The Price of Survival

I dreamed of her again last night.

There was so little warning. Three previous asteroids had passed Earth at a distance closer than the Moon and had gone completely undetected by us. The wormhole changed everything we thought we knew. Surely, if earth’s future was insecure, it was due to human activity - there was no threat from space. Suddenly, we had less than a week.

I was reviewing images transmitted from our latest deep space probe at the edge of the solar system when I discovered it. The images were so unusual, they had been kicked up to me. I called an emergency meeting with the Administrator and the President. It was decided that it would do no good to cause panic, so the news of the impending assault of asteroids through the wormhole was not made public.

Cassie cried when I told her what I had been working on in secret. Studying the wormhole, I had designed a device to mimic the exact vibrations and create a stable field that would allow us to step through to another world on the other side of the galaxy. “You’re not bringing that in the house,” she declared. “We will not survive alone while our friends die.”

The day approached - August 13, 2019. I begged Cassie to come with me, but she was adamant. How could I start a new life without her? I declared I would never leave her just as the sirens sounded.

Last night, I dreamed of her. For a few moments, the synaptic firings of my cerebral cortex conjured her face, her smile and those clear, bright eyes whose gaze could penetrate to my very soul and leave me wordlessly enraptured. I awoke to the sound of my sobs echoing in the emptiness of my cowardly existence.


Word Count - 299
Daily Flash Fiction Contest Entry