The Sun will Follow

I miss the sun.

I had to leave Earth to see it again, through armored glass instead of natural atmosphere. Is there such a thing as natural atmosphere anymore?

The old-fashioned mechanical clock continued to tick away the minutes until I finally left the surface, forever. Next to the clock was a window which looked out upon the grounds of Vandenberg Air Force Base, and the small shuttle which will take me up to the Demetria, the last remaining ark.

I could see a dark line outside of the electrified security perimeter, crowds of people camped outside the base looking on as their last hope prepares to lift off. I couldn’t see their faces, and regarded this as a blessing. What more could be said? Sorry that you have to perish as the ecosystem collapses and the food chain with it?

I had been through all of the briefings. I had read the literature. The signs had been there even when I was a child. Ocean-spanning hurricanes which lasted for months. Blights which ravaged crops across entire continents. Droughts which never ended – ever. It took decades of wars and famine for the powers that be to realize that humanity’s time on Earth had come to an end.

“Brian, we are at 98 percent.”

The voice came from the computer console at my desk, the voice of MAC.

“How long?”

“Another ten minutes.”

Ten more minutes for the last of the data to be transferred to the shuttle, along with MAC’s intelligence core. Ten minutes for the last traces of human knowledge and culture which could be saved to be packaged, downloaded, and stored in databanks for future generations yet to exist.

“The crowd is getting restless, Brian.”

I looked out the window again. A ripple seemed to pass through the dark line, though it was probably my imagination.

I looked past the crowds to the distant factories which belched opaque, brown smoke into the sky. It was just a fraction of the combined productive might of the entire industrialized world. Even then, it almost wasn’t enough. Every factory which could build the required material was activated. Every power plant was repurposed to power these factories. Every effort bent toward building, launching, and populating the twenty giant arks which would leave behind the legacy of humanity’s sins. Some of the power plants had previously been decommissioned in favor of more modern, less polluting models years ago, in a more optimistic time. It was now a moot point, wasn’t it? Activate everything to launch our last hope into the sky, and scorch the Earth as surely as the rockets scorched the ground.

I was one of the chosen, the fifteen thousand out of Earth’s ten billion human beings picked to leave as shepherds of humanity’s future. Ensconced on twenty interstellar “arks”, stuffed with the genetic material of every organism that still existed, we will set out for the nearest Earth-like planets with our priceless cargo, leaving a dying world behind.

Leaving so much behind. I reached into my pocket and grasped the pendant I always carried. It depicted a half-sun.

“I don’t think the crowd will be a problem,” I said to MAC. “Security is tight.”

“Tell that to the people at Nellis. I heard they lost a shuttle before they got things under control.”

“How are the security drones doing?”

Right on cue, a riot drone carrying stun weapons passed the window, on its way to reinforce some part of the perimeter deemed by MAC to be vulnerable. Still in reserve were the military drones, with their deadly arsenal. MAC could not use deadly force against humans.

But I could.

“Twenty-three riot drones on patrol, four down for maintenance. Five lethals in reserve, ready to launch. The perimeter is secure.”

“We’re looking good, MAC.”

“That’s an assessment which requires quite a strange perspective under the circumstances.”

I chuckled at MAC’s dry humor. The death of our world was a reality we had lived with for so long, we could joke about it. I silently thanked the unknown programmers who gave life, gave a soul to MAC. Without it, I might have gone insane a long time ago.

The radio crackled.

“That’s it, Knuckles. I’m coming back in for the last time.”

It was Levi, the last of my security contingent. I heard the purr of his armored vehicle outside approach the command center, then abruptly cut out.

I keyed the mike.

“Get in here, Levi. We don’t have much time.”

“On my way.”

Levi was not leaving Earth with me, and he was fine with that. I didn’t ask why, and he didn’t say. He was the only other entity present who could operate the lethal drones. His job was to cover my exit, and he would do it well.

Levi was utterly reliable.

When that was done, his job would be finished, and he would go wherever he had planned to live out the end. Another tech had mentioned something about a family in Israel, but Israel was mostly under water.

I fingered my pendant again. Lara was gone, and I had no one to leave behind. Would the sun someday shine on her grave, even through a scorched sky?

“Brian, the natives are getting restless. I think this thing might go bad.”

“I noticed, Levi. Nellis again?”

“Maybe. I didn’t see any heavy weapons, but it’s not hard to hide them, especially in a crowd that large.”

“Just get in here and man this station.”

I began closing down mainframes as I made the last preparations. I looked outside. The factories continued to belch orange clouds into the sky. It was nearly ten o’clock and the sun was still not visible.

Thump!

The explosion was the first warning I got, before I saw the perimeter fence disappear beneath the dark line.

“Brian, the perimeter has been compromised in five areas. Sending security contingents now.”

MAC’s voice was annoyingly calm. I started sweating as I snapped monitors to security camera view.
People were streaming through holes which had been blasted in the fence.

“They’ve breached the fence! They have explosives!”

“I heard, Levi!” I said as I began spinning up the lethals. “Hurry!”

Another explosion shook the entire facility.

“That was the southern fuel farm,” said MAC. “By my estimates, they will be here in ten minutes. I recommend getting to the shuttle and launching now.”

MAC actually managed to sound perturbed this time, and I knew it was time to go.

“Levi, I’m heading to the shuttle. Get in here as soon as you can!”

“I’m almost there! Good luck, Knuckles.”

I grabbed a knapsack filled with personal items and headed out the door with Levi’s voice following. The building was large, filled with equipment which had been gathering dust over the years after engineers determined that it was of no use to the mission. I was threading my way through aisles of gear toward the exit when a shockwave tore through the room and raised the dust into a choking cloud.

MAC’s voice sounded in my ear.

“They blew the security door. They’re inside, Brian. Get moving!”

I wondered how Levi was doing and quickened my pace. To my left I heard voices – more than one. I heard the lower-pitched whirr of the lethal drones above the roof, but they could not fire at targets inside. Footsteps other than my own echoed inside, racing through the aisles and moving inexorably toward the exit, the one leading to my waiting shuttle. I broke into a run.

I had almost reached the exit when they burst onto the scene. There were three of them, two with guns. The third was a woman. My heart almost stopped.

It was Lara.

One man held a gun on me. The second forced Lara to her knees and pressed the muzzle of his weapon to her temple.

“You!” said the first man. “Give me the codes.”

I paused, looking back and forth from him to Lara.

“What codes?”

“I know all about you, Brian Turek! We know this is your wife.”

He gestured at the second man.

“Give us the codes to the shuttle, and he won’t splatter her brains all over the wall.”

I hesitated, and the man pressed the gun against Lara’s head, causing her neck to bend to her left. Her eyes were very wide, pleading.

“Wait!” I said. I was trying to buy time, but I didn’t know how far away Levi was. “Do you know how to operate that shuttle?”

“Enter the codes, point, click, go, right? I know all about how that shuttle works. Quit stalling!”

I didn’t hear Levi’s weapon fire, but the man holding Lara hostage grew a hole in his forehead. His weapon clattered to the floor followed by his body. The second man started to turn when two holes appeared in his chest. He looked down in astonishment, then folded to the ground.

Levi appeared from my right, the smoke still drifting from his rifle. I had never been so glad to see him.

I ran to Lara, and we embraced tightly.

“I thought you were dead! Your plane…I heard that it went down. What happened?”

“I drove. Brian, I went cross-country. I went to hide with my parents in Denver, like you said. They caught up with me in Las Vegas. I’m so sorry…”

She broke down in tears. How could I blame her for this? I knew that someone might try to use her as leverage, but I didn’t have adequate time to make preparations. Then the reports of her plane going down on its way to Denver amid chaos…
As I held my weeping wife, I suddenly realized that I could not leave. The sun rose with her.

“Let’s go, Lara.”

“Brian, the shuttle will not support both you and her,” said MAC’s voice.

“I know that.”

Lara wiped the tears away with hand and looked at me bewilderingly.

“It’s MAC,” I said. “Hold on. MAC, reset the codes for Levi…”

Levi had reloaded his weapon and was looking at me gravely.

“Don’t do it, Brian,” he said. “There was a very good reason why the commission selected you.”

“My place is here,” I said stubbornly.

Levi lifted his weapon.

“What are you going to do, shoot me?” I asked. “Take the shuttle! Someone should go! Why not you?”

Levi fired.

I flinched, then staggered as I found myself holding Lara’s now dead weight in my arms.

“Lara!”

Lara’s eyes fluttered, and blood flowed freely from the wound in her chest. Just above the wound, I saw the pendant, the other half of the sun I carried. I gently lowered her to the ground.

Levi kept his weapon trained on me.

“You better get going, Knuckles.”

I was shaking in rage as I stared back at him, but his eyes were impenetrable.

Utterly reliable Levi.

I kissed Lara’s cooling lips, set my own pendant on her chest next to hers, and headed toward the exit under Levi’s watchful gaze.

Outside, I could hear the noises of a full riot. Hisses and thumps sounded as the drones fired at the crowd, keeping them at bay. Nearly blinded by my tears, I climbed up the ladder and entered the shuttle.

The launch was anticlimactic. Lights on the console came on as I strapped myself in. I had almost nothing to do as MAC prepared the shuttle for liftoff. There was no countdown, and when the engines fired and pressed my back into the seat, I looked outside and saw Vandenburg falling away, teeming with desperate people. I saw the distant factories still working at full steam despite having nothing useful to do. As the ground fell away and the sky raced toward me, the sun peeked above the filthy atmosphere and greeted my eyes for the first time in years.

A distant flash announced the presence of Demetria, my destination, shining in the sun’s unfiltered glory.


Word count: 1993