End of the World Broadcast

The brilliant era of humanity, once bright enough to illuminate the dark night, has come to an end.
In the never-ending cold, the massive cities built by mankind have turned into snow-covered graveyards, and buildings tall enough to touch the sky have become tombstones.
And I… am wandering alone in this ruined world.

01. Repair.

“Alright… I’ll insert this here…”

I was in a narrow, dark room filled with dust.
Various books, blueprints, tools, and half-assembled parts filled the room. Compared to living spaces where people ate and slept, it wasn’t as dirty and still retained some of its original appearance.
Nevertheless, after being abandoned for so long, it had become covered in dust.

“…I think I did it right this time.”

I was fixing a machine in that room, relying on the light of a small flashlight.
It was a drone from the old era—a black body with eight pairs of wings.

“Surely, I haven’t missed anything this time?”

I compare the worn-out blueprint with the completed drone in front of me. At least it looks fine on the outside. There are no gaps or bulging parts.
And I think I’ve checked the internal components thoroughly. At the very least, I haven’t done anything stupid like putting screws in the wrong place or connecting wires incorrectly.

I’ve never professionally learned about or handled machines in my life, but to survive alone in this world, I’ve had to do all sorts of things.
By touching, disassembling, and reassembling machines I’d never seen before, I’ve gained enough experience to assemble them according to blueprints after just a few trials and errors.
The real question now is whether this blueprint itself is accurate.

“……..”

The assembly seems perfect. I really hope it works this time. No, it has to work.
I check the blueprint one last time to make sure I haven’t missed anything, then carefully put the bracelet-shaped controller on my wrist and press the power button.
With a beep, the controller starts to light up.
The drone connected to the controller does the same.
Blue lines begin to form on the black body, and with the sound of motors running, it slowly starts to rise.

“…Please.”

After several trials and errors, multiple failures. Frustration.
Would I succeed this time?
With hopeful but somewhat cynical eyes, I face the camera attached to the bottom of the drone.
All eight pairs of wings are spinning well without any issues, and it doesn’t tilt to one side or shake significantly—though that might be because there’s no wind indoors.
Judging by its relatively stable flight, it seems there are no ‘assembly problems’ at least.
But.

“Ah. What on earth is the problem?”

Crash. The drone, which had risen just over a meter, couldn’t last even a minute before falling to the floor.
The cold mechanical voice from the controller saying [Cannot connect] seemed to mock me.
Damn it. How many times is this now?

I carefully pick up the fallen drone, grumbling.
It’s been a week since I stopped moving to try to fix this ancient drone, whose body and blueprints might be decades or centuries old.

“…Should I give up soon?”

‘Drone design for long-distance communication and video transmission.’
For a year, I’ve been wandering in a city where I’m the only living human after waking up.
I’ve been moving on foot, following traces of civilization to find other survivors, but all I see are the scenes of a world that has ended.
That’s why I thought if I could fix this drone capable of long-distance communication, I might be able to contact survivors who might be far away.

…But it seems it’s time to stop now.
If I starve to death while trying to meet living people, it would be meaningless.

“…Sigh, I’ll try just one more time and then move on.”

Meeting living people.
And asking them why the world has become like this.
I’ve been wishing for this ever since I woke up alone in an abandoned lab, so I keep getting attached to the idea.
Nothing threatens survival more than chasing uncertain hopes and clinging to them.
Even though I know it’s foolish, I cannot let go of this thin thread of hope, and once again, I grasp the screwdriver.
Saying that this is really the last, the very last attempt before moving on—a phrase I’ve already repeated countless times.

“I’m sure I did it right…”

I place the controller and drone back on the dusty floor and calmly compare them with the blueprint once more.
But whether the blueprint is wrong or my eyes are wrong, there was no significant difference between the blueprint and the drone I had assembled.

“Is it really a connection issue…?”

While repeatedly disassembling and reassembling the drone that refused to fly no matter what, I’ve come up with three possibilities.
First, as mentioned earlier, there might be flaws in the blueprint itself, so even if I assemble it ‘according to the blueprint,’ it won’t work properly.
I don’t know how great a technician the person who lived here was, but there could be design errors at this incomplete stage.

Second, whether it’s the connection between the controller and the drone, or with the ‘communication target’ that it was supposed to connect to, the drone might not be able to properly receive signals and thus fails to function.
Given the time that has passed, this is also a likely possibility, just like the first one.

The third is… that everyone in this world except me is dead or in a similar state.
I don’t want to think too deeply about this. I’d rather just believe that’s not the case.

Anyway, given the long time that has passed and various realistic reasons, it’s not surprising that it doesn’t work… but if that’s the case, everything I’ve done so far has been in vain.
Whether it’s a design issue or a component problem, it’s not something I can solve on my own.
If I had the exceptional knowledge and various tools to solve such problems by myself, I would have made my own equipment to find people, rather than trying to revive this outdated piece of junk.

“Work this time! Please!”

I know it’s my greed to hope that a blueprint that’s at least a few years old—possibly decades or centuries—is accurate and that the drone works properly… but I was that desperate.

“Haah…”

However, contrary to my expectations, the drone did not get fixed.
Just like before, it turned on when I pressed the button and rose slightly, but that was it.
Up button, down button, auto navigation mode, and communication-related buttons… I tried pressing all the buttons I could, but the drone wouldn’t respond.
Even if it couldn’t communicate, if it just responded to controls, I could at least use it as a light source since it emits light, but no.

“Haah.”

I sighed involuntarily at the sight of the drone repeatedly crashing. I should have just continued on my way.
There’s no clear destination to my steps. I have the ‘purpose’ of meeting other survivors, but I have no information on where these survivors might be.
So now I’m just a wanderer, holding only this purpose in my heart, endlessly walking along the roads, going wherever I can go. Nothing more, nothing less.

But… even walking aimlessly along the roads would have been more valuable than wasting resources by fiddling with an unusable object for over a week.

“Just wasted a lot of precious food. What was I doing?”

Right. No matter how desperate I was.
Realistically, would such an old thing even work properly now?

“…Let’s go.”

Clinging to a machine that, even if fixed, wouldn’t be of much help for survival.
And on top of that, not even being able to fix it… I couldn’t afford to stay dejected over such a trivial matter for long.
I needed to move quickly and find resources, making up for the time and food I had meaninglessly spent here.

“Still, I found useful things like tools… maybe it wasn’t such a loss if I think of it as a week of rest.”

I gather my belongings while trying to lift my dampened spirits with those words.
I neatly organize the map that shows the path I’ve walked since waking from my long sleep, along with the many tools that have accompanied me on this journey, into a large bag that could fit one person.
I stuff tools that might be needed someday into the empty spaces of the bag.
Finally, I put on a thick coat to withstand the bitter cold, hang a mask on my ears, and stand up.

And at that moment.

—Attempting to connect to public network.

The mechanical voice flowed from the controller I had placed on the floor, thinking there was no hope left.

“…What?”

It’s trying to connect?

-…Connection is not smooth. Rescanning.
-…Connection is not smooth. Retrying.
-…Connection is not smooth. Rescanning.
-…Connection is…

Unable to leave my spot due to the expectation that maybe it was fixed now—a hope I couldn’t shake off—I waited for several minutes, listening to sounds I had never heard before.

-…Connection is not smooth. Connection is…

“Ha… I should have known.”

This world is always like this.
Whatever you expect, in the end, there’s nothing, leading to despair equal to or greater than your expectation.

Even knowing this, if I were to abandon all expectations, I feel like I would lose the will to live. So whenever something like this happens, I can’t help but have a little hope, and it makes me feel stupid.

As I pondered my foolishness and was about to open the door, ignoring the voice that kept saying the connection couldn’t be established,

-Connected to ~~~~~ network successfully. Starting video transmission now.

“What?”

Words I had never heard before reached my ears.
Connected successfully? Really?
I couldn’t make out where it had connected to because of the static mechanical noise.
But right now, that wasn’t important.
The drone had connected to a network somewhere.
In other words, civilization and people with enough technology to communicate with this drone still remain somewhere on this Earth.

“Oh my god!”

As if to prove the claim about video transmission wasn’t a lie, the risen drone maintained a stable orbit.
The camera at the bottom, which had been dull like the eyes of the dead until just a moment ago, was now showing signs of life.
At that sight, I raised my arms high and shouted in excitement.
Since waking up in this world, it was the first time my wish had come true.