[ WP ] You missed the last spaceship leaving earth

“ Well, that ’ s that, I guess ” he shrugged as the blue spaceship took off. 
 He wasn ’ t really sure how he missed it, either. Or any of the ships, really. For the past 3 months, the 4 giant spaceships have been flying in and out, with news reports absolutely everywhere telling the people of earth to get on them whenever you saw them, as soon as you could. He tried, you know. First week in, he got an alert from the app on his phone that one, the red one, had landed about 2 hours away. He tried getting an über, the public bus system, a taxi, but as always, all structure of society diminished as soon as they arrived: everyone just wanted to board it ASAP. He attempted to steal a bike to get to it, but he knew it was useless as time passed and he couldn ’ t get the lock to budge – by bike it would take him longer to get there than the ships waited anyway. 
 
 This pattern persisted, with news reports becoming even more urging to get on them. More apps to notify of their presence became available. He started carrying a tiny saw to cut the lock of bikes, and studied the instructions that were now available online everywhere on how to start the cars that were left abandoned after every spaceship visit. Absolutely everyone carried a Go-bag with them absolutely all the time. He did too. 
 
 He remembers thinking during this time that people really are like sheep: where in the beginning people were skeptical, after a week or 2 of these giant, state-of-the-art, flying, so-called spaceships randomly showing up and scooping up people, no one wanted to be left behind. But no-one was really sure either where they were going, either. If everyone else went, I should go too, right? 
 
 Now he is just staring at the lack of dots on the map in his app. And his other app. And the other app. No matter what app he looked at, none of them showed any dots indicating the presence of a ship anymore. After the first month, ships had stopped coming to Europe. After the second, the Americas were left unvisited. For the last two weeks, only Sub-Saharan Africa had seen the ships, but not even the green one anymore. Their appearances have been more and more focused on just South-Africa, then Cape Town over the last week. “ And here I am, a lucky bugger to live in Cape town, yet unlucky enough to have missed absolutely EVERY ship in the past 3 fucking months ”. 
 
 As the reality dawned on him, he started grumbling. Sure, he had been a bit sarcastic about the whole ordeal. The media, all of them worldwide, telling us that “ new information ” had become available and it would be “ in our best interest ” to go. It seemed ridiculous. Most of his friends, family, acquaintances, hell, even fellow countrymen, had now boarded these ships off to who-knows-where. Probably never to be seen again. This was history, and he was part of it. He just wasn ’ t sure what part of it – good or bad side? Will the ones that went – Boarders, as they were referred to – ever come back to earth? Will they create a new society somewhere? Will they become part of an already existing one? Where did those fucking ships come from anyway? No one ever had any information, just instructions to board! Why would he?! I mean, apart from the whole “ basically no one left in the country now-thing ”, off course. Then again, it IS kinda cool to board a spaceship and fly off to the unknown… many a book is written on precisely that story line. 
 
 He opened his app again. No dots. Same for the other apps. More sighs as he tried to figure out how he was feeling about this. Or what to do now, anyway. Should he join those nutcases that refused to Board and instead were Doomsday-prepping? Try his best to continue life as he had known it, despite society having fallen apart? Perhaps go to Europe? There were still many people left in Europe, as they had only had about a month to Board and not everyone could pay for a plane-ticket – those prices sky-rocketed pretty quickly when the ships stopped coming to Europe. Maybe now they will drop again? 
 
 Evening had fallen, and he realized it had gotten cold. He took a random car home, and started cooking some soup. Then the doorbell rang. 

