He stood on the brink of the hill and watched the dogs melt into the snow below him. Fine. Now he could leave them behind.
He had risen before dawn becaues dawn had come so late: 8:04a.m - the shortest day.
It was a piece of naff marketing to evacuate the world on this day; they could have waited until February at least but then everybody would have been busy with tax return forms and would have been so concerned with how much they could get back that they'd forget that they were supposed to leave. Lately the government had been giving money away. A whole village in Wales who had opted never to leave their hills had tried to spend evey last penny in the local pub but had drank themselves to death before they'd even started on their Post Office Bonds.
He kicked a ledge of snow with the toe of his boot. It shook itself into a thousand flakes then settled back on the ground. He wondered how long it would stay there, unwalke dupon, after he'd gone. Surely in a week it would all melt. They said this was because of the Hottening Up but as far as he cuold see it was because it rained and had always rained where he came from.
Sighing, he took his boots off. His best, buffalo leather boots bought in Tokyo. Bustling, beeping with electronics, bloody excellent Tokyo. He loved that city more than women. So much so, that when it had come to choosing which shuttle to leave on later that day, after it had grown dark, he had asked for a special exemption to the EU rule and had been granted leave to depart with the East Asians on a shuttle fitted with sushi chefs. The Japanese had already cleared the Pacific of tuna in preparation for today: D Day. The environmentalists had gone mad, 'Leave The Earth As You Found It!' they'd chanted on their rainbow-painted ships.
But none of us remember how we first found the world, thought the man, wasn't that the point? We - or rather, our elected rulers, had decreed a beginning to the world's existence, a time when change did not exist, and now had decreed today, the shortest day, as an aribtrary end to mankind's residence on earth.
The transit planes that had been dropping out the thick porridge of clouds launched their loud speakers now and the metal sounding pre-recorded voice of a foreign leader assaulted the hill, the dogs, the man.
'Ladies and gentlemen: Gather yourselves! We will leave with hope for our species and for the world...'
He put his hands over his ears and tried to squint out the planes as he took a final look at the sky. There was very little time left before the world would have completed yet another rotation around its star. But the day was not darkening; it was growing pale blue and bright orange. It would be dark soon, of course, but he always forgot this: that first came so much colour.
Even his toes were turning purple. This was the first time in his life he'd been barefoot in the snow.
