How did that poem go, the one about the end of the world? “Not with a bang, but a whimper?” Yeah, that’s pretty much how it was for us. Although I still find it a little insulting when people say that the world ended. You’d think I’d have accepted it after 47 years, but for whatever reason, nothing gets on my nerves more than people saying that the world ended. It’s a logical paradox. They’re always saying “we survived the end of the world,” which doesn’t make sense. If the world had really ended, nobody would’ve survived. My thinking is, it’s not really over until we’re all gone. Sure, our population is dwindling and nobody’s in the mood to make more babies, but I’d say we all deserve a little credit for still being here. I just want to shout at them. You’re still here! Hell, even I’m still here. They call it hope. I call it reason.

Sorry, I got a little off track there. I’ll go back to the end. The whimper.

It was the lights. All it took to wipe us out was turning off the goddamn lights. I should’ve known. I always thought it would be something more… complex? You learn about the great tragedies of humanity in high school and there’s always emphasis on just how complicated it all was. World War I happened because that Ferdinand guy got assassinated, which was because of Serbian nationalism, which was because of the web of alliances in the Balkans, which was because of a whole bunch of other history I never understood. I think that’s why it always used to be so shocking when some type of natural disaster happened. I remember when that earthquake hit my city when I was a kid, and how afterwards everybody walked around in a daze, unable to process without somebody to blame. So I guess it’s not surprising when the lights first went out, the all anybody could do was try to figure out who was responsible. On that first day, the U.S was split dead even between its conspiracy theories: half the people I talked to said it was China, the other half said it was our own government. Without computer screens working, we had no idea that the rest of the world was grappling with the same question. It took us shockingly long to figure out international communication without our iPhone screens working. Only when the people who still had landlines finally called their family abroad did we realize that this was something beyond politics. And then when we woke up the next morning and NASA announced the sun was starting to dim, we realized this was something beyond our world.

The scientists never figured out exactly how it worked. I suppose they could’ve with more time, but once we realized there’d only be a few more weeks of light, most people had other priorities. After a few days of the sun getting darker but the air staying warm, we knew that this was only about the light. The sources of light still worked, we just weren’t able to see it. Although, the strangest thing wasn’t seeing the sky without the sun in it. That happened every night before this. The strangest thing was fire. Once the power grids went down and the heat turned off, we started to make fire to keep our houses warm. There’s something so cold about a fire without light.

It took about 10 years for society to completely collapse. People tried to hold onto normal for a long time. Even I foolishly expected some type of new civilized society to rise. But in the dark, it quickly becomes clear that most people only behaved civilly because that’s what they knew. Look at crime, for example. Let’s say robbing a bank. Take the shame of looking into someone’s eyes out of the equation and it becomes a whole lot easier. By the end of Year 2, my parents had been murdered in their home and my brother had went missing trying to get food. By Year 5, I was the only one left. I protected Diane for as long as I could, but some thug shot her on one of her walks. I always told her it was a bad idea to leave the house without me, but I guess I can’t blame her for valuing her sanity over her safety. Her walks had been getting longer. I think she wanted a baby. Always mentioned it. Maybe it’s good then, that she went when she did. Bringing a child into this world would’ve been a far greater sin than anything else I’ve done to survive.

Now I’ve been mostly alone for 43 years. It’s not too bad. I can’t even see myself getting old. But I can feel it. My bones creak, my muscles ache. I try not to think about the past too much. Even that’s getting harder. As I get closer to a sure end, I can’t help but remember the light. But it’s not the sunny days, or the bright houses. What I remember most vividly are the lights that stood alone among darkness. Slow dancing with Diane in the tiny kitchen of our first apartment, bathed in the pale white light of our open refrigerator. Sitting with Dad in the bed of his pickup truck, eating Mexican food tinted with the red of the taillights. Smoking with my college friends, the tiny lighter casting shadows across my shivering hands. I guess light shines the strongest in the dark.

Which brings me to why I’m making this recording. I don’t know who this is for. Or what. But I thought I’d at least leave an account of what happened here. Fun stuff, right?

Anyways, I won’t keep you for much longer. I have to leave. I’ve heard whispers about a farmhouse. They say it still has light. For whatever reason, this random barn in the middle of rural Ireland still glows with light. It’s probably a trap to weed out the few of us who didn’t go when they turned off the lights. Or it doesn’t exist, a false hope for those who need something to believe in. Either way, it doesn’t make sense for me to go. I’m a rational person. Yet I’m about to try and cross the Atlantic. I’m not stupid, I know I’ll probably die.

But I need to see it again.

The light shining in the dark.