The Last Man

[Wayne23]

1/1/2029: We start conference play tomorrow.

1/15: 15-2, 4-0. We continue to score well, 77.2 (+9.4), and rebound well, +4.4. Ball handling isn’t getting any better, 15.9 TOs (+0.2). +1.7 assists, but -0.6 steals. 5 guys averaging in double figures, 4 guards and Eric Costa. All have between 12.9 and 10.1. 6th man Joey Daws is still the leading scorer. We’re going to go with a 3 guard lineup, with Hawk at PG, Daws at SG, and Howe at SF. Baer will play SF when any of them need a break.

1/29: 19-2, 8-0. RPI #29. I’m in shock. Thrilled about how we’re doing, but never expected this kind of success this quickly.

+10.5 PPG, +3.9 RBs, +1.0 TOs, but still 15.3. +2.8 assists.

Joey Daws leads us with 13.7 PPG. 4 others with 10.2 or more. Costa, Stan and Howe lead us in RBs. Our bench gives us what we need, especially, Baer, Herd, and Butler.

[Wayne23]

May, 2125: 1979-1986… “tough times” would be ridiculously understating what went on- not that I know a lot about what went on, except in general terms, but still.

I saw it coming and in late May of 2079 headed for the hills. I went to the most isolated spot in Wyoming that I could find, drove my wide bodied pick up deeply into the woods, and just holed up. I was in communication via wireless and short wave radio. Those allowed me to get news, as long as there was some. I communicated with no one. Didn’t want to take any chance of being discovered. It was all incoming, no outgoing.

The reports got fewer and fewer. The very last one mentioned that it appeared that a super volcano had erupted in or near Japan. That became painfully obvious very quickly, and for a very long time.

The years between 2079 and 2105 were the longest, most boring years of my life. If not for the HC I would have gone around the bend. I retrospect I was probably too conservative about staying hidden, but the incident in 2099, when I killed those three men, made me hesitant to leave my sheltered area.

The pick up was covered with camouflage, mostly branches leaves and such, and was really in a very isolated spot, but I still didn’t wander too far after 2099. The hikes which I had started to take in 2095 were finished. I didn’t dare leave the pick up.

So from 2079 until 2095, and again from 2099 until 2105, I spent most of my time in the HC. Of course I regularly had to recharge the 3D printer and the HC, but there really wasn’t anything else I had to do. So I read, and I went on adventures in the HC.

I did a lot of my own cooking during those years, both because it filled the time, and because it was a creative pursuit. I’m not artistic and I truly cannot draw, paint, or anything like that. I’m not good enough with tools to do woodworking. I’m no sculptor. So cooking was one way to be creative.

Another way was writing, which is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I stuck with it though. I started with short stories, and worked my way up to novels. I finished three. All sci-fi yarns set in space. I was living my own dystopian novel so there was no interest in writing one of those.

I did so many different HC activities. Some were standbys, like the six games I played. Others were adventures. I drove Indy cars and Grand Prix cars, which are very different things. It was fun but I could never get up to the speeds the pros did. No idea how they did that.

I did a lot of adventuring- hang gliding, white water rafting, and so on. I even learned to ski jump, which I had always wanted to try. That became practically an addiction for a while.

I did some tourist stuff, just visiting famous places like the Louvre, Athens and Rome, the pyramids- you name it, really.

By the end of civilization everything that existed in the world existed in a HC. Just dial it up and let it bill you. I had rigged the system so that it still billed me, and I created the money through a phony bank account within the HC, and a credit card to with it.

So, I say I was bored, and yes, I was, but it could have been a lot worse.

Oh, companionship. I created three girlfriends. When I was in the mood for female companionship I’d spend time with whichever one suited the mood of the moment. One was a real spitfire, one was a kind of a “hippy chick,” and the third was the girl next door type. I won’t get into physical details but they each had their own unique look.

I had friends too, based upon friends I had known in real life.

But mostly I was on my own. As I’ve said, I have no real need to be with people much, and I’ve always enjoyed my own company. As Thoreau said, “… I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

Thank goodness, I suppose.

Oh, the climate. It went from way too hot to way too cold, without enough rain or snow to avoid drought in most areas. The super volcano, which I came to assume was on the mild side for one of those, caused about 8-9 years of winter. It covered the planet in dirt, dust, and debris, kept the sun from breaking through almost completely through the first 7 or 8 years. I never left the HC without a gas mask through all of those years.

Almost no one at all survived, I’m sure. How those three men I ran into in 2099 made it, I will never understand. I’m thinking they had to have the same 3D printer/HC set up I did, which begs the question of why they were out roving. Who knows? Maybe they were careless and they managed to render one or both devices inoperable. I’ll never know.

There’s a lot more to tell so I’ll continue in the next chapter.

[Wayne23]

2/7: On 1/29 we entered the rankings at #23. We proceeded to lose our next game, and 2 of the next 3.

We’re till alone in 1st, 1 up on Seattle, 3 or more on the rest, with 3 to play. We’re still getting our points outside, from Daws, Hawk, Howe, and Baer, with Costa being our only consistent inside scorer.

2 of our last 3 are on the road.

2/19: We simply fell apart at the end of the regular season, but so did Seattle, so we backed into the #1 seed for the WAC tourney.

21-6, We end the regular season at 21-6, 10-4, 1 up on TX Rio Grande and Seattle, which fell to the #3 seed. We were 2-4 in our last 6 games, so we’ll be looking for a turnaround or it will be an early exit.

+8.0 PPG, +3.4 RBs, +0.3 TOs (15.6), +1.8 assists. RPI is #42.

We play #8 seed UMKC, 8-19, 4-10. They beat us by 18 in the last game of regular season play. Earlier in the season we won by 10 here.

[Wayne23]

I mentioned the complete climate turnabout. No matter how much climate change there is if the sun can’t get through the debris it’s going to get cold. It got cold. The biggest difference that made in my life was that I needed to keep the 3 D printer and the HC warm. Not a big issue, but it meant I needed to increase the frequency with which I recharged them both. I reset my alarms for that. Oh, and I went outside even less. I mean it was COLD. At the worst of it we were back to Wyoming weather at its very worst, but as a regular thing, twelve months a year. There were whole months when my temperature sensors said it never got up to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and dipped as low as 45 below. Finally, around 2095 most of the particulate matter had settled down, and the sun started to peek through the clouds. By 2097 the weather had warmed up again. The climate was so screwed up by now it didn’t seem to know what to do, but all of the things that had caused global warming were no longer happening, so the climate sort of moderated. By 2100 or so Wyoming was pretty much back to Wyoming climate.

Given that I was stuck there for the next 15 years, I adjusted to the indoor lifestyle. Of course with the HC I could be “outdoors” as often as I liked, and I made sure to be outdoors for a few hours a day.

The one thing that I haven’t mentioned, that very likely saved my sanity, was that in 2080 I recreated HC versions of Dan and Hal, the two jet black cats I had when I started coaching. I had them as 5 month old kittens and kept them that way, and they made me laugh, and entertained me for many hours over the long years. And yes, HC technology had made pets that were indistinguishable from the real thing, and you could program them to grow and age, or not, as you saw fit.

They’re still with me. I have always wished there was a way for them to exist outside of the HC, but that’s not going to happen.

Oh, I practiced shooting at a range inside the HC 3 times a week during all of those years. It paid off in 2099, and actually, it has paid off a few times since, not with humans, but with animals who I either surprised, or who decided to stalk me. This thing I carry would probably take down a Tyrannosaur- not that there are any of those around!

There’s probably a lot more I could tell about my years in isolation in Wyoming, but it all kind of just amounts to variations on a theme. When I left my hidey hole in 2105, life got a little more interesting in that I got to explore real places. I still spent lots of times adventuring in the HC, but there was more variety in my life.

Next time I’ll start to tell about some of the places I’ve seen.

[Wayne23]

3/1: 39-36 at the half. We shut out the SG, just playing mostly man to man. They’ve got an edge inside but our PG, Leo hawk, has 12, and that’s keeping us ahead. 11 fouls on us, 6 on them, which has had me chirping throughout.

63-63 at the end of regulation, and OT. Fouls still favor them, as do rebounds. We’re handling the ball better.

71-71 at the end of the first OT.

80-83. (Author’s note: On the last possession we got a rebound on their end with 6 seconds left and didn’t get it across half court. This happens all the time and it desperately needs a fix.)

25 fouls called on us, 13 on them. They went to the line 33 times, we went 8. That was way more than the difference.

4 guys did most of the scoring for us: Hawk had 18, but most in the 1st half, Baer had 16, Costa had 14, Daws had 13, most of them late.

Tough loss. Is our season over? It may be. Our RPI is 42, but that changes twice more, and given our conference and our 2-5 finish we may not get invited anywhere. It will be along 11 days while we wait.

Back up PF Matt Role sprained an ankle. He’s out for two weeks.

3/3: Well, #8 seed UMKC beat us, beat #4, then beat #3 Seattle to win the title.

3/12: 21-7, 10-4, RPI #49. +7.6 PPG, +3.0 RBs, +0.7 TOs, +1.7 assists. Seems like an RPI of 49 should get us somewhere.

NIT #3 West. We play #6 Boston College, 15-14, but from a power conference. On paper we don’t match up all that badly.

3/14: 31-31 at the half. We’re hanging with them but we’re not hitting shots. If that changes we can win this game.

72-67! Great 2nd half! 23 lead changes, 17 ties, but we were there at the end. 5 in double figures, led by Joey Daws with 17 and 6. Subs Rob Baer and Dee Herd had 13 each, 11 for Howe, 10 for Hawk.

#7 seed Southern, 21-9, from the SWAC is next. The PG and the C are the guys to stop.

3/16: 38-30 at the half. Deke Howe has 13 to lead us. So far so good.

71-64. 16 for Howe, 12 for Daws, 10 for Hawk, 8 and 10 for Costa.

We’re in the quarter finals against #1 seed Rutgers, 21-11. Their PG is #2 in the country in scoring, with 30.6. The usual challenge- stop him, or stop everyone else.

3/21: 34-55 at the half. Fouls and turnovers, 11 of each. Our D is nonexistent, they’re shooting .714. Horrible. We’re going to 3-2 on D since almost all of their points are outside.

71-93. We were never really in this one. We played a lot better in the 2nd but never really made up the deficit. 5 had 10 or more points.

4/4: Awards: Deke Howe and Eric Costa made WAC 2nd team, and I got the COY. We finished first and that’s it? Joey Daws gets nothing? Disgusting.

4/16: My #2 and #3 both leave. They got better offers and a chance to move up to a #1 and #2 respectively. I get two guys who look to be really better than I thought I could do. Excited!

4/23: I ask for a facilities upgrade. Got it. We go from C- to C+. We need money but I figured the most I’d get would be $2000 to $2500, which wouldn’t make that much difference.

Great first season: 23-8, 10-4, 1st place, round of 8 in the NIT. Team Prestige climbs from 3 to 11.

We’re losing 2 players but they were both starters, Deke Howe and Tad Stan. Hopefully the guys coming in will be ready to play. If so, we could do well again next season.

[Wayne23]

June, 2125: When I left Wyoming I decided to head for the West Coast, figuring I’d explore up and down. Well, of course the West Coast wasn’t really the West Coast anymore. The coastline had moved quite a distance inland, and the highways weren’t conforming to the data I had in my RoadXplore. I had nothing but time so I just worked my way south.

It took me six days to get to the new coast. I really couldn’t do anywhere near the 200-250 miles in the 4 hours of driving per day that I had allowed myself. I had to use a great deal of caution because there were all kinds of road hazards. In some spots that was cars, trucks, campers, buses, even 18 wheelers blocking the highway; sometimes I could just hop in and move a vehicle off the roadway, but sometimes I couldn’t, or it would have been too dangerous to try. I always found a away through but sometimes it took a lot of planning, and some creativity, or just brute force. I even resorted to explosives a couple of times. At other times the dust, dirt and debris dropped from the sky from the super volcano had never been washed off the road surface. My wide bodied pick up had all wheel drive but there were lots of places that even that didn’t help a lot.

Eventually I got as far south as Sacramento. San Francisco and Oakland seemed to be under the Pacific, and Sacramento was a coastal city now.

I changed plans and backtracked north. The further north I got the easier it was to navigate the highways. When I got up to the traditionally rainy areas of Oregon and Washington, I had an easier time.

I saw lots of traces of death of course. All these years later all that was left was bone, but there were many, many skeletons and partial skeletons, both human and animal.

It got to be a pretty depressing trip fairly quickly. I thought about just giving it up but decided that I wanted to see some places. As a hoops coach I had travelled everywhere and seen almost nothing. There was never time for side trips much beyond the city where we were playing. While I did believe in taking my players to museums, galleries, theaters, and other local sites when we had the chance to do so, there was never a way to take them far enough to see things like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Niagara Falls, and a thousand other places. So I decided to see at least some of them now, and if it took a while to get there, so what. I was strict about the 4 hours of driving rule though. I did about two in the morning, and two in the afternoon, and I stopped right at the two hour mark each time; set an alarm. I’m big on setting alarms.

That’s left over from when I was coaching and had such a busy schedule I needed the reminder. That’s far from the case now, but old habits die hard.

Eventually I saw a lot more than I expected but then I’ve been at this for 20 years now. Some places were just too hot, or would have required crossing too much desert, so I skipped those. The coastal stuff- both coasts, was gone, underwater. I would have loved to have gotten a good size boat and done some exploring by water, but I didn’t know enough about boats to take the chance of being marooned at sea.

I don’t travel every day. I drive 2 days, then rest the third. And if I wake up and just don’t feel like it, I stay put.

I definitely have my lazy days. I don’t let myself get lazy too often, but once in a while I just give in to the feeling.

It’s a big country, but not nearly as big as it was without the coasts, and with a good half of the rest just too desert-like to be worth exploring. I also saw a lot of Canada.

I’ve pretty much seen it all by now but travelling around means I don’t look at the same thing every day, and it keeps my mind stimulated, I think. I am planning on driving just one or two days a week from now on.

That will get the job done, and it won’t keep me chained to a steering wheel. And yes, we had self-driving cars before everything went to hell, but I choose to drive myself.

Okay, maybe I’ll talk about routines next time.

[Wayne23]

5/1: We buy National Basic.

6/5: Going after some transfers. We get a PG.

6/26: 2 scholarships. We need 1 and 1. Looking at 20.

8/21: We offer to 2 Cs. At least for now, no guard is showing interest.

9/18: Looking at soft teams again this year. More home games than last year.

10/30: Zero luck with recruits so far.

11/6: Here’s the lineup: Senior Joey Daws is set at SG, but 3 will share PG: junior Leo Hawk starts, supported by junior Cole Tare, and frosh Matt Feld, who also plays some SG.

Junior Rob Baer is at SF.

Frosh Reg Wolk is at PF and junior Fred Carr at C, with our last walk on, senior Eric Costa, subbing at SF, PF, and C.

We’re picked to finish 2nd in the WAC. Our A. D. has set goals of winning the WAC tourney and winning 15+ games. You never know with a tourney but we expect to win 15+.

[Wayne23]

June, 2125: Routines… I’ve already mentioned driving 4 hours most days, although that’s about finished. I get up when I get up, mid-morning usually. I have breakfast, which, 99% of the time is cereal with blueberries or waffles with yogurt or real maple syrup. Breakfast always comes out of the 3D printer.

In the old days I then drove for 2 hours, looking around carefully, both for road hazards and for things worth stopping to check on. I stopped at the two hour mark, if I hadn’t before, and saw what there was to see. Then lunch, a short nap, and unless there was something worth staying for, took a nap, then drove the second two hours with the same routine as above. Lunch was usually a fruit smoothie from the HC, or soup and crackers.

Rarely, a grilled cheese sandwich.

Then I stopped for the night. After securing the area, checking around in general, I spent the rest of the day reading, or doing things in the HC, having an adventure, touring the world, or whatever. Somewhere in there would be dinner, and taking care of any business like clothing cleaning and repair- all done by “people” in the HC.

While in the HC I almost always activated my two cats. There were adventures and simulations they wanted no part of, but otherwise they stayed with me.

Again, often I cooked dinner with ingredients from the 3D printer- maybe 1/3 of the time. Otherwise I just “dialed up a meal,” or went to a HC restaurant, alone, or with one or more HC “people.”

Eventually I got some sleep. I’m not one for sleeping for long periods of time. My sleep kind of comes in shifts. I sleep a couple of hours, get up and do something or read, sleep a couple more. I probably get 5-6 hours total, including the after lunch nap. During the night I don’t do really physical things. If I play a game it will be more like a computer game than one of the ones where I physically move through the game in the HC.

Now that I’m only driving a day a week, I spend most of my time in the HC. There is an absolutely endless supply of things to do in there so I don’t get bored.

Maybe a little more philosophy next time.

[Wayne23]

12/2: 4-3 to start. Lost our last 2, by 2 and 3 points.

12/25: 9-4 at the end of pre-conf. play. +11.2 PPG, +1.6 RBs, +6.1 TOs (12.8, which is higher than I like, but not all that bad, and way better than last year.).

Joey Daws is our best player. The SG leads us in all major categories except RBs. Our scoring is pretty balanced between inside and outside. Walk on senior Eric Costa has emerged as our best inside player, and Fred Carr as our best inside scorer. Matt Feld took the starting PG job from Leo Hawk 4 games in.

We’re thin up front.

We’ve had only two close games and we lost both.

[Wayne23]

June, 2125: I’ve said it before but the mind shift to not having to do anything was a big issue, but once I got past that things have been great. We’re so accustomed to having to have a purpose, whether we believe it comes from inside ourselves or is external, that it is a gigantic shift not to have one.

In thinking about it, in telling this story I seriously underestimated how difficult it was to adjust to having absolutely no contact with real people. Sure, the HC helped, but I found I only forgot that the HC people weren’t real for part of the time. Reality came through frequently.

Sometimes the realization that all of it was fictitious made me actually stop mid-program. Now that I think about it that happened frequently, over a period of several years.

There were times when I was definitely depressed, and far more than lonely.

Eventually, I adjusted, and my romantic partners, friends, acquaintances… filled the need for people in my life. And yet again, I am good on my own, which helped. I think a truly social person would have been fortunate to remain sane.

Okay, three lovers. Why not? Who am I cheating on? None of them are what we used to call high maintenance, since I just see them when I want to, for as long as I want to.

I programmed them- well, selected and adjusted them with care. They have very distinct personalities, character traits, likes and dislikes, physical appearance, skills…, and my relationships with all three are probably deeper and more complex than I would have predicted. BUT… all I need to do is say, “end program,” and they’re gone. Every man’s dream relationship?

Same with friends, of course. There when I want them to be, gone when I don’t.

Next time: More about the games I play.