Eight Minutes

One last deep breath

“Do you want to watch?” I ask.

“I do,” she says, her voice trembling. “…and I don’t.”

My sister's voice catches as we watch the clock. Her toes curl tight into the blanket, fighting back the fear. I've seen this a hundred times—slow, deep breaths until the panic fades. The others try to mirror her stillness.

I call her sister but, like the rest, she’s not blood—circumstance made us family. The five of us, stowaways, left behind by the chaos. When their questions tumble out, I do my best to piece together a past they don't remember—solemn broadcasts, then panic. I try to explain the simple truth: the sun is dying. Soon darkness will be all we know.

Though they listen intently, their dirty faces still register a hope I can’t share. These children have known only this dying star and our makeshift family. Each day, we sun ourselves at the edge of the domed roof in the late afternoon until it’s safe to slip back inside. In those moments, we savor the breeze and let it fill us. Our eyes study the shapes of the distant mountains until we can describe them from memory.

When they ask, I can’t tell them how my senses went numb, hands shaking. Or how my father’s body doubled over, retching, until he was only spitting blood. Or how he packed his car in frantic haste, leaving me without a word. I can only paint a vague picture—riots, cities ablaze.

It’s then that I remember her, my sister, standing alone, arms up. A tiny figure begging the madness for rescue. We were all alone, I tell them, until we found one another.

Around the world, massive new cities rise up—fortresses built near the bones of the old, designed to protect as life outside will wither. Like Arks meant to save a world, these shelters are a monument to our desperation. Even now, I can feel the blasting in my bones. Canyon-like holes echoed with machinery around the clock as endless lines of earthmovers rattled the old city. Every able hand, every strong back joined the cause.

Inside, it's all false daylight and the timed hiss of manufactured rain. I hear some pay fortunes for a patch of real grass. A whole world paying to pretend nothing's changed. We laugh, picturing their pale faces, as less affluent feet squeak on plastic blades. While outside, the old city bursts with green. Grass and wildflowers poke through every crack, reaching for that dying sun. Inside, they imagine what we touch every day. This wild, forgotten place is our temporary paradise now.

We run full-tilt through the old city, howling like wolves and crazed monkeys in the empty streets. We are the in-betweens, restless missionaries of a forgotten world. Scavengers, we are. We wonder at the absurdity of these buildings left to us. The abandoned skyscrapers still gleam even as vines tear at their crumbling facades. The thoroughfares bathe us in rose, amber, and aqua light. We sniff the fresh air, let it fill us. Each gulp is a precious drink to a wanderer facing a long, parched journey.

Abandoned buildings whisper their secrets, give us their treasures. Over crumbling stairwells, through shattered windows, we dart. Our nimble hands and lithe bodies ignore the empty threats of robot sentries—their metallic chunk-chunk is just a forgotten echo now.

In the silent train station, a young one calls out the Northern Line. I mimic the Southern. Our voices, sharp and clear, ring against the cold marble. Here each of us chooses a destination, faces bright with pretend hope. We know the truth, but this is our play. For a moment, I almost believe.

We each have a specialty—a cook, a gardener, a draftsman, a medic. I’m the teacher and the oldest. My sister is a dancer. Each twirl, a perfect circle in the infinite dust. She bows to our applause, her face alight, as I throw a found bundle of plastic roses at her feet.

Desperate voices from the tunnels ask, "Has it happened?" We don't reply. Like them, we're ghosts now.

Nearly every day from our perch we see them—the ones who will stay outside, clinging to their past. They tend tiny gardens, stubborn patches of green that will never grow to full height. Like ants, they dig their homes deep into the earth. At night, we can see the twinkle of their fires. Do they count the seconds, too? Can they ignore the silent ticking from the clock on the tallest tower? Though it never makes a sound, we hear it in our chests, our heartbeats timed as the numbers fall.

“How long does it take?” my sister asks. She knows the answer. Everyone does.

The sun’s light takes a bit over eight minutes to reach us. This is our place to watch, atop the dome, the old and new worlds sprawled at our feet. Far below, specks move and gather on the old city rooftops. People. I hope they are as prepared as we are. This family, these stowaways, we’ve chosen each other.

As the world braces for the inevitable, we are twisted like stubborn vines, a life built in the high steel of the new city—a home that saved no place for us. Our bodies lean into one another. Behind closed lids, we sear the sun’s shape into our minds, feel the whisper of flames, the heat of its core.

My sister and I crouch along the edge, one eye on the countdown. At eight minutes and sixteen seconds, the clock flashes red. A horn shatters the silence. Everywhere, movement stops. The sun is dead, a derelict shape in the vastness of space. From here, the horizon stretches unbroken, our last shadows long and stark. Sister...I don't know where you were born, but to me, you've always been. You, not the clock, are the heartbeat in my dreams. When I imagine the endless night, it's your hand I seek.

I see my sister close her eyes, her face lifted to the last warmth. Our universe takes one last deep breath.

And with a wink, it's gone.

* * *

Music to read by: Where We’re Going by Hans Zimmer

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Backstory

Truthfully, I’ve been sitting on this story, pushing pixels, noodling on it for a long time. Early drafts had problems so I let it sit dormant.

One major issue was too many technical details. Here are a few snippets from early drafts —

The new city:

Inside the walls, towering screens were erected to mimic daylight with rain and wind machines for weather. Far below ground, pens and stables for livestock. This new world under the dome has most every amenity or some approximation of it. The bells calling people of all religions to worship are splendid. We hear even a small patch of grass is available if you were willing to pay.

Blech. Fooey. The story always needed to stay with the kids and their experience through the narrator’s voice.

I also see writers stumble, myself included, over technobabble:

The sun, at aphelion, is the farthest from us in its orbit it will be all year. The light takes over 500 seconds…

And, finally, I saved you a narrative breakdown of how many days elapse before the earth is too cold for various things – plants, animals, CO2 disruption, etc. Though, Andy Weir would have been proud.

An early reader said I should be prepared for strong reactions. And I’m here for it. Eight Minutes, to me, is about defiance. Resilience, even. At some level, it’s about the haves/have-nots facing the same event and the values they carry into the situation. I don’t care much about the haves in this story, giving them less than a paragraph so we can stay with the kids.

Just to be clear: I’m no prepper. I do, however, like sci-fi/disaster stories that don’t allow humankind to do anything about it…except find a way to survive. I also prefer scrappy, underdog characters that don’t have it all together, haven’t been studying the exact thing that’s about to happen. In doing so, I can keep everyone from being a character in a Roland Emmerich movie.

But, the reason why this story came about at all, is the last line:

And with a wink, it's gone

From day one I had that. Everything else unspooled backward from there.

Hope you enjoyed the story.

-j.