I was caught totally unawares when they showed up at my doorstep, nothing to give them away except for the black limo outside and the dark suits they wore.
"You!"I gasped.
"It's time," the tall, lanky one said, inscrutable behind his shades.
"You get to take just ten personal effects," added the stout one, adjusting his earpiece, and looking beyond at the wealth of clutter behind me in my home.
"Ten!?" I gritted my teeth. "I was told twenty!"
"Things change." Stout shrugged.
"In fact the only constant ---" began Lanky.
"Enough!" I cut him off and hurried deeper into my home, my mind a runaway blender. Just 10 things? But I had accumulated so much - how could I give all this up? Why had they reduced the amount? Were there more people to accommodate? Wasn't the ship big enough? All this had been worked out before. And why now? December was still a way off.
I began to hastily throw some stuff together on my bed.
"You don't need to take your bed with you," I heard a voice call out from my living room.
"I know that," was my acid retort, the acid more in my tone than the words.
"Leave the beer," said the other. "No alcohol on board."
What do I take? I wondered. Maybe only those things that were irreplaceable?
"How about my watch? Phone? Wallet? IDs. Do I count those?'
"Not everyone needs a phone. You take that, we'll count it," rumbled Lanky in his baritone.
"Take your jewelry, wallet and ID. We'll overlook it," said Stout in his falsetto. I heard a snicker.
My personal stationary was irreplaceable. I grabbed some of the more precious stuff; Art was a drug to me. I needed my 9B, my 4/0 brushes, my oils, acrylics, and sketchpads. My Hotwheels collection! I had to take that! My copies of GT, NFS, TDU, F1 were hastily stuffed into a bag. Next went in a box containing all my storage media - hundreds of thousands of photos, hundreds of articles, my manuscripts, and then I quickly put together some stuff from my box of memorabilia; concert tickets, some awards, hospital ID tags from birthings, a matchbook from my first date, a full-length hand-drawn comic from my youngest son . . . I still had four more items to go. Tools! I have hundreds of tools. I picked a few I knew I couldn't part with, and stuffed them into the duffle bag that was now getting fat. I had only selected my very favourite HWs - but there still must have been a couple of hundred in there - I had left back a thousand, or more. Finally a few books, and some autographed records; I didn't care that they said the ARK had every book and piece of music - I wanted my personal copies of these. I came out to the living room hefting the bag.
"Do we need to count?" asked one of the agents.
"No," I grumbled. "Anyway I have only nine."
"And they are?"
1: Stationary.
2: Storage media.
3: Model Car collection.
4: iPhone.
5: Some books.
6: A few vinyl records.
7: Box of memorabilia.
8: Video games
9: A few tools.
"That it?" Lanky rubbed his palms together. "Let's go."
"Hold on," I cried desperately. I had one more thing, what should it be? And then a slight hum from the corner - a string vibrating to some harmonic - my 12-stringer! I'd banged on that Yam for nigh twenty years, nay, maybe more. How could I leave such a well-seasoned guitar behind?
10: One very old Yamaha 12 string acoustic guitar.
"Okay," I said, "I'm good to go."
They led me outside to the waiting limo. I tossed my stuff in the trunk.
He was sprawled comfortably in the back seat of the limo when I got in, a long cold drink in his hand.
"Hello, Shem," I said worriedly.
"Glad you could make it, Photon." He gave me wink and that wry smile of his.
I felt better. Even though it was the end of the world. I wondered what floating around in orbit felt like.
)
