Of course," I agreed reasonably.
The other shapes gathered closer. I squinted pleasantly at them. It seemed unwise to stand up in the midst of such an intense hallucination, so I remained on my sitting log.
"Where were the humans taken, if I might ask?" I inquired.
"Oh, it was all done in absolute accordance with galactic law, we can assure you of that," said the first shape, which I was beginning to make out had a number of fat tentacles hanging down from its top, where its face would presumably have been, had it been a thing with a face. "They were resettled on a Class 3 colony world, where I assume they live in harmony to this very day. Alles in Ordnung."
"Alles in Ordnung," I agreed.
"Might I ask, Mr. Angel--"
"Call me Josh," I said.
"Might I ask, Josh, what brings an angel to this planet?"
"We stop by from time to time," I said. "What brings the rest of you?"
"Geological survey," said one of the shapes that had yet to speak. Its voice was much higher-pitched, like steam escaping a kettle.