The Death of the Sun

July 14th, 4033

        I can see the stars today.

        Yesterday there was still enough gray left in the sky to cover them up. I should've stopped going outside a while ago, but I have to watch it. The slow decay. The descent into that endless inky black we've all been waiting for.

        All things considered, stepping outside today was almost nice. There was no wind, only that stale frozen air. It reminded me of sitting under a tree, reading a book while snow fell around the house I grew up in. I remember that day; snow was rare back then. I remember waking up to my mother telling me school had been canceled. The temperature was twelve degrees Fahrenheit and snow had begun to fall the previous night.

        My heart jolted and my first thought was to grab this wonderful book with this one really beautiful paragraph smack in the middle of a snowy January night setting. I remember racing outside, book in hand, shoes and socks forgotten, clad only in flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeve tee-shirt. I sat under that tree in front of my house and reread that one beautiful paragraph over about thirty times. It was cold, but not so cold that I couldn't get up and walk back inside when I was finished reading. Not so cold that I had to wrap myself in every blanket I owned and still feel a stiff chill gripping me an hour later.

        Not that cold.

        I miss those times. Being so excited to see snow, because it only visited so rarely. Running out from under a tree barefoot, feeling that twelve degrees Fahrenheit was akin to arctic parameters.

        Today before venturing outside, I dressed in thermal long johns, fleece joggers, a cotton-knit sweater, jeans, a faded drug rug, red and black checked fluffy pajama pants, gray and blue sweatpants, a windbreaker, a pair of black snow pants (recycled from their previous Colorado owner), a blue and gold letterman jacket, a pair of compression socks, a pair of fuzzy Christmas socks, and an insulating pair of crocheted socks handmade with five hues of blue. I stuffed my socked feet into a pair of tan hiking boots, wound three scarves around my mouth and nose, two scarves around my neck securing the facial scarves close to my chin, donned four beanies starting with the tightest-fitting and finishing off with a loose neon orange toboggan. After this I wrapped a cream colored thermal blanket neatly around my back, weaving it under my arms, and tying it tightly behind my neck. I repeated this process in reverse with an identical blanket, securing it at my throat. Lastly, the gloves. First, a tight green pair of polyester, next a fuzzy dark blue pair ending just below the spot on my wrist with the seahorse tattoo. After this, a pair of black leather gloves, and finally, a pair of snow mittens (again, courtesy of Mr. Colorado).

        All this to say, I spent roughly 13 minutes outside. I came back inside about an hour ago. Back inside to the dim, stifling smoky air. I only started regaining feeling in my fingers about 10 minutes ago, when I started writing this.

        13 minutes. And yet over an hour later, I'm still shoved into all these layers and shivering down to my spine.

        All the layers minus the mittens and work gloves. Details. Just small things. But the small things are keeping us going. Like knowing I spent roughly 13 minutes outside. It's important to keep track of the small details. They're all we have left to latch on to. I know the ragtag outfit must sound like an asinine attempt at survival gear, but really, it's not like I could expect my golden-years tour of Houston, Texas to end with the sun collapsing in on itself. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

        If I'm being completely honest, and I will be because the only people left to read this are more likely to die tomorrow than drag themselves out of the Sauna to find this, I took this trip because I knew something was wrong. The nine months leading up to my trip were filled with news reports about the rapidly advancing space-travel technology. Every day it seemed some new piece was added to the puzzle, and within a few months it seemed not only possible, but likely that the human race would soon journey to other galaxies, and without that nasty Time-Trouble.

        No sir, no more Time-Trouble for the humans. At least that's what I call it. Time-Trouble. The Trouble being that getting to another galaxy tends to take a lot of time and humans don't live forever. Well, no more Time-Trouble for us. NASA really pulled out the stops putting their workers into overtime this year, I guess, because those science sizzlers figured out a way to speed up the process without any damaging effects to on-board life. Two months ago, going to another galaxy became as feasible as taking a summer vacation.

        I may have been wearing glasses since the second grade, and that may have been over sixty years ago, but I'm not blind. I saw the news reporters stumbling over story after story about new ground-breaking space travel technology and I knew something was coming. NASA's last ground-breaking discovery before all those news reports started up was about forty years ago. An AI-programmed spacecraft finally identified signs of life on another planet, in another galaxy. After all these years of looking.

        The first AI crafts launched hundreds of years ago, thousands scattered to the stars. I don't know what the politicians thought they'd do with confirmation of alien life, but I sure as shit know what they did with it. Hid out in their fancy bunkers, conducted secret meetings, did everything they could to hide it from the world. I guess they were scared the little green men would be a threat to their seats of power. Just another case of history repeating itself - little children running scared from what they don't know. But something like that, it doesn't just stay hidden. 

        Some young idealist with a mop of curling brown hair and a five year career at NASA hacked into his boss' database after hearing (from his hidden position on the toilet in the staff restroom) that some big discovery had been made. After reading the discovery file, and then the subsequent files pertaining to "global security" (courtesy of an apparently impressive hacker friend), Mophead leaked the discovery file; poor kid was exasperated with the government for their willingness to hide information of such magnitude. No one ever interviewed Mophead. I found that strange, too. About a week after the file was leaked, a news reporter announced to the world that Mophead had taken his own life. Personally, I've smelled the rank stink of smoking shit before, and boy they must've been on a diet of beans and cheese for weeks to build that bonfire. 

        People talked a lot about space travel after that. Some even publicly volunteered to be test subjects for cryo-genesis tanks that would allow passengers to travel in a state of stasis until reaching the alien planet. Our government shut that talk down real quick. Word was, funding at NASA took a serious cut. News was, another singer was rising in popularity. Same old distraction tactics from news stations paid for by the politicians.

        When news stories about space travel started up again, I thought, "Those delicate little orchids finally decided to leave their caves." I thought maybe they'd seen a profit potential in alien exploration that outweighed the political risks. And then another news report came on. And then another. And I started to smell that bonfire again.

        Then they solved that age old Time-Trouble. And no one took a trip to prove it. Almost like the Really Important People were waiting to use it. Almost like something was coming. Something was coming, and the science sizzlers were cracking their knuckles and beating their keypads and racing to meet it with scientific savvy. 

        So, I booked a flight. All of my animals (I've had many animal family members over the years) made it to the Rainbow Bridge years ago. Mitzy, my black and white Pitbull/Lab mix I found abandoned as a three week old puppy, was the last one to leave me. Nearly four years ago now. My daughter was busy with her new grandson, my son busy planning an Alaskan cruise for his and his wife's thirtieth anniversary. I did bring my husband along for the ride. The ashes I didn't spread along our farm I keep tucked away tight in a bulbous gold-plated locket between my gravity-riddled breasts.

        Long story short, I didn't have much going on aside from the news reports. And I was tired of just smelling the bonfire. Something was happening, I could feel it in the wind, and I wanted to see the pyre the smoke was rising from. 

        The day I arrived was the day the first six of the newly designed ships took off. I walked out of the airport just in time to watch them shoot up into the cumulus clouds. Later, in my hotel room, the news reporters told me that nearly every person on those ships was an important politician. The ones who weren't were pilots, and, of course, the world's richest. If that don't make you smell the smoke, I'm not sure what would. America, China, Russia, Germany, England, and several other countries were left without presidents, queens, prime ministers, you name it. The world had lost its leaders. But a talk show host had a new diet recommendation. 

        The next morning, I showed up at the NASA command center for my guided tour, one member in a group of thirty. I remember feeling hot getting out of bed that morning. The sun looked bigger than normal, all traces of the previous day's cumulous clouds gone. Just a swollen ball of fire staring down from a blue eternity. I remember sweating as I walked through the front doors with the tour group.

        And I remember the sudden blast of heat that slammed me and about twenty more of us flat onto our faces while the glass doors shattered at our backs. I remember how quiet it got after that, and seeing everyone sort of  limp their bodies toward some sort of seated position. Crisped faces turned to the door, and we saw.

        The sun was all that was left of the sky. Tendrils of brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows lapped through the sky. If it had been a snapshot, it would've looked like a beautiful work from Van Gogh. As it was, the tendrils moved constantly, seeming to drip the way fire does when it's been lit awhile, conjuring to mind looking into the mouth of a dragon. Even then, in the midst of all that blinding light, I could tell the light was starting to fade. Slowly. But it was fading. I remember sitting there and just thinking "Those damn politicians finally set the sky on fire." But of course it wasn't them. They were just rich and well connected enough to know when to get the hell out of dodge and have the money to move those mountains. 

        I don't know how long we sat there. It felt like the whole world was holding it's breath. 

        Eventually, our thirty person entourage of red and peeling flesh just picked ourselves up off the floor and retreated into the building. None of us spoke, deciding to do this; we simply knew our universe had cracked open and the only thing to do was hunker down. For a while, we thought we had a chance. Of all the places we could've been when this happened, we were at NASA command center after our Time-Trouble had come to an end. What good fortune! Wrong. 

        The last of the new ships had taken off with the last Important People and pilots while I slept in my hotel room. Everything that survived the heat blast was so encrypted DaVinci himself couldn't have cracked the codes. And we didn't have DaVinci. We had a thirty-something tour guide, a handful of science geeks fresh out of college, a teenaged girl with her mid-aged suburban-type parents, a group of seventy-something bald historians, an art history professor and her aloof husband, and a freelance writer from Colorado. Also known as, Mr. Colorado. Staff had apparently cleared out before our arrival. Thankfully for me, Mr. Colorado came straight from the airport, luggage still in tow. What he thought he'd do with snow gear in July in Houston, Texas I'll never know; it wasn't long after that fire was finally gone from the sky, leaving us with the empty dull gray, that our tour guide found Mr. Colorado in what would soon be known as the Sauna, hanging from the ceiling with a crooked neck. 

        The Sauna became necessary after the sun left us. A large room with a sunken den style center, the Sauna used to be used for testing smaller equipment. Now that sunken center houses our new sun. We rotate shifts so someone is always awake to rip another board off another desk and toss it into the fire if our sun is looking hungry. This new sun is much more demanding than our original. We crowd around it day and night, remembering how warm our old sun kept us. And how we thought it could never die. 

        It's called the Sauna as a joke. In truth, it's only about forty degrees warmer there than it is outside, the open windows greedily suck out our heat along with boundless thick tendrils of smoke, and soon that won't be enough. We were lucky to have found the employee lockers stuffed with  warmer pieces of clothing, and the staff kitchen stocked with food, but no clothes can warm a world without a sun. And the food is dwindling even faster than those last streaks of gray light.

        Some of the others spend their days toiling over the computers that still function, trying desperately to open a ship we can't board. But it's just that: desperation. Even if we board a ship, the ones left behind don't have the technology to get us to another galaxy in a matter of weeks. And their power reserves could only give us heat for so long before giving out. Our sun left us and we weren't among the rich and well connected and they left us too. Some nights (well, I guess it's always night now) I hear the science geeks talk about their regrets, things they wish they'd done. 

        Me? I wish with all my heart I had stayed home, an hour away from my kids in opposite directions. I smelled the fire, sure. But only an idiot goes looking for shit. And that's sure what I got. I'd give my bulbous gold-plated locket that hasn't left my neck in twenty years to the devil if he'd give me another hour with my kids, back home on our farm.

        But at least now I got the stars. That gray covered them up for a while, but they didn't leave us. They'll stay with us until the end. It can't be but a couple more weeks now, probably less with the food supply getting as low as it is. So even though it'll freeze me quicker, I have to keep going outside, to see the way the sky keeps changing. Maybe tomorrow I'll remember some of that beautiful paragraph from that wonderful book and I can repeat it to the stars and remember how nice twelve degrees Fahrenheit felt with the sun shining on my face. Maybe my kids will look at those same stars and miss me. Everything we've ever known is gone or going quick. But at least we have the stars again.

        - Amanda McKinney