Superstar of Tomorrow

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After a devastating meteor shower, the apocalypse beckoned as foreign elements sparked deadly mutations in animals, and micro-organisms invisible to the naked eye unleashed countless epidemics.

On top of their own diseases, mankind had to deal with mutated beasts. Threats loomed everywhere and a torrent of microbiological mutations lurked as illness and disaster halted progress and curbed productivity.

Bustling cities were reduced to ruins and vast plots of fertile land turned to hellish wastelands.

__________

Fang Zhao couldn’t remember how long he lingered in that apocalyptic world, how long he fought.

Ninety-odd years? Or perhaps 100 years?

He could no longer remember.

Before the apocalypse, he was a somewhat well-known composer whose career was on the rise. Just as he was about to release what he considered his best work, the mother of all wars arrived. He fled for survival and led troops into battle.

When conquered lands were recovered one after another, people thought the war would end soon and prosperous times would emerge. Yet this was when he collapsed, in the darkness before the dawn.

__________

“If you don’t have the determination to fight to the death, then this war will certainly be lost.”

“That’s why earth’s population has dwindled from 8 billion to 80 million.”

“Old Zhao, say, do you think we will win?”

“We will.”

“I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of a Pyrrhic victory.”

“We will win.”

“That’s good. When we win, I’m going to find a place and start herding again. Boy, how I loved the ranch where we lived when I was a kid—the blue skies and the green pastures. What about you, Old Zhao? Are you going to relaunch your career as a composer?”

“Relaunch? I never stopped in the first place.”

__________

In Fang Zhao’s head, a conversation he once had with his comrade Su Mu suddenly popped up.

The cries of his men facing imminent death and the howls of the mutated animals began to fade. The extreme pain from decades of illnesses and deadly wounds had been wiped from his memory as his body began to recover its senses.

The vitality of a withered tree that meets the spring was confusing to Fang Zhao. After all, he was more than 100 years old, an emaciated old man with damaged fingers. Even though his body had mutated and strengthened as a function of his immune system, he was still bogged down by injury and illness. He was also an old man. He felt like an overheated engine all the time and could no longer relax at will.

Just when Fang Zhao was about to carefully feel out his body, his brain was assaulted by a pain resembling pricking needles and barraged with images he couldn’t recognize, crowding his head to its breaking point.

As he gradually gained control of his body, Fang Zhao’s eyelids spasmed and he sat up to take deep breaths. The overloading of his brain blurred his vision, but as his headache faded, his vision resumed too, and Fang Zhao took in his unusual surroundings acutely.

With instincts and sensitivity honed from countless battles, Fang Zhao could tell without looking that he was in a foreign location.

No.

It wasn’t an unknown location.

A scene appeared in his mind, a seemingly very familiar scene.

This is where he used to live.