Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. I am a somewhat peculiar being, I am not the typical main character you are used to, and today I come to tell you my story. I will not leave you with more suspense: I am a Doberman dog, to be precise, with developed intelligence, although it was not always like that.
Well, in this year that is the year 6000, humanity has advanced a lot in technology and nowadays most humans are off the planet, since this planet has its hours counted. I am not currently on planet Earth; in fact, I am not in that galaxy. Now I come to tell you about my adventure.
It all began in the year 5900; an atrocious disease invaded the Earth. It was a disease that came from fungi and it was deadly; it was like a parasite that invaded the human body and put them in a vegetable state and they died slowly, since the fungus devoured them from the inside. Animals were not spared from this disease either.
The pandemic terrified the whole world; the world's population almost disappeared, most animal species also almost vanished from existence. The world entered a time of panic.
After 20 years of suffering, after research on various human beings and animals as well, although the latter were the ones who bore the brunt, since human ethics had disappeared, out of desperation, humans did everything to put an end to this evil.
They even sacrificed children to see how the fungus developed in their bodies; it was fatal. Animals were also prey to humans, but with them they were more savage; they did not care about anything and my race had a worse time. We dogs were being investigated more because the fungus did not harm us as much as the other species. They managed to get a kind of vaccine to be able to eliminate the deadly fungus, but at a very heavy cost: per country in the world, the population disappeared by 80%. Some countries even disappeared from the map and other countries occupied their territory. My breed disappeared almost entirely; several dogs of different breeds died among various experiments. Humans had no mercy; they were not only looking for the cure, but also researching other things for their benefits. Now there were only at most 50 dogs left in the whole world, and this is where I come in.
The year was 5980. I was born in captivity in a government facility in Europe. I couldn't tell you the exact place because I didn't even care. I woke up in a cage and I was already something big; I don't remember anything from when I was a puppy. I became aware of myself when I was older; perhaps those experiments they did with me gave me mental lucidity and now I was aware of my existence. I woke up with a great pain in my body; it seems that something had been done to me, I don't really remember what it was.
I looked around me and found a lot of cages and saw that there were not only dogs, but also other animals that I did not know at that moment. The only one I recognized was a cat. That cat was very smart; thanks to him we managed to escape. A few days after we were conscious, the cat was also just like me; he had a lot of intelligence. He tricked the guards to steal a small card that opened the cages so he could escape. Since he knew he couldn't do it alone, he freed all of us.
We formed a small team among all of us who were there; the cat became our leader. For this escape it was kill or be killed. There was an animal similar to humans; I later learned that it was called a gorilla and it was very strong. We managed to escape thanks to him and other animals called pumas. At the end of this escape, only 10 of the 30 of us survived. The cat had a lame hind leg, but survived, and we hid in a forest far away from the main city of humans.
Years passed; it was now 5985. Our small group survived by hunting some animals. The world gradually recovered from this terrible evil. The remaining humans extinguished all kinds of infectious fungi from the planet to prevent this tragedy from happening again, and saved some for their medicines. I am not very aware of that, but I know that something like mushrooms go into some human medicines. We, after some time, there were only 6 intelligent animals left: they were a gorilla, a raccoon, two pumas, the cat and me, a dog. The rest of us who escaped died of their wounds.
Eventually we began to speak the human language and began to communicate better. We were outcasts from humanity; they would most likely hunt us if they found out about us. We kept ourselves hidden in this small forest, but eventually stories of us emerged and humans hunted us down. The cat tried to lead an attack against them, but we had no weapons and relied only on our intellect. The gorilla sacrificed himself so that we could escape; then the pumas and the raccoon also died.
The cat and I ran off and infiltrated a city, and in the escape we both separated and wished each other luck. We had the idea that, since we are domestic animals, we would pretend to be normal to escape the manhunt.
Some time later, I started wandering around different countries and in every country I went to, I couldn't find a single dog. I never heard about the cat that helped us; maybe he did well because I had seen cats in the different countries I visited, but I never found a dog. And in every city I visited they persecuted me.
One night, camouflaged on the rooftops of a very poor country, at that time I had already arrived in Spain, I heard some men saying that my breed, the dogs, was being sold to the governments for very high amounts of money, that's why nobody wanted me. Tired and dehydrated, I ran away. After a while I managed to reach another country, and in one of the very humble villages I fell to the ground tired from the whole trip. Already inside me I wanted to end it all. I thought: I'm too old to go on and I closed my eyes, caring very little about what happened to me.
I opened my eyes to find to my surprise that I was wrapped in blankets and was in some kind of human's house; I think they called it a stable. Suddenly, a young human boy about 15 years old came in to check on me. He brought me some homemade food so I could recover. At first I was scared and reluctant to accept his food, but he seemed sincere. He approached me carefully and lowered his head; he seemed to know dog manners.
I accepted the food and the young man commented that he liked dog stories and that he finally got to meet one, and that he wanted to protect me. I listened to him as I ate and it was kind of funny because I completely forgot he was a dog, and when I finished eating, I said out loud, "How delicious, thank you." The young man fell backwards from fright, got up quickly and stood still looking at me. I didn't know what to do and just said, "I mean wow." The young man, from how scared he was, laughed a little and then calmed down, and we had a conversation. I told him my story and the nice young man empathized with me. We quickly became good friends.
After some time, I saw how my life was getting better. The young man told me to stay hidden in the barn because his father was not as good as he was and he might sell me to the government for money. The young man cared a lot about me. Years passed and I realized that I was no longer a normal dog; I was too old to be alive. It was already the year 5995 and I was still alive. It had been about 20 years and I didn't feel old at all; maybe something humans did to me that changed my inner self. The young man is currently 18 years old; I am now very sure of his age and he remained my friend. After that, a few more months passed and, as they say, nothing lasts forever. Something bad happened: the father found me out.
The young man was grown up and confronted his father to defend me. He tried to tell the father that he was leaving with me and that the father had no say in his decisions. Blinded by anger and greed, since $50 million was being offered for my head, the father shot his own son with his shotgun, killing him, and tried to capture me. The young man who lived with me was lying in front of me in a pool of blood. I didn't know what these feelings were that overwhelmed my whole body. The father approached me to capture me, but I spoke to him and told him that he was a horrible father and to think about what he had done.
The father, surprised because I spoke, stepped back and slipped, falling to the ground. He dropped the shotgun and, trembling, looked at his son and came to his senses about what he had done. I just looked at him in annoyance. The father grabbed his shotgun and shot himself in the head. I was covered in blood. I approached the body of the human who had protected me for several years and asked him for forgiveness for what I had caused. He, still with some life left, only managed to say: "Sorry for not taking care of you more", gave a smile and died. I just put my head down and then howled for several hours. I realized I was shedding tears like humans, the first time that had ever happened to me. This human had fought to the end for me.
Because of the howls I gave, the townspeople became aware of my presence and began to chase me again, trying to capture their prize. After this terrible incident, many countries already knew me; everywhere I went, everywhere they tried to capture me. I could not find peace in this filthy world. I tried to go to Africa, as there were animals of different species there. When I arrived, I was surprised to find that most of the animals did not exist either; this planet seemed to have only humans. I wandered elsewhere to find animals; I walked for years.
Being the year 6000, I was still young and I did not understand why. By these years I had learned to read and I knew several human things and I learned other things to survive, but I was really tired of this life. I arrived in the United States, crossed through snowstorms and deserts, hunting small animals to keep my strength up. I encountered bears and jaguars, but they were not friendly. I traveled literally all over the world, but I could never find another dog. I was the last one in the world. I came to a place called Grand Canyon and with difficulty I climbed up a huge rock. Below me was an abyss.
It had already been 6 months of this year and I didn't want to go on. I hoped with all my strength that I would not be immortal and die. (It was nighttime so that no human would bother me and I could die in peace). I threw myself into the void remembering some nice moments with the human who took pity on me and my friends who died at the beginning. The rest was just despair for me.
When I was about to hit the ground with my face, I closed my eyes, but nothing was happening. When I opened my eyes, I realized something that would only happen in fiction: an alien spacecraft was abducting me. I remember thinking: not content with humans, now aliens are joining in. I cursed my luck. Let me die in peace, but nothing could be further from the truth, when these beings spoke to me in my dialect and communicated with me telepathically. They were human-like, but had no hair and were larger and more elongated, very strange. For some reason I was not afraid.
They told me that they had followed my life, as they found it interesting, and the ending I wanted to give myself they did not like, a simple whim of theirs, but with a feeling in the background. They took me far away from this solar system and crossed a kind of circle with many colors and we quickly went out to another dimension. From everything I had read, I had some knowledge. They dropped me off on a weird planet and just left, not even giving me time to ask them why they chose me. They just left me here stranded on a planet I don't know.
I thought I would be left alone on this planet, but I was wrong. Walking around this planet, I came to a somewhat old town with huts; it looked like it was from the past. These houses were not so big, almost like for me. Great was my surprise when I realized that all this town was inhabited by dogs of different breeds and they could talk. I was left with my mouth open. After many agonies in my old life, I could finally see a light at the end of my journey.
I went over to talk to them and they welcomed me with open arms, as humans say. The mayor of this town took care of me; I understood their language normally. It seems that these aliens helped me to fit into this world. I told my story to the mayor and he helped me integrate into this dog society; it is wonderful. This story I am passing on to you happened a long time ago and now I am happy with my family. It turns out that I am not immortal, I am just long-lived and I already feel my old age.
It has been 300 human years and I am already getting old. It only remains for me to leave you with a message: do not give up on your journey because sooner or later there will be a reward. If not in this life, it will be in the next, but there will always be something waiting for you. In the end I decided to call myself REX because I'm like a dinosaur, hehe. Thanks for reading me. Good luck, survivor.