The Svalbard seed vault was designed to survive the apocalypse; I just happened to be in it when the end of the world came. That's the only reason I survived: because I was doing routine inventory on the hundreds of thousands of seeds stored there, buried deep under the permafrost in an Arctic mountainside, waiting to repopulate the earth's crops in the event of genetic engineering mishaps or natural disasters. It's a doomsday vault.

The event happened six months ago. I was in the vault when I felt a vibration in my chest followed by a violent shaking. It took fifteen minutes or so to pass and for me to regain my footing. When I came back out, everyone was dead--everything was dead. Of course, I was nearly at the North Pole, there wasn't much alive to there to begin with. I'd only learn later just how bad things were.

I gave up after two days of trying to make contact with the mainland--the internet didn't work, the radio didn't work, and the phone didn't work. I thought of all those tales of castaways, and the struggle to decide whether to leave or hunker down. Surely the mainland would realize soon that there was a problem. Rescue was inevitable. But maybe it wasn't--why couldn't I contact them?

Isolation drove me to action three days later. I filled a backpack with canned food and water and headed to the airstrip, pondering the decades-ago bureaucrat who mandated that everyone living at the Svalbard research station could fly a plane--this was a signal moment in contingency planning. As I walked, I glanced over and saw the blinking green LEDs at the vault entrance. Something in the back of my mind flashed instinctively: take seeds. I can't figure out why I thought that; there was no reason to think whatever had devastated the station was global. But I followed the instinct anyway, filling a backpack with seeds before taking off.

Panic set in as I approached Tromsø and couldn't raise anyone in air traffic control. When I landed and saw scenes of devastation everywhere around me, fear turned to existential terror. Almost without thought, I began working my way southward, to lower latitudes, but was met everywhere with the same lifeless tableau.

It has been six months now. I have exhausted all my seeds, sowing them in desperate hope of creating new life. Now I traverse the same paths over and over, looking for sprouts and salvation in equal measure. But everywhere, death and barren fields. I won't starve to death, and I won't die of dehydration, but death is assured: either too little oxygen or too much carbon dioxide. Already I have begun to wheeze.