the.sun
They had been talking about it for months, having all the scientists come on the news shows and the talk shows, talking about the sun. How the sun had a lifespan, just like us, and that their calculations were telling them that maybe the sun wasn’t everlasting like we thought.
It was all hubbub at first, all ‘crazy scientists’ and everyone just laughing it off. One of the worst parts of the human condition is its propensity towards immortality, even though it knows how mortal it is. We convince ourselves that the only thing that will kill us is old age. We went on convincing ourselves until the solar flares.
They were vicious bombs of fire that spread for miles in all directions, landing in random places and affecting everyone around them. Those same scientists, they became the heroes, the ones that would tell us what to do. It was sad when we all realized that they had no answers, only facts.
“The sun is starting to waste away, it is becoming decrepit.” I saw one egg-headed old man say on The Today Show. “Slowly it will waste away until it is a fraction of its original size, and its force of gravity will falter. It will fall just as we will.” And then, like always, people would ask frantically, “How do we stop it? What can we do? What will happen to us?” And the scientist man, he would shrug, actually shrug, and say, “I don’t know, but it will be exciting to see.”
And so, that was life for a while. Everyone living in fear that your town would be next, or you were near the town that was going to be next. It rained fire, off and on, and everyone was afraid to leave their homes. Ryan and I, we knew it was stupid to hide in a house that could burn down and bury you, so we went on with our lives to much less crowded streets. Rich people built “fire shelters,” and hid in those too. And I couldn’t help but take a step back and watch as one of the most far-reaching and innovative races became obsolete in the most sad and pathetic way.
It was Thursday night, and I was making stuffing in the microwave, while Ryan played random punk songs on his guitar in the living room. I could see him through the breakfast bar, and randomly would say things like “I can’t believe in the doomsday era we live in that our building is still asking for rent. I mean, we’re all gonna be dead soon! You think they’d realize by now that money don’t mean shit.”
“Money will always be our one and only god,” Ryan says, looking down at his unplugged electric guitar, strumming a string here and there. “I thought science replaced money once we knew the sun was going to explode,” I say. He shakes his head. “You can’t buy food with science,” he mumbles, distracted in his string-picking. I had just stirred the stuffing and put it back in the microwave when the whole place shook like nothing I’d ever felt before and I fall onto the linoleum. “FUCK,” I yell, and I look up to see Ryan watching me, fear in his eyes, as I lay on the ground. He is cradling his guitar, sitting on the couch. I crawl over to him, the earth still shaking so hard, all of our furniture is sliding across the floor. I worry about the TV, my computer, my CD player. “Let’s get out of here!” Ryan yells, and I run to our room to grab my manual camera. I run back out and Ryan opens the front door; we run without closing or locking it, running to the parking lot until we are sitting on the hood of his car, sitting in the black of night. We both sit there, heaving, holding our creative weapons of choice.
“What the fuck is going on?!” I scream, “There’s no earthquakes in Virginia!” Ryan is still breathing hard, and his body shakes from the fear of this unfamiliar world, from the running, from the cold. “It’s ending,” he says in this voice of clarity, in a voice I’ve never heard him speak before. “The sun has gone, and we are falling.”
Hearing him say it, I can feel the dread rising up through my body. I imagine it is black and sticky, like tar, like the bad guy in Ferngully that always made me feel sick. Thinking of all the things I never got to do, I start to cry. “THIS IS TRULY THE PROOF WE NEED,” I scream. I am a crazy person now. “GOD IS NON-EXISTENT, AND IF ANYTHING SHOULD TELL YOU THAT, IT IS THIS FALL OF HUMANITY. IT IS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH. IT IS FIRE RAINING FROM THE SKIES!!! THERE IS NO GOD, ONLY DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!”
I imagine blood as my tears; I imagine my yelling has filled the sky with realizations, with people nodding along to my truths. Ryan is a shocked statue, staring at me with a gaping hole for a mouth. “I never got to see Europe Ryan,” I plead, “I never got to visit Amsterdam and eat a pot brownie in a coffee shop.” He smiles sadly, “I never got to ask you to marry me.” Oh the pain is too much to bear! I hold him then, hugging him with my camera dangling from my hand. “Ask me now!” I whisper loudly, “ask me and I’ll say yes.” He looks at me strangely. “Why would you say yes?”
“Because I love you!” I say fiercely and kiss him violently on his cheek, his neck, his face. As we hold each other so hard, like we’re afraid the gravity can give out at any moment, I watch people over his shoulder pour out of their homes. They are all disheveled and scared, looking at the sky. They walk slow and murmur like zombies, unsure and bloodied at the world’s current state.
“Time has stopped!” Someone yells from their third floor apartment. “The seconds aren’t moving!” We all look up and gasp; I start to wonder when the end will actually come. “That’s so weird,” Ryan whispers, “how can we be moving and going about our lives without time?” I shrug, “I guess life is filled with stuff we don’t know.” It is getting colder and colder, and Ryan and I hold each other so close. “I’m glad we get to die together,” I whisper, “I never want to let you go.” Ryan is chattering and I wonder why we stayed outside. “I love you,” his shivering mouth says, and I kiss him as hard as I can. We are kissing, and all around us it gets brighter. We are sweating now instead of shivering, and I stop our kiss to sneeze. Everyone is looking at the sky, like always, but the new brightness that hurts my eyes makes me wonder, so I look up too. There it is, a solar flare aiming right for us. It’s a ray of sunshine, about to kill you and your entire family. “I guess this is goodbye,” I say to no one in particular, and I immediately wish I had said something a little less corny. Ryan and I, we look at each other and in his eyes I see hope, and I realize why I loved him so much. And then the light engulfs us, until we can no longer see, or hear, or think.