This story is in my book "Tips for Tailoring Spacetime Fabric Vol. 2" which is now available at Author House -- Amazon -- Barnes and Noble "Roger Bourke White Jr."

The Only Living Person in New York:

The Choice

This story was inspired by my watching the third movie version of the Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend. This Will Smith version was nicely done, and touching, but several things about it kept bothering me. (here's my review)Specifically, in the movie:

New York was abandoned years ago but was not now a smoking ruin. It should have been. Any fire that spread would have devastated most of the buildings. And New York was abandoned hastily, so there would have been fires.
The dehumanizing plague involved was spread worldwide as a cure for cancer before it was discovered to be a plague. This provided no reason to knock down the Manhattan bridges.
All the “zombies” chasing Will and his dog were diseased humans who had their minds reduced to animal ferocity, not magically powered or animated dead. Yet they too had survived for many years. If they didn’t have enough mind to operate a can opener, how were they still alive?

I thought hard about what circumstance could happen that would let New York City be abandoned in a quick way, but in an orderly-enough fashion that it wouldn’t burn and crumble within six weeks of the abandoning. It wasn’t easy to come up with any solution. I could think of no style of plague or natural disaster that would lead to this orderly departure. Then, an Ah hah!

Here is my version of “the only living boy in New York” scenario.

Beginning
Chapter
1
2
3
4
Odyssey

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