A hermit on his final adventure.

The world has ended silently. The problem of sharply lowering birth rate was found out in the first years of the 2020s. The brightest minds of humanity immediately took on the pursuit of correcting this phenomena, but every effort was in vain.

First decades brought turmoil and even warfare. The diminishing population could not support the rising mass of the elderly causing collapse of social structures. Cynicism and meaninglessness were rampant, and brought with them violence and decadence. Finally people gathered in tight hives, reverting back to basic industry to survive.

And then, silence.

He was among the last children that were still born in the 20s. Living in Helsinki, he experienced a rather nice childhood as the world was still a sane place to live back then. As a young adult, he worked as a scientist, specializing in artificial intelligence.

He was always a reclusive man, failing more or less in matters of both love and friendship, always drawn towards his lonely contemplations. So it was that he made a grave decision, in midst of the most heated turmoil of the world he turned his back on it and headed north into the woods.

Necessity was a great teacher. Hunger taught him fishing, need showed him how to make traps for the animals of the forest. In the shelter of a lonely cabin next to a small lake he lived out his life. At first he sometimes got visitors from strangers and refugees but when he grew older they ceased and he was all alone with the nature.

A lifetime of loneliness has drawn him into peculiar behaviors: he talks to himself, he envisions situations of the old, civilized world in the yard of his tilted cabin. And most of all the survival of his mind in those inhospitable circumstances were granted by his dry and humorous wit that always danced and figured out new puzzles and ponderings for his own amusement.

Nonetheless, the laws of nature are catching up on him. The winter was hard, and even with his honed skills of survival he came close to dying in the middle of the harshest colds. That much sweeter was the spring that brought the sun that warmed his wrinkled skin. A spring, that would be his last, he instinctively knew.

So it was that he left his dear cabin and sauna. He gathered the supplies he had and pointed his endlessly duct-taped traveling shoes towards the south. He dreamed of seeing the Mediterranean and the white sandy beaches.

He would have his last adventure.