There was the constant footfall of scuffling feet, the breathfall of sour lips expectorating their hungry bile on the back of your neck or directly into your weary eyes. There was the constant vile touch of everybody rubbing against your body and mind. We had learned not to look each other in the eyes, to lower our heads, only to keep our chins down positioned on the steady movement of our feet.

For ever so long, we thought that we would die from famine, pestilence, a falling meteor or a rampant viral disease.

It did not happen.

Decades ago, our mortal ancestors would have called us lucky. If only they could see us now.

But we were dying from an unceasing immortality. The telomerase stretch was always restored to its youthful order. Our bodies remained young and free of disease. A fountain of youth poisoned with the reality—no one died and more and more were always born. The Restore-nanos could not be stopped. They propagated even faster than our cells—than ourselves.

We had been robbed of all the the other pleasures of good food, fine wine, a vacation on the beach. There was no more room for that, we were over seventy billion on the planet.

And still expanding.

Old Earth had to carry our heavy load. The last pleasure we had was to find intercourse with another. We did in some hopeless ennui way, our bodies biotechnically renewed, still carried their deep, ancient instincts.

I no longer knew how many children, grandchildren and the many grands after that I had. Like the years, you simply gave up on counting.

Every resource was gone and used. Even the super rich lived the lives of paupers now. Poor humans, we mumbled to ourselves.

Full fortunes had been given away to have a few precious moments alone. Wars had been fought over that, destroying the last scraps which could have been used to take us to the stars.

We were now completely earthbound. And every day bound to each other.

But I had scavenged for an ever long time. There were still pieces and parts of forgotten technology. Unlike others who had fallen into a stumbling stupor wandering the worn streets of ages past, I kept aware. Here and there were abandoned chips and wires. I pieced my thoughts together as well as those components.

Everyone else caught in their unaware pain and suffering did not notice that I slowly held a small box in my hands. They shuffled by and bumped me into the next body. Most did not react and went on their way, a very few others still somewhat alive in their souls said, “Hi.” or “Are you looking for a good time?”

I shook my head, all good times were gone for my common humanity.

But I had a hope.

I took one of those wires from what I had made, I pushed it deep into my arm. It found a source of unending energy in one of those Restore-Nanos.

After all those decades and what must have been at least two centuries, I had calculated the formula for a folding of space and time.

My breath was released in a long sigh. I flipped the one simple switch.

None of them noticed I was gone—there were too many.

Yet, I had done it. It was a small space, but it was a place of my own. Finally, I was solely and soully alone.

I took a deep breath, though there was no real oxygen there. It didn’t manner those nanos never stopped fixing the damage.

I went back and forth—to the masses and then to the one. I gathered what was left of that overcrowded world. Scrap metal and forgotten wires. Even some downtrodden trampled weeds and seeds.

I continued to unfold that mini-universe. It expanded and expanded. I made a sun of thermal engines. From my own saliva—rain, rivers, and oceans grew. Those weeds and seeds began to grow. I could take a real breath. From a drop of my blood—which held the whole billion years of terrestrial evolution—I was able to begin to fill my planet with new evolving life.

My cells and the nanos made it easy to fill the sky, the earth, the seas.

I had a world of my own. An Adam alone. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share.

Not even with an Eve.

Maybe one day…