I should have done it. Click the button. Or step on the button. Or hammer my fist on the button. Anyways, I should have done something. Life is not easy not being able to press the button. Yes. Press. This is the word. A button has to be pressed down to activate something. But what if the button is fake and you pressing it would create the normal unscripted outcome, like destiny made by the gods or so? Or would the grinding of the plastic of the button create tiny energy-transfers which would grow in a perfect chaotic system to create some in-explainable outcome, like every movement of every living and dead entity does every single moment in time and space?

I should have pressed the button. Even though it would not helped the case. I was full of bitterness, when I left the place, the tiny cabin in the wasteland. I mean, outside of the planks which held the cabin together was nothing for miles. Maybe a half rotten cactus or the swirling mayhem of mutated flies trying to mate with their primitive genitals, which still worked somehow, because the end had already been ended.

I had been living in the cabin for 3 days. Like every symbol else, 3 days are enough to raise from the dead. The concept of three is premeditated in the universe. Like 7. Another magical number. Or 1/137. Getting away from numbers, I had been sleeping for quite some time after the long trek from the south to the northern parts of the wastelands. I was not expecting anything. I knew, that I was alone and earth had been killed by its inhabitants. Not even the cockroaches had archived to come back. Earth was cursed now, a rotten ball of decay rolling alone through the wilderness of the endless night, like other planets. How long would it take to let the atmosphere disappear? Or was earth still running on its own gasoline, the semi-fluid iron-mass in its core? Or had it stopped, like a heart, when the last bombs fell. No they did not fall. They just exploded, the triggers decayed by time, like clocks going off. But then humanity had already gone. Well, most of them. Maybe the politicians were still living in their bunkers, alone in the dark, eating rotten food from rusted tins. Or eating themselves, dreaming of coming back to the surface of the planet, they had destroyed. Didn’t they believe, that god would help them getting back? And wouldn’t they believe, that they were the most important creatures of this planet, while the mass of people, who worked and lived and reproduced were just bio-mass, unimportant?

The cabin had no door, but a block of grayish-blue steel in its middle with a button on it. The color of the button was red, one of the only objects in existence which still had this color. Not even the sun had this color when she was turning up at mornings and leaving the world to the cold night. The sun was weaker now and the clouds never appeared, because there was no water on this world anymore. Or whatever the concept of water was. There was slime and mud, salt-lakes, salt-oceans. Even the trenches were dead and the old hidden sea-monsters had never shown up. Water did not exist anymore, because the gravity had been greatly reduced by the war itself. And the pull of the sun had been exposed and cut, like cutting a rope with a chainsaw. And now, this beautiful planet, formerly known as earth, was rolling down the highway of forgotten planets, had become rogue. Well, humanity had been fucked itself and there was still something to do. Somehow, at least.

I had left the cabin in the morning of the 4^th day and now I was walking north. I was not sure, what to expect. I was able to lift my eyes from the ground to watch the bleached sky, but there was no movement, no sign of change. I was walking fast. I was usually able to make 50-70 miles a day, which was not much, but my legs felt old nowadays and after a week or maybe 10 days, I would need to rest again. Sunlight was sparse nowadays and earths disconnection from the central star of this solar system was steadily rising. Considering time and space, the planet had already archived a 3^rd of its distance to Mars and maybe, the plants would collide, but considering the emptiness of space, it was highly improbable. As improbable as being saved, by any god or alien.

And yet, I was still walking. And day became dawn became night. And there was a glimpse of the moon in the corner of my eye and I turned my head. The moon was crescent like the eyes of a beautiful woman with high, almost diagonal eyebrows. And I even saw her cheeks and her jaw-line. And her black hair, which was already graying for years now, but she was coloring it as black as possible, as if she wanted to turn time backwards in its blackness. And she looked at me, stared at me.

And I turned around and kept walking. There were times, when the hollow rays of light still created shadows in the surviving stones or when the whispers of flies and dry bushes created the impression of a voice, telling me words, I did not understand anymore. Maybe I was deaf and blind, but that is just a matter of experience and pain.

After 11 days I found a cabin. The walls were thin enough to look through the gaps between the planks. And I went through the door and there was a block made from steel, gray and blue and there was a red button on it. And I sat down on the earth and stared at my mirror-image and I closed my eyes. And there she was. And she stared at me. And I slept.