The Starman's Messenger

1825 Days

He landed in complete chaos. His senses were instantly assaulted by his surroundings, without warning or gradual build, as if sound and vision had been turned on like a light switch.

It was overwhelming, and he instantly felt suffocated in fear and a resigned feeling of hopelessness. It forced him to his knees, where he stayed until he could bring himself to open his eyes and try to make sense of the horrific and confusing scene he found himself in.

As he raised his head to look, he took in many things at once. He seemed to be in the centre of a busy market, full of stalls selling a range of everyday items from food to clothing, to animals squealing in small cages, to Christmas decorations. However the usual warm feeling of merry shoppers looking for the best deal or searching for a hot drink to warm themselves was absent, and instead a despair filled the air that matched the coldness of the stinging rain drops that fell init. To look for an explanation for this dismal atmosphere, he looked to the people surrounding him. The first person to catch his attention was a man, standing with a disconnected look on his face, as if he was completely unaware of his surroundings, and he seemed to stare into the traffic that rolled past the square. His left arm hung limply in a sling across his body, and he wore a smart green uniform. Despite his best efforts, he could not seem to attract the attention of this man and so he moved on.

He saw horrible things on his walk through the square. An inconsolable man knelt in the gutter, clutching his stomach as he emptied its contents down the drain. A young woman lashed out at two small,cowering children, as she shrieked and sobbed uncontrollably until she was dragged away by other passers-by. An old man sat on the concrete, cradling a radio playing the same cherished love song over and over as he rocked back and forth, with the same, other-worldly look as the soldier, painted across his face. Every person he tried to make contact with stared on, oblivious, as though they could walk through him as they walked through the rain, wandering aimlessly in a trance.

He soon discovered the only people that gave him and his carrot orange hair a look were the children. In fact, they seemed almost transfixed by his appearance, staring at his colourful patterned suit and the electric blue guitar slung across his back, making him shine like a beacon in their grey, dreary surroundings. Much to his dismay, when ever he approached them they turned away and carried on looting the stalls which had been abandoned by their adult owners.

A collage of sounds fell upon his ears, the ringing of telephones, radios emitting both news and songs, crying and wailing but few consoling voices. Everywhere he looked his vision was filled by tear stained faces of all ages, empty of hope and happiness. His head started to throb with the collecting effect of it all, and unable to take in any more, he stumbled out of the square and into the surrounding streets.

He walked and walked, adopting the tactic of the adults he had seen,shutting off his senses as he went. Until however, he stopped out side an ice cream parlour, which happened to be the first building he had come across that seemed unaffected by the appending doom that crushed every other one he had passed. A girl sat at the bar in the window, sipping from a straw in a tall glass full of pink milkshake. When she saw him she smiled and waved, the first friendly acknowledgement he had received since his arrival.

He walked into the parlour, craving its source of comfort and lightheartedness in which it seemed to glow. As he stepped in, his gaze instantly fell onto a television, perched in the top right corner of the room behind the counter. Yet another tear stained face stared back at him, this time belonging to a news reporter burdened with the latest breaking news. The sound on the television was muted but the news bulletin trailing across the bottom of the screen gave him the explanation he had been looking for.

As he read, a numb feeling spread from his chest to his head, until he couldn't think.

It read 'Scientists from around the world have made collective discoveries that have uncovered, due to the Earth's dwindling resources, humans have an estimated five years left of sustainable existence.'

The only thing that brought him back to reality from the noise growing louder and louder in his head was when the television, lights and blenders cut out and died with a flicker. Electricity was the first thing to go. The artificial comfort of electric light,simply gone in the blink of an eye. "With news gone", he thought,"what happens to those still unaware? Who will tell the world we've got five years?"

He swung the guitar from his back and stared at the strings. Music was all he knew. He understood its power to spread, to give a message, to give hope.

Suddenly, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see the girl he had seen in the window grinning, unaware of her inclusion in the world's death sentence, at him. 'Hi,' she said, 'Looks like a power cut. What's your name?'

'Ziggy,'he choked in reply, 'Ziggy Stardust.'