It's a normal day in San Francisco. The sun shines on the picturesque bay area illuminating the waves as they meet the shore. Inside the greater city of San Fran, a car horn blares in annoyance with a pedestrian violating the sanctity of traffic law. This is a frequent occurrence in a city of almost a million people.

What doesn't happen that often, is an argument that has escalated into screaming. This is especially true for hospitals. Unfortunately for the staff at the Saint Francis hospital in UCSF, this exact scenario is happening in front of them.

"I swear to god Rosie, you are not having that child!", exclaims a man in a Ralph Lauren vest.

"Arthur, I am having it and that is final. You have no right to tell me not to have him after I caught you with your secretary in our fucking house!", retorts a woman with an obvious pregnancy bump.

"The doctor said that it will be a miscarriage. I don't want that, you don't want that. Please let's just try again and we will get through this together."

"Sweetie, I need stability in my life and a child will create that. I know they said that he probably won't survive, but he gives me hope. Right now I have no life of my own and I need something to keep me going."

Eventually the couple leaves and it appears that the argument has been sorted out. The pair walk out together with the man sighing in exasperation he seems defeated. 

4 months later those same people can be seen again in a private hotel room. The woman is exhausted and sweaty on a hospital bed. Instead of the usual scene of a tired mother sweetly holding her child, this mother is in her husbands embrace.

The two of them are crying together as her child did not move after birth, nor did it cry. Instead it was perfectly still. Worried about the child the doctors were able to confirm that it was alive and breathing, but it still wouldn't move. 

Panic set in and the obstetrician checks its eyes. Moving a light around trying to get a reaction results in nothing as the baby stares into space. In an effort to get it to cry, the OB starts gently slapping his bottom. Not a single cry comes from its mouth.

After even further testing, the doctor has confirmed that the baby is for all purposes braindead. By some miracle however, it is able to breathe on its own. This for all accounts is impossible as no signals are being sent from the brain to the lungs, but for some unholy reason it breathes. 

Unsure of what to do the husband looks to his wife for answers. He doesn't want to say what everyone else in the room is thinking, but he is disgusted by this thing cosplaying as his son.

Meeting his gaze with tearful eyes, Rosie starts the arduous conversation:

"Honey, I know what you're thinking and I understand you to an extent. You need to understand how much he means to me though."

"Rosie, its dead. There is nothing we can do for it, let's just give it to the state."

"He, Arthur, the baby is not an it. And he is most certainly alive. Do you not hear him breathing? We are raising him. I know our financials well we can certainly afford to do so."

"I will not let that thing have my name Rosie. If you insist, it will have a hospital room paid for. I want no part in its 'life'." The word life is accented with a chilling tone from Arthur.

"Fine, I'll raise him myself then. His name is Noah, and If you ever call him an it again, I will never speak to you."

After the tense exchange the room settles as the matter has been sorted. A few nights in the hospital bed go by, and Rosie goes back home to Arthur. Unable to meet the needs of a child who she is not equipped to take care of, she thinks it best to let it stay at the hospital.

While cruel, it is important to understand that even feeding this child as a dreadful task. The baby will not swallow, nor open its mouth. It's stomach does not even grumble when hungry. The only way to keep him alive is through an IV.

This is just one small aspect of taking care of him. A body that never moves produces bed sores from the constant contact with the bed. It takes incredible dedication to ensure that the child is rolled over every couple of hours to not leave lasting effects.

Like this life moves on. 18 years have passed and in that same white void of a hospital room a patient can be seen laying in a bed. From a passerby's point of view it looks like he is sleeping, but on closer inspection his eyes can be seen staring directly at a wall.

This emaciated patient has sunken green eyes with raccoon circles surrounding them. His long black hair has become unruly and wild. He looks no healthier than a war victim. One thin arm is resting over the white sheets and long claws emerge from his bony fingers.

A nurse walks in to the room and does a cursory 360 and checks a couple of boxes on her clipboard. This will be the only other person in the room for the day. 

What had once started as a passionate care for a child had turned into a mockery. The visits from his parents, which had continuously slowed down, stopped five years ago.

Ever since then the care he received was an embarrassment. Noah had bedsores all over his body, and if his joints were to bend right now, his limbs would probably fall off. 

Just outside the room in the hallway, the nurse who had signed off on her clipboard glances up at a television screen.

"Tensions arise at the latest UN summit. The war between the United States, and the European Union shows no signs of stopping any time soon."

The nurse enters another room a few doors down that has a large table, a vending machine, and a broken coffee machine. Inside the breakroom she turns on the TV and switches it to a new channel doing a segment on the housing crisis.

"--that's why affordable housing is impossible in California. There are just too many immigrants taking up cheap labor jobs that make average Americans unable to support themselves."

"Steven, you are citing debunked talking points that make no sense. If we would tax more than 1% of the income earned from tech C.E.O.s and weapons manufacturers, the government could easily create affordable housing."

"Hey Julie, have you been living under a rock. The world is facing the largest human conflict that we have ever seen. The only thing stopping these companies from going to Europe with our data and weapons information are these tax cuts. Asking them to stop the tax cuts is like asking me to learn French. I struggled in high school, and I swear to god----"

The program gets interrupted and switches over to breaking news with the President of the United States holding a press release.

"My Fellow Americans. It is with heavy heart that I confirm your greatest fears."

"We have detected several nuclear warheads from Italy on direct course for our country. This is the end of our nation as we know it. As an act of retaliation the total sum of our nuclear arsenal has been sent out on Europe."

"To the European Union I say just this: 'You may have ended our nation, but we have unleashed the sun."

"Now I ask the good people in this country, and those left in the world, to join me for our final minutes in a moment of silence."

Silence fills the halls of the hospital and the sound of a clipboard falling to the ground echoes. People collapse on the ground in panic. Doctors and nurses can be seen embracing and crying. The voices of people ring out in a cacophony as hundreds of phone calls have just begun.

Two minutes have passed, there is nothing. The entirety of earth's biosphere has been wiped from the planet, causing the atmosphere to be full of dust. The planet has been completely reformed to a barren wasteland.

In some unknown corner of the universe, one organism is experiencing the worst pain it has ever felt. After living a life like a rock, an immense pain shoots through his head as trillions upon trillions of neurons that he never had spring forth to life. New concepts in the form of images shoot through his head, but if they were translated to English they would say:

"I am Alive?"