I had a dream once that I was walking along the floor of a canyon, with the walls extending high above me, red rock-like jaws about to snap shut around me, cut me off from the sky.

It wasn’t my sky in the dream. It was the old sky, the blue sky.

On the eighth day, He said “Let the air of Telu Mennet be filled with Xenon Triceremide, and let it not burn the lungs or seep as sickness into the skin, the eyes. Let it have very nearly the same bonding properties as oxygen, and let it work as a nearly perfect substitute for oxygen in nearly all biochemical reactions,” and so it was, and He looked upon the planet of Telu Mennet, and He saw that it was good.

He could have put Adam here instead, I think.

In my dream, the walls of the canyon were lined with cave-mouths, dark, and darker when compared to the bright afternoon sunshine.

It wasn’t my sun in my dream. It was the old sun, the yellow sun.

It never looked yellow, really. You could never look at it long enough for it to be any color at all.

Here would have been as good a place as the old world to put Adam. I wonder how He made the choice, why there and not here? Maybe He thought Earth was prettier, but I doubt it; of all the things God is able to do, He is not able to be wrong. There is no place that is beautiful like this place. We should have named it “Eden”. We shouldn’t have left. Or no, they shouldn’t have left.

I only ever dreamed once about the canyon, and the eyes staring down from those caves. Most of the time when I dream of eyes staring down at me, it’s Jean, from the porthole of one of the last ships. It’s a dream, not a memory. It’s ridiculous in that way. Those ships, a mile-and-a-half tall, towering, and me, down in the spaceport, gazing up– there’s no way I could have seen her. But that’s how it is in my dreams.

This morning, when I brush my teeth, my gums bleed. I haven’t flossed in a few days. I’ve been sort of bad about that lately. It’s strange, because I only ever did it for myself, my own health and comfort, but here I am not doing it, and if you asked me why, the first thing to flash into my head would be that there’s no one else around. I don’t want to bleed, though. It feels more wrong, now, than it has before. It feels like I’m supposed to be taking extra care of myself now that all the world is mine.

God appointed Adam as steward of the Earth. Adam’s gums didn’t bleed.

When I step outside into the sunlights, I tell myself that I’m going to get more dental floss today.

Any other planet, that would have been a joke. They should have called this place “Eden”, the one place we came to where you don’t have to bother with bio-domes and oxygen-recyclers and bulky suits and decontamination showers. You can skip right to the building, and the driving, and the buying. You have plenty to leave behind. You have cities to leave behind, and everything in them. Food, plastic, medicine—worth its weight in spit, for all a rocket-engine cares. This is Eden, this is the garden, and I am the steward of the world. I shall want for nothing.

I take a different car every day. No one brought any of those along either, and except for a few things here and there, no one brought anything from inside them; why bother cleaning them out? I try every day to make a few guesses about who it was who used to drive these. Today, there are two faux-paper coffee-cups in the cupholders, one medium, one small. The medium one is a caramel siggarun latte. The small is decaf with three sugars and two creams.

I tell myself a little story about the last conversation before these cups were left here. A parent and their child, I think. The lipstick on the cup makes me think ‘‘mother’’, but who knows? “I’m just trying to get you used to coffee,” she said—or no, she sighed. There was a defeat in it, like she was being forced to admit something about the nature of life; you can’t survive without coffee. No one can survive without coffee, when real jobs and responsibilities start rolling in. Might as well learn to like the taste as soon as you can.

I think a little more about the maybe-mother. What can I learn from her liking siggarun? It’s sweet and bitter together, like chocolate, but not chocolate. No one who’s eaten it would agree that it’s like chocolate. Coffee and two sugars and a siggarun swirl, no milk or cream. Bitter and sweet on top of bitter and sweet. I think she must have been very tired. I think she must have loved her child very much. I think she must have imagined a very different life for herself.

Sometimes, going through the suburbs, I see cars left in driveways, and I wonder about it. Did the family have two cars, and they just left one behind after the last night before their ship left? Some of the houses, maybe. Some have big enough driveways for two, and big enough lawns and facades and windows to have afforded it. Some have enough toys scattered across the front yard to tell me that the family never could have survived without at least two cars. But there are houses that are small, and quiet in a way that makes me imagine the owner taking their car and making sure it was well-parked and out of the way before leaving.

For who?

For me?

Maybe for no one at all, maybe just for the idea of somebody else. Maybe some people are always thinking about other people, and what little things they can do. I’m pretty sure the story of Eden is all wrong. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and here’s how it probably really goes: Adam and Eve are living happily, with all the rest of God’s creatures, even the snake—there’s no problem with the snake in the real story, and no apple either. Instead, what happens is a burst of poorly planned economic development near the mangrove trees makes it no longer financially viable to maintain the garden, and without maintenance there are no jobs, and without jobs, what are Adam and Eve to do? They have bills to pay. That huge loan they took out from God to be able to come here isn’t getting any smaller, and the interest is nothing to sneeze at, you know? So off goes Eve, to find work somewhere else, past the garden walls and the powered-down satellite angels standing post, and all the rest of God’s creatures go with her. But not Adam. Adam stays right where he is.

Me and that real version of Adam, though, we’re not all that much alike. Not if you think about it, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Adam, he was alone before Eve, too, not just after. He was alone in Eden, just him by himself, the only person in all the world, and so when Eve left, he was already sort of used to it.

After Eve left, Adam had a garden to himself, not a city, and not a planet.

I pick a convenience-store—one of the ones where I’ve already smashed in a window. I don’t feel like smashing another window today. The aisles are dark. All the solar plants have shut down. But I can see well enough with the daylight spilling in from the street. I take what I need. It felt strange the first time. It doesn’t feel strange anymore.

I wonder what it must be like in the other worlds, left behind. Was anyone else left behind there?—or no, did anyone else stay behind? I’ve never been to any of them, but I’ve seen pictures and videos and read things and talked about them. There’s no great mystery. Those worlds were never so lucky as this one, to be able to build like we have and sell like we have. How easy is it to buy dental floss on Yenuin? On Hinenn? Prion?—the skies black and black and black with poison, the soil rich in aluminum and titanium and platinum and gold and helium-ore.

Who would ever stay there? No sun, no solar panels—good old-fashioned fuel making everything go. I load my haul into the trunk: dental-floss of course, mouthwash for good measure, toothpaste to respect the theme, a few packs of trading-cards, some canned soup, some candy, some pens, a greeting-card. Thinking of you I could drive this car until I die, the suns above me aren’t going anywhere. I could write card after card after card until I die, and no one will read them, will they? Archaeologists.

People always used to think about it, talk about it in the old world, what future archaeologists would find, what would they make of it? How would they judge us? But it’s different, this, it’s not like finding things from the Romans or the Greeks or the Egyptians or the Celts. These aren’t people who vanished, they are just people who changed.

It occurs to me today that I’m going to be famous in the future. I’m going to be the one who stayed behind, and there will be studies of my life and my reasons for staying. “Why did he do it?” they will ask. “What can we learn from his greeting-cards, hundreds and hundreds of them piled up in the living-room of his apartment? Who was he going to send them to?”

There has never been anyone quite like me, before. There has never been anyone before who stayed behind—there has never been anywhere to stay behind at, before. Not in Greece or Egypt or Gaul, they were just full of people who changed, and those are just places that changed alongside them. There was never any such person as the Last Roman.

There are people someday who will think about me more than they should. Someday, for someone, those greeting-cards will be scripture.

Today, I don’t go straight back home with all the things I’ve taken. I take this car, and I drive it out of the city, through the suburbs, and further, and further, until I start reaching the parts of this world that look the same as they looked before we came. I drive through what we could only call forests, but not of trees. I drive past lakes of what isn’t water, lakes of two atoms of hydrogen, one atom of Xenon Triceremide, and it really does taste the same, nevermind the weight. It sits in your gut like a stone, and it pelts you like hail in the shower, but you can float without holding your breath.

“Why did he stay?” they will ask, and I wonder what they will come up with.

I drive and I drive—I could drive this car until I die. It could drive itself until I die, but I don’t let it. I hold the wheel and I work the pedals. I don’t want it to drive itself; it would feel too much like someone else, and if it isn’t Eve, I don’t want anyone else here anymore. I drive until I reach a great canyon. I get out, and carefully, carefully, I hike my way down to the floor of it.

I walk along the wound.

This is not the canyon from my dream. The rocks are beige-blue. There are no cave-mouths. The sky is green. There are two suns, and I know from a book that they’re red and blue, but I can’t stare at them long enough to see.

I walk and I walk. I could walk until I die. Anyone can walk until they die. Anyone can do anything until they die. All they have to do is die, and there: it’s done.

I’m not going to die today, I’ve decided, but right before I finally do, I think I’m going to write out a note begging whoever finds me someday to bring my bones here, and bury them. Not pick them apart, no scanning or studying, nothing like that. Just bring them and bury them.

I wonder if they’ll do it. Maybe it will be like Tutenkhaman and all the other mummies, and no one will give a shit about what I wanted. Or maybe whoever finds me will be the sort of person who makes sure to leave the car neatly in the driveway before heading out from Eden.

On the ninth day, He said “Let there be nothing that matters but numbers. Let there be no reason to do anything but for numbers. Let the numbers rise and let the numbers fall. Let the numbers bring joy. Let the numbers swallow everyone whole”

And so it was, and so it is. I spit a little blood from my gums down into the dirt when I finally reach the far end of the canyon, and I look upon it, a little piece of me that they will never find, and I see that it is good.