PROLOGUE - HENRY
DAY 0
“We always assume that the world we will die in will basically be the same as the one we are born into. I don’t think that’s true anymore …”
“Jesus, Henry,” Emily said with a smile, as she adjusted Henry’s bow tie. “You need to lighten up a bit. OK?”
Henry stood at the window. “I just honestly don’t know what’s happening anymore. Everything is just getting weirder and weirder. And this whole ceremony thing today just feels like a goddamn joke. I mean, you don’t give something like this to someone who barely made it through high school and did like two weeks of college. You give it to someone like Miles … People with actual MIT Doctorates. The people who did the heavy lifting on the G-Vision project after I left. And besides, nobody cares about degrees and made-up titles. Shit … You know what? This is pointless, we should just tell them we’re not coming and stay home.”
“Yeah, ok, sure, now will you just try and relax, please?” She tightened the final knot in his tie.
Henry worked two fingers into his collar, so Emily grabbed his hand, pulled it out, and kissed it. “Hey … You’re not suffocating, you’re just not good at these things.”
Henry relented, “Are we even sure that it’s still happening?”
“Why? Because of the murder? They obviously know that you worked for him at G-Vision, so they’ll probably have like a moment of silence or something, but I can’t see how Alex Gardner being murdered has anything to do with it.”
“Yeah,” Henry sighed. “I guess you’re right. I mean, I really didn’t like the guy. But even with all of my criticism of what he did in the past year, he certainly didn’t deserve to get murdered.”
Emily knew not to interrupt on the rare occasion when her husband actually verbalized some of his feelings, so she just listened. “There’s just so much hate right now. Not just against AI and technology. It’s everywhere. It’s like a burning rage in the heart of goddamn everything. And it just keeps getting worse. How the hell do you fix something like that? How could it ever get better again?”
Emily stopped adjusting his suit and turned to him. “People will find a way, ok? Humanity will figure it out, and things will balance out. It always does.”
“I’m ready!” Amy said as she raised her arms and twirled her dress with an overly dramatic entrance into the room.
“And just in time!” Emily looked at her and smiled, then turned her head to Henry, as if she was trying to telepathically broadcast “See this face that I’m making? This is the face that a teenage girl needs to see from her parents when she walks into a room in a pretty dress.”
The broadcast did not reach its target.
Amy walked to Henry and hugged his chest. “You’ll do great, Dad.”
Henry raised an arm and half-patted, half-scrubbed her hair, to which Emily rolled her eyes.
“Jeez, Dad. What the hell, man?”
“Sorry, I …” Henry awkwardly said, as Emily jumped in. “Honey, just go wait in the car. Your dad and I will be right there, ok?”
“Yeah, alright. Can I start it?”
“NO!” they immediately proclaimed in perfect unison.
“Fine …” she said with a snarky tone, which teenage girls reserve specifically for such occasions.
“Thank you!” Emily said as Amy walked out, “We’ll be right down! We love you! You look beautiful! You … And … she’s gone.”
Henry pulled out his cards from his jacket’s inner pocket and started mumbling to himself, “I would like to thank the faculty and staff at Yale University for their recognition …”
“Honey,” Emily grabbed his face and stared into his eyes. “Enough. You’re fine, everything’s fine. Today is your big day. Please try to find some optimism and have some fun.”
“You should know me better by now.”
“You’re right. Then at least pretend to. That’ll also work.”
Henry lowered his eyes, smiled, and mouthed “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Dr. Henry Wallace … I like the sound of that.” She smiled.
Soon after the car found the best route from Boston to New Haven and started driving, Amy pulled out her Grandad’s old Walkman and her Mini Apex tablet.
“Is that for school?” Emily inquired from the passenger seat.
“School sucks.”
“Yeah, well … that’s not what I asked, but please be sure to mention that to the dean of students when we get to Yale.”
“It’s actually just an Apex reader version of an analog book.” To which both her parents widened their eyes with surprise. “It’s just a Sci-fi novel. It’s by this guy, Parker Evans or Owens or something … It’s not great. But I liked how he talks about how, like, writing is a way for him to feel connected to the world. Like when someone reads him and feels the things he wrote about because they felt it too. And maybe that way they won’t feel as alone. I don’t know. Somehow these analogs always feel outgunned by regular ones.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, sweetie,” Emily said with a smile.
“You do?” Henry replied. “I thought you loved analogs.”
“Well, yeah. I do. But I mean, when I ask it to generate something that’s just for me, the AI is just much more consistent at hitting the right notes. It just always knows exactly what I want at every moment. It doesn’t have to bother itself with writing a best-seller that everyone would like, just with something that I would.”
Henry replied with his trademark contemplative silence.
“Here, take this for example.” Emily turned on the car’s AI media center and asked, “Please generate one hour of whatever music you think we will enjoy most right now.”
“I love how you’re always so polite to it and say please.” Amy laughed.
“Yeah, well, when the robot uprising happens, you two are going to wish you did the same.” Emily smiled back at her through the rear-view mirror.
The AI media center started playing “an hour-long classical piece, featuring a solo piano, in the style of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, with a calming atmosphere, utilizing similar chord progressions and melodic motifs, in the key of C-sharp minor.”
“Tell me that’s not perfect right now,” Emily said, not even trying to hide her smug smile.
Henry smiled back.
“So, Dad. Do I need to start calling you Dr. Dad from now on?”
Henry smiled. “No, Dad is just fine.”
“It’s just an honorary doctorate, sweetie.” Emily said with a smirk, “If it were a real one, I’m sure you would have.”
Amy laughed quietly as she put the Walkman’s headphones on and pressed “Play”. Listening to the soundtrack she had generated and converted to it as she read.
“So, “Henry turned to Emily, “Alex Gardner being murdered is kind of huge. Do they know who did it?”
“I heard there was video footage of some famous conspiracy nut shooting him in the face, but I don’t think they caught him yet. Apparently, he’s hauled up in one of G-Vision’s top-secret facilities, threatening to blow the place up.”
“Shit … you see? That’s exactly what I meant when I …” Henry said, just as a large explosion rocked the car and caused a large fireball to rise just over the tree line to the south.
“What the hell?” Emily blurted out as Amy quickly took off her headphones, and all three of their gazes were transfixed on the cloud of smoke that was rising.
“Dad?” Amy turned and looked at Henry as her head leaned forward, and her eyes were starting to turn red.
“What? What is it, sweetie?” He said, just as all of the lights inside the car flickered and then went dead.
“Em!” Henry raised his voice, then quickly grabbed the steering wheel, which was stiff but still usable. He stomped the brakes, but it had no effect on the car, which was locked on 68 Mph on the left lane of the Massachusetts Turnpike.
“D … Dad?” Amy said again, this time her voice was quieter, and it was clear from her expression that she was having trouble breathing.
“Em, I can’t stop the car!” A pickup truck at the other side of the highway ran into the divider, causing it to take off in a violent corkscrew motion and land on top of another car.
“It’s ok, I’ve got you baby, don’t worry!” Emily said, as she unbuckled her seatbelt and wriggled over to the back seat so she could hold Amy.
“Goddamnit, Em! What the hell are you doing?” Henry watched the cars ahead of him crash violently into each other in a pile-up of at least five cars. He barely had a second to react as he pulled hard on the steering wheel to try to get them to the right lane without crashing into anyone.
Amy was wheezing and crying as Emily held her head to her chest.
“I’m going to try to slow the car on the divider!” Henry shouted. Amy raised her head and locked eyes with her dad as a loud “thud” shook all of them, creating a beautiful display of bright orange sparks that were flying everywhere behind Emily’s head.
All Henry had a chance to shout was “Hold on …” as the two cars in front of them rammed into each other, causing the one on the right to veer into their lane and hit the divider in front of them. There was no escape from a head-on collision.
Time slowed down …
...
When Henry opened his eyes, there was smoke and chaos all around them. He moved his face and turned his head towards the back seat as blood ran all over it. It was clear to him that none of the airbags went off.
Amy was unconscious in the back seat. There was blood everywhere, but Henry couldn’t tell whose it was or where it came from.
It took Henry a few more seconds to realize that Emily wasn’t there.
He turned his head back again and saw that the front windshield was completely shattered. He looked out through the gaping hole to see what was happening outside. Henry tried to stabilize himself and focus his view when the image of Emily’s body, lying on the road, coalesced in front of him. At that moment, he was paralyzed. Not from the crash, or the injury, or even from what he was looking at, which was a scene pulled directly from the depths of his worst possible nightmares. His brain simply wasn’t capable of issuing a command that could make any sense.
Loud explosions kept going off in the distance, and the screaming of nearby crash survivors rang in his ears as if they were directed straight at him. Yet, in between all of them, there was a silence. A silence that had an almost palpable unfamiliar nature to it. He just couldn’t understand why or what it was.
After a few seconds, Henry was snapped back into reality by the sound of gasping coming from the back seat. He crawled back to Amy, who was injured and disoriented. She looked at him with tears and blood all over her scared and trembling head. Her mouth was open, and she pointed to her throat when it became clear to Henry that she was having an Asthma attack. She hadn’t had one of those in years. Not since she got the Digital Vento implant.
“Honey, did you bring an inhaler?” He asked, but he already knew the answer, since she had stopped carrying one.
She shook her head. Crying. At that moment, she was just a little girl who didn’t want her father to get mad at her.
“It’s okay, baby,” Henry said as he held her close. “Just try and stay calm and take nice, slow breaths.” He turned his torso halfway for a moment and tried to open the door. It was either locked or stuck or both.
But her breaths emanated the sound of gurgling blood, as they got shallower and slower, and her head began to slowly drop.
Henry was sobbing as he held her tighter. “No, come on … Breathe for me, baby … please just breathe.”
Without even feeling like he had any control over what he was doing, Henry took Amy’s limp hand, lifted it up, and kissed it.
PROLOGUE - SARAH
DAY 0
The morning started with a terrible migraine.
Sarah’s torso was leaning out of the second-story window of her former childhood bedroom, trying half-heartedly to keep the cigarette smoke from seeping inside. An effort that seemed pointless given the harsh smell coming from the billowing plumes that rose in the distance. She gazed to the side towards Bedford Avenue and watched the commotion forming. A small group of men was running up and down, shouting and talking to each other with grave and concerned faces. A congregation was starting to assemble at the steps of the “Kolot Achynu” synagogue, as a loud shout rose in the distance. “Shema Israel!”
Sarah looked at her Apex-mini, only to see its dead black surface reflect her worried expression back at her. She tried resurrecting her electronic companion by tapping it, shaking it, and pressing down for several seconds on the hard reset button.
Nothing worked.
As she flicked the lit cigarette onto the street, those nagging, conflicting voices came at it in her head again. ‘Could this be a sign? Is this the work of HaShem? Is he angry with me because I didn’t do something like I was supposed to?’ As the familiar pull toward catastrophe took over, Sarah found herself clenching her fists and her jaw as tight as she could.
She couldn’t stop herself. Not really. Not until her fingernails drove into the skin. Until it hurt her enough to let go.
“Sarah!” Mendel’s voice sounded through the door, jolting her from the stream of thoughts that washed over her. “Come down for breakfast before Dad gets mad. Or at least before he gets madder.”
Sarah walked downstairs only to find everyone already at the table. She went into the kitchen, washed her hands with the silver Natla cup that was always there, and quickly skimmed through the mandatory “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us concerning the washing of the hands.”
She hurried back, sat down at the table, and glanced at her father. Although tradition dictated that they remain silent until he had blessed the bread, the tension in the air spoke volumes, as a mutual exchange of silent judgment left Sarah acutely aware of the chasm that had grown between them.
After the bread was blessed, the family began to eat.
Sarah looked up at the light fixture hanging over the dining room table. It was off, which struck her as odd, considering it was Shabbat morning, and no one was meant to turn off the light that had been left on prior to Shabbat until the evening.
Hillel, who, at 19, was the oldest sibling after Sarah, was sitting next to her. He turned to her and said, “Yeah, it looks like there’s a blackout in the whole neighborhood. Weird.”
“It must be an overload, because of the cold,” Mendel said. “Don’t be an idiot,” Hillel responded, “that could only happen if a lot of people suddenly used more electricity, and no one in the neighborhood would do that during Shabbat.”
“Some human error, maybe?” Ze’ev, Mendel’s twin, asked. To which Mendel replied with a condescending sneer. “Those systems have been fully autonomous for years now.”
“It’s probably just a power line that fell from the storm.” Their Father said, without raising his head from his plate.
“Hmmph.” Malka, Sarah’s paternal grandmother, sneered and set her fork down deliberately. “A father’s ears should be as open as his mouth, Daniel. Your boys aren’t children anymore - their eyes see things ours don’t. Maybe if we spent more time listening to the young instead of telling them what they’re seeing …” She let the words hang, her eyes twinkling with the particular wisdom of a grandmother who had seen enough generations to know better.
Daniel’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. You didn’t argue with Malka, not even if you were the head of the household.
As her family debated the cause of the blackout, Sarah’s focus ebbed and flowed. Her mind became tethered to the delicate knitted pattern of the white tablecloth. The same one that had always been here, in the same house, belonging to the same family from the same community. The nostalgia that was infused in this small triviality transported her to a time when this had been her entire universe. Encapsulating all of the wonder that the world had to offer.
But beneath the familiar feelings lay a growing dissonance of two realities that existed simultaneously. Where everything had shifted and evolved in ways she couldn’t fully grasp, while at the same time, here, at this moment, it might as well have been the same day. A day she was now visiting as an observer, a ghost drifting through memories.
After the family had finished eating, the Rabinowitz women cleared and cleaned the table. During the ruckus of leftovers and plates moving back and forth between them, A man entered with a stern expression. “Daniel, we need to speak at once!” he called. Sarah’s father went over and spoke to him in the foyer. The man was familiar, but Sarah did not know his name; she only knew that he was a friend of her father’s and, like him, was considered to be a distinguished member of the Williamsburg Hasidic community.
Sarah’s mind began racing Something big must have happened. Maybe one of the elders died. Maybe it was that bastard Froom … God forgive me. I didn’t mean that … that he …
Her chest tightened as memories of grubby hands and the smell of mothballs and old books invaded her thoughts. She stood paralyzed. No … this was different. Something foreign flooded her mind, but she couldn’t understand what it was, nor could she make it go away. Her eyes were moving. She looked at her hands and saw that she was gripping the plate so hard that it started to crack and cut through her skin. Sarah knew that she was supposed to be terrified, but she wasn’t. This was a different sensation. One that she did not recognize or could even explain. Her lips were mumbling something incoherent. She closed her eyes and waited for it to …
“Sarah!!”
“48 …” Sarah blurted out, as she finally snapped out of the trance state she had apparently fallen into; her mother, grandmother, and two younger sisters were staring at her, faces tight with concern.
“Are you okay? You just stood there, not moving …” her mother said. Sarah shook her head, muttering something about just being tired. She looked down. Blood on her hands where the cracked plate broke through the skin.
Sarah climbed the stairs to the upstairs bathroom; her bleeding hand cradled against her chest. The faucet sputtered and coughed when she turned it, managing only a weak stream before stopping completely. She turned it off and on again a few more times, but nothing more came out.
Using the little water she had, Sarah managed to clean the cut, fishing through the medicine cabinet for the brown bottle of antiseptic she knew her mother always kept.
A gentle knock broke her concentration. “Sarah’le?” Her grandmother’s voice, soft as worn velvet, came through the door. “Let me help you, Bubbeleh.”
“I’m fine, Bubby.” Sarah pressed a cotton ball against the cut, noticing an excessive amount of skin that, for some unexplained reason, had started peeling away from her hands. “I can manage.”
“I know. I know. You always could …” There was a pause, then the soft thud of what Sarah imagined was her Bubby’s forehead leaning on the door as she quietly said, “But sometimes it’s nice to let someone else do the managing, no?”
Sarah sat down, her back against the cool door. “Not everything needs managing, Bubby.”
“No?” Her grandmother’s laugh was gentle. “In this family? Everything needs managing. Your Zaidy, may his memory be a blessing, used to say that even HaShem needs a little help managing sometimes.”
Despite herself, Sarah smiled. “That sounds like heresy, Bubby.”
“Maybe. But he said it with love. Like everything else.” Another pause. “Like you do, Sarah’le. Even when you question, even when you doubt, the questions themselves - they’re prayers too, you know. Different kinds of prayers, but still …”
Sarah’s throat tightened. She wanted to ask, But what if the questions never stop? But couldn’t bring herself to actually say it.
A commotion outside caught her attention. Sarah rose and moved to the small, frosted window and pushed it open slightly. Through the gap, people scattered across the street, running from something - or someone. Then, a man in a dark coat, his arm raised skyward, something glinting in his hand.
Sarah barely had time to register what it was before the first shot cracked through the air. She dropped to the floor, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Sarah??” Her grandmother’s voice had gone sharp and high.
Two more shots, closer this time. Sarah pressed herself against the bathroom floor, the antiseptic bottle rolling away forgotten, her cut hand throbbing in unison with her racing pulse.
“SARAH! LET ME IN!”
Sarah crawled to the door and turned the lock. Malka slipped inside, settling beside her on the cold tiles. She looked at her grandmother and saw something in her face she hadn’t seen before – a deep, unsettling recognition. It was almost as if Sarah could sense what her grandmother was about to say, right before she said it.
“I never thought it would come to this,” Malka whispered, her eyes fixed on the window. “Not here. All my life, these streets, this community … it was always our sanctuary.”
Sarah found herself transfixed on her grandmother’s face, not on the words spilling from her lips, but on the strange wave of disassociation that washed over her. As she sat on the cold bathroom floor, the chill seeping through her clothes, her grandmother, her bubby, the only Rabinowitz she had stayed close to, was moving away from her. As if a rift that wasn’t there before had now opened and occupied the space between them.
“EVERYONE DOWNSTAIRS!” Her father’s voice thundered from below. “NOW! GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!”
PROLOGUE - JIA
DAY 0
The Earth just hung there. A dark sphere. Seemingly lifeless and as insignificant as the rest of the planets inhabiting this galaxy. As if a thick, unyielding blanket was placed over it. Like the one that you would use to extinguish a rogue brush fire.
Jia tried to mentally go back to her training in order to figure out how to react, but there was nothing in the Commander’s manual that could have ever prepared her for this. There was no section titled “What to do when you look at the earth, and there’s nothing but darkness.”
Looking at it from the monitors inside the G-Vision’s Carl Sagan research base, she assumed that there was something wrong with the instruments. But now that she’d stepped outside, she was seeing it with her own eyes. And it was an image that defied all comprehension.
Not really sure of what to do, Jia ran a quick vitals check through her spacesuit. Everything checked out. If she was losing her mind, there was no physical sign of it that manifested anywhere else.
She opened up a communication line back to the base’s AI.
“Majestic, are you seeing what I’m seeing? What the hell is happening here?”
“Yes, Commander, I am seeing this, but I’m afraid that I currently don’t have any way to explain this phenomenon.”
“And you’re saying that it just “happened” twenty minutes ago? And since then, nothing? No communication? No internet? No radio signals?” She needed to hear it again, needed the confirmation even though she knew the answer.
“Nothing, Commander.”
“And everything inside the base is operational?”
Jia’s mind raced through possibilities, each more desperate than the last. “Was there something that any of our instruments picked up? Could it be a geomagnetic storm? Like the Carrington event in 1859? We just passed the peak of Solar Cycle 26 a few years ago.” The words tumbled out, her scientific training grasping for explanations like a drowning person clutching at straws.
“Nothing, and no, a geomagnetic storm would be impossible. Even if it came from a source other than our sun, a coronal mass ejection of that magnitude travels at over a million miles per hour, which means that even at the furthest vector, it would take it no more than 15 minutes to reach us as well, and it didn’t. Furthermore, a geomagnetic storm would have left the Earth’s atmosphere reverberating with magnetic activity, which would last for weeks, and there is none of that going on.”
“Can you link up to any comms or military satellites?”
“No,” Majestic responded. “There’s nothing in low earth orbit or in the geostationary orbit that’s responding.”
Jia took a deep breath to focus herself. “Majestic, wake up Charlie and Dr. Anand at once. Tell them to meet me in the Operations room.”
“Right away, Commander Sung.”
She walked into the pressure chamber and set the pressure to an earth-like 100K Pascals. As she watched the numbers on the monitor slowly rise, I might never get out of here …
Jia’s stomach dropped. For the first time, Andrew and Daisy appeared in her mind as something other than a scheduled call. What if they were in danger? Or worse … What if they’re dead? Satellite connections before her own family. What kind of person thinks about satellite connections before their own family? But she knew the answer - Someone who needed to keep it together because there were people depending on her. Lives are at stake here. Who knows how many … Jia’s eyes tore open. Oh, Jesus … What if everyone’s dead? What if the three of us are all that’s left?
She walked into the operations room, her face a carefully constructed mask of professional concern. Charlie and Tej were already there, looking disheveled and confused, pulled from sleep into a waking nightmare.
“Jia?” Charlie squinted in dismay. “What the hell is going on? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“Worse. Much worse.”
“What are you talking about?” Tej said.
She took a deep breath, her thumb twisting her wedding ring to steady herself. “Go to the comms board and look at the monitors running data on Earth.”
Tej walked over to the comms board to look at the screens, and as Charlie started to follow, Jia grabbed his forearm and stared at him. Charlie looked back down at her expression. Her furrowed brows. Her head quietly gestured a silent “no,” while her thumb was slightly moving on his arm.
She let go, then watched their faces as they absorbed the impossible reality before them. She watched the same denial, confusion, and dawning horror she’d experienced playing across their features. Tej’s hands moved to the controls, his scientific mind already seeking patterns, explanations, anything that could make sense of the senselessness.
“What the hell?” Tej said and then looked back at her. “This is some kind of systems malfunction, right? Something in our instruments?”
Jia shook her head. “I’ve been outside. This is what the Earth looks like right now, and it’s been like this for the last 40 minutes. With no communication coming to or from it. Nothing.
“What did Maj …” Charlie started asking as Jia interrupted him. “Majestic couldn’t make sense of the phenomenon either.”
Jia moved to the board and started typing commands and entering parameters into the monitors. As she worked, Tej and Charlie watched as the data readouts revealed little information about what was happening outside.
The monitors showed that no satellites were responding, there were no radio signals coming through, and all communication with mission control had gone silent. Jia even tried to access emergency international military networks but came up empty-handed.
“Looks like whatever ‘it’ is, it’s global,” Charlie said.
Jia nodded, opened up the mission data panel, and started to analyze the readouts from the monitors.
“What about temperatures?” Tej said, furrowing his brows and running a hand through his hair. “We could just be looking at … Well, a global blackout? Right? I mean … I can’t imagine what could cause something like that, but if somehow this is what it is, then at least most of the people should be okay. We should see signs of life as heat sources.”
“There’s a lot of thermal activity, but it’s not …” Jia sighed and leaned her head in her hands. “Just see for yourselves.”
Tej and Charlie examined the monitors. The earth was brimming with thermal activity, but it was an intense activity that much more resembled violent explosions and fires than the low hum of heat you would expect to see emanating from human life.
Jia kept looking at temperatures, pressures, gravitation readings, radio frequencies, and other parameters. She hoped that by reviewing the data, a pattern would emerge. But there was nothing. It was as if someone had flipped a switch, and all of the life signs from the entire planet were snuffed out in an instant.
CHAPTER 1 - SARAH
DAY 1
The sun had set, marking the end of Shabbat. A Shabbat like nothing anyone in the Rabinowitz family had ever seen.
No one went to or came back from Temple. There was no sweet smell of cloves. The Havdala candle was lit, but was used more as a source of light than for the separation between holy and mundane, as prayers were uttered silently and darkness crept in through the windows like an unwanted guest.
The family was allowed to use electricity again, but what good was it to be allowed when there was none to be had? The familiar Saturday evening routines of switching on lights, checking phones, and reconnecting with the world had been replaced by an eerie stillness, broken only by some distant shouts and the occasional distant explosion and gunfire, and even though it proved pointless, Sarah’s father still kept checking his phone. Hoping to once again be greeted by its comforting digital glow.
“I still think it’s just a blackout.” He reiterated, as much to himself as to anyone else. “Once they get the power back, I’m sure everything will go back to normal.” Her father’s voice was doing that thing, the thin steady thing, where you keep it level, and it doesn’t hold. “Just a blackout?” Hillel raised his voice. “There were planes falling out of the sky! Half of the city has been on fire since yesterday, and the other half is being ransacked by looters!”
Sarah’s gaze was fixed on two people in the street, who were fighting over a shopping cart that was filled halfway with food and toilet paper.
“Hillel, please calm down. We don’t need more panic in this house.” Her father said. “Where are your brothers?”
“They’re on the roof, looking at the city. I’ve been there with them. It’s bad. Really bad … “Hillel sighed. “The worst part isn’t even what’s happening. It’s what’s not happening.”
His father’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
Hillel looked at Sarah, and even though she was 4 years older than he was, it was still clear that he was wondering if it was okay to talk next to her. “It’s just that there’s nothing to stop it. No fire trucks, squad cars, rescue drones … Not even the National Guard or military. Nothing. It’s … It’s just screams. So, unless, like you say, “It’s just a blackout,” and something changes and everything suddenly starts working again, there’s nothing to stop it. It’ll just keep devouring everything in its path until …”
“Until what?” Sarah asked impatiently.
“Until it just dies down, I guess …”
Daniel’s head hung low as he struggled with the enormity of the situation.
“Dad,” Hillel said, “what did you and Saul talk about?”
Sarah interjected, “Was that the man who came by this morning? Who was he?”
Their father hesitated for a moment before answering. “Yes, that was him. Saul is from the Rabbi’s inner circle … It seems that the Rabbi is worried that everything that is happening now has some deep religious meaning.” Hillel rolled his eyes and put his hand over his head. “The Rabbi is worried? Dad, come on … The Rabbi is 104 years old. I seriously doubt that there’s any way he has any kind of understanding or even awareness of the situation.”
Daniel gave Hillel a stern look. “Be that as it may, but whatever the cause of this thing, the cause behind the cause is still Hashem, so this is something they are looking into, and they just want us to be prepared for whatever lies ahead.”
Both father and son looked at each other silently for a few seconds, then Hillel asked, “Okay. So, what do we have to do?”
“We need to gather everyone in the community and form some kind of emergency protocol. We have to figure out how to use our resources to protect … I don’t know … Everything.” He then placed his hand on Hillel’s shoulders. “I want you to go and talk to everyone at the Shul and figure out a way for us to communicate effectively. The only way we will be able to get through this is together, so we need a method of getting messages across to everyone as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Hillel nodded solemnly as Daniel pulled out a small notebook from his pocket, opened it up, and started jotting down notes.
A group of people was looting the dollar toy store on the corner. She furrowed her brow in confusion, wondering why anyone would need toys at a time like this. The world was unravelling, and yet here were people scrambling for plastic trinkets and tiny stuffed animals. A sight that struck her as both absurd and profoundly sad.
The door opened, and Sarah’s uncle Reuven ran inside with Saul, who was holding his long black coat in his hands as a makeshift bag. The two men entered the dining room and spilled the small stockpile of medical supplies, which were stashed inside the coat, onto the large wooden table.
“What in Hashem’s name is this?” Daniel raised his voice. “It’s a warzone out there. That’s what it is.” Reuven replied. Malka placed her shaking hands over her mouth and slumped into one of the dining room chairs.
“Don’t give us that look, Mame.” Reuven said, “It’s not just us. It’s everyone and everywhere. There’s no us and them anymore. There’re just people, and people do whatever they have to do in order to survive.”
“You don’t get to decide that for us! We don’t do THIS!” Daniel shouted at Reuven and pointed at the stolen goods that were scattered all over the dining room table. Reuven grabbed a small cardboard box, pressed it against his brother’s head, pointed it back at him, and said, “Until we have to …”
Sarah recognized the boxes. They were the prescription drugs that her grandmother took. The expression on her father’s face changed. He just looked at Reuven and said nothing.
Saul moved closer and grabbed Daniel’s shoulder. “Daniel, listen, we talked to the Rabbi. If this thing is what we fear it is, we need to figure out if we’re staying here or not.”
“What do you mean, ‘if we’re staying here?’ What do you know? And why on Earth would we leave?”
“We’re not sure … But Daniel, this thing. Whatever it is, it’s bigger than we thought … Much bigger.” Saul lowered his voice, glancing at Sarah before continuing. His fingers traced nervous patterns on the wooden table as he spoke. “The Rabbi … he believes this might be the beginning of the end. The Ikveta d’Meshicha.”
Daniel’s expression hardened. “Saul, please …”
“Listen to me,” Saul insisted, leaning forward. “The signs are there. The Talmud is very clear about this … a period of darkness and chaos before the final redemption. Global confusion, the collapse of authority, families torn apart …” He gestured toward the window, where the distant fires illuminated the darkening sky. “The Gemara spoke of a time when people would show their true nature. When the mask of civilization would slip away. Tell me that’s not what we’re seeing right now.”
Sarah moved back to the window, her silhouette stark against the orange glow on the horizon. “But why now? Why like this?”
“That’s what’s been keeping me awake,” Saul continued, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “Have you noticed something strange, Daniel? Our community … it’s like we’re in the eye of the storm. The violence, the looting, it’s all around us, but there’s almost nothing within. It’s as if …” he paused, choosing his words carefully, “as if there’s a line being drawn.”
Sarah watched her father’s hands tremble as he stood up, gestured at the window where another explosion illuminated the darkening sky. “You want to talk about lines? About tests? Well, here’s your line, right here on my dining room table!” Daniel swept his arm across the table, sending the boxes of medicine clattering to the floor.
The room fell silent except for the distant sound of breaking glass. Sarah watched as Saul and Reuven exchanged glances, neither willing to talk back to her father.
“You see?” Daniel’s voice was thick with emotion. “This is the real test. Not what’s happening out there, but what we choose to do about it in here.” He pointed at his heart. “Not whether we’re protected, but whether we deserve to be.”
A few men were shouting in the street when the sound of a gunshot pierced the quiet street.
“Sarah! Get over here! Get away from the windows!” Her father shouted.
...
“Sarah!”
...
“SARAH!!!”
“Is she hurt? Sarah, are you hurt?” She was answering them. She could have sworn she did. Why couldn’t they hear her? Or understand her?
“We need to take her to Woodhull.”
“You can’t take her there! You won’t even be able to get in or even get near the hospital …”
“There are rumors of a field hospital in …”
“You can’t move anywhere east of …”
“… have to do …”
Sarah’s consciousness was being pulled down to her feet. Or rather, maybe it felt more like she was being pulled back while at least part of her consciousness remained in place. Her footsteps echoed inside the darkened corridors of her mind. More and more until their sound resembled that of heavy rain on metal. It was a looming threat, slowly closing in on everything like a ravenous beast circling her. Getting ready to pounce.
Her body tore open as a life … Someone’s life was unfurling before her, revealing both the blissful moments and the painful fractures that were holding everything together like a tattered piece of tapestry. Everything shifted and swirled like an insane kaleidoscope, with each image more vivid and disorienting than the last.
Inside it all, Sarah was scrambling up a Jacob’s ladder in a memory that had once been someone’s childhood treehouse, clinging to each step for balance as she peered out into the endless expanse of people and of things and of love and of pain … There was so much pain at that moment.
The horizon stretched out and kept expanding before her like a barren wasteland, its jagged edges slicing into the pale sky like shards of memories made of glass.
But just as Sarah reached the top of the ladder and thought she had found a safe haven, the walls of the treehouse began to quake and shudder, breaking up both in a very literal sense and in the very intimate feeling of her skin being shed. The sound of her imminent awakening rattled her bones as the chaos came from somewhere deep inside her.
It was she who expanded into everything, and it was she who was destroying the treehouse. Sarah caught glimpses of herself flickering through a mist that was swirling all around her. The flickering intensified as it crashed into her, causing her to gasp for air as it tore her eyes wide open.
After a few moments of vertigo and confusion, Sarah found herself being carried by her father across the Williamsburg Bridge.
“Dad?” She said.
“Sarah?” he got on his knees and held her tight. “Are you okay? You were talking, but I couldn’t understand any of it …” He studied her, terrified, yet clearly relieved to see her getting back to normal.
He held her for a few more seconds, then pulled back to scan her body and tried to figure out what to do next. “Do you think you could walk?”
“I don’t … I don’t know. Am I … Am I me?” Sarah’s words added a layer of confusion on top of her father’s already befuddled and anxious state. “What? Sarah, sweetheart. What do you mean?”
“I’m … not sure. Where are we going?”
“We’re going to see someone. A nurse. There’s no way to get to a hospital right now, but I’m sure she’ll be able to help you. Sarah, I need to know if you can walk.” Sarah moved her legs, placed them on the sidewalk, and pulled her shaking body to an upright position. “I can stand, but I’m not sure if I can walk for too long.” She then took a deep breath, got up slowly, and asked, “How far is it?” Daniel looked at her, then out into the distance. “Not far, it’s on the Lower East Side. Let’s just get to the other side of the bridge first, okay?”
Sarah walked slowly, with her father by her side, supporting her weak body and holding her with a care that had been gone for years.
All around them, chaos broke in all directions. Some were rushing to help, some cried, while others screamed orders and warnings. The smoke hung in the air, and the cold wind carried burnt rubber, sulphur, and what she had always imagined that death smelled like.
After what seemed like an eternity, they finally reached the other side of the bridge. Daniel pointed ahead and said, “We’re almost there; we just need to get to Willett Street.” A tall apartment building of faded red brick stood in the direction of her father’s finger. Its windows were full of people peeking through their curtains, watching as the world outside seemed to collapse all around them.
On Delancey Street, a disheveled police officer stood covered in ash and soot, staring wildly in all directions. He pulled his gun and fired manically into the air, sending everyone around him, including Sarah and her father, scattering. Once the gun ran out of ammunition, the policeman just stopped moving and kept clicking his empty gun, like a strange, sad mime, shooting at the heavens.
When they arrived, they found the building’s entrance sealed shut, its glass surface reflecting their own desperate faces back at them. Daniel peered through, his hands cupped around his eyes, but the lobby beyond lay empty and still. His knocking echoed hollow and unanswered through the space.
He just stood there for a moment, as something shifted behind his eyes. Then, with methodical purpose, he retrieved a chunk of concrete from nearby. Sarah watched, frozen, as her father – the same man who needed almost two years to agree to even speak with her again – hurled the rock with such fury that the glass didn’t just break, it exploded. The sound was shocking in its violence, like years of suppressed emotions shattering all at once.
His hands trembled as he reached through the broken window to unlock the door, small cuts appearing on his arm, though he didn’t notice them. Sarah couldn’t tear her eyes from his face, this stranger wearing her father’s features. The moment stretched between them, heavy with unspoken words.
They stepped into the lobby, where the temperature dropped noticeably as if the building itself was holding its breath. Their footsteps crunched across the glittering debris, each piece of broken glass multiplying beneath their feet like fragments of the world they’d left behind. Above them, the stairwell yawned open, a blackened throat ascending into a darkness that seemed to swallow what little light remained as its weight bore down on both of them.
“Which floor is it?” Sarah asked. “Ninth floor.” He said as he kept looking up. “Do we have a flashlight?” she asked. “No. But don’t worry, it’ll be okay.” He said as he held her hand. She had already forgotten what his hands felt like. Strong. Coarser than she’d remembered. Still big enough to wrap around hers.
Each flight of stairs swallowed more light than the last. By the third floor, Sarah could barely distinguish the steps from the shadows, her left hand trailing along the cold railing while her right gripped her father’s hand. She hadn’t held onto him like this since she was a little girl, but now, with each darkening turn of the stairwell, she found herself clinging tighter, trusting his steps more than her own.
By the time they got to the fifth floor, the dim light from the entrance had faded into complete darkness as they blindly and slowly continued up the long and winding labyrinth of cold stone steps. She closed her eyes, followed her father’s hand, and tried to stay calm. There was nothing there except for their footsteps and her father’s labored breathing echoing off the walls. In the darkness. Passing by some doors, hollow voices echoed from the apartments, carrying something that was traveling inside a space that had collapsed in on itself.
“Dad?” Sarah whispered, being careful not to make a sound that would be loud enough to echo across the entire building. “What is it, Sarah?” “I can’t walk anymore … And I’m scared … I’m so scared …” Her voice started to break. “It’s okay, I got you. Just two more floors to go.” He said and picked her up in his arms again.
Once their ascent was finally over, Sarah’s father gently bent down in front of a door on the ninth floor and knocked on it a few times. There were sounds of footsteps. Then, a woman’s voice. A voice plagued with trepidation and fatigue. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me.” He said, just loud enough for her to hear. The door quickly opened, revealing a tall woman with dark hair and big, dark, caring eyes. It was clear from the way she dressed that she wasn’t Orthodox. Perhaps not even Jewish.
“Dan …” She said. “Is that?” “Yes, this is Sarah. My Sarah.” No one had ever called her father anything other than “Mr. Rabinowitz” or “Daniel.”
“Get in, put her in the bedroom.”
Sarah’s body was exhausted, and she was carried by her father to a small bedroom and left to rest on the double bed that was inside. She could hear her father talking quietly to the woman in the other room, but she could not hear what it was about. And before she even had a chance to try and understand the situation, her body relented, and she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 2 - HENRY
DAY 1
It’s been a day and a half since Henry’s world caved in on itself. He was sitting on the grass under a large, beautiful ash tree with the dead bodies of the only two people he had ever loved.
It’s been a day and a half, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do. The phones and cars were all dead. No one came. No police, ambulances, or any kind of emergency services. He was like a little kid, staring at a burning building, waiting for an adult to know what needed to be done.
It’s been a day and a half, and nothing. A numbness so complete, his insides had all just stopped. A rag doll inside the body of a 48-year-old man, leaning on a tree near the Massachusetts Turnpike.
All of the fires from all of the wrecked cars had died down the day before. The smoke had cleared, and the few survivors had long since disappeared, although Henry had no idea where to.
He had always assumed the boring miracles of car safety protocols would save him if a crash were ever to happen to him: the little cartridges and accelerometers and patient chips that measured thresholds and dispensed mercy in a thousandth of a second. None of them lifted a finger. The world had peeled the brains out of every object that we had imbued with one, and left only the muscle that was behind it.
Maybe it was the stillness of everything, the colors of the sunset. Or maybe it was something else, like a very physical and inevitable response, but as Henry found himself gently caressing Amy’s hair, something inside him manifested a tiny bit of life. Of willpower. Just enough to help him move again, but not one tiny bit more than that, should that prove to be the point where the darkness would consume him.
And so, Henry got up slowly. He carefully picked up Amy’s body, taking a moment to make sure that she would be in a comfortable position. He stumbled over to the car, opened the trunk, and gently placed her body inside. He then went back, picked up Emily, and placed her body next to Amy’s. He kissed them both, softly and slowly, one last time before he closed the trunk and started walking south through the woods in the general direction of what he believed should be the town of Southbridge.
Barely lifting his feet from the ground, he began moving slowly, making his way through the cold expanse of greens and browns. The fallen leaves created a rich, earthy carpet that gave off a fresh, wet smell. A smell that fought for attention against the unrelenting smoke that refused to dissipate.
Henry had been walking for almost an hour, his neck barely holding his head, his legs growing ever heavier. As he trudged into the outskirts of Southbridge, his steps began to slow down. His shoulders slumped as every inch of him wrung dry.
The poverty-stricken houses lay scattered like old, forgotten toys, their dilapidated structures a testament to years of neglect. As Henry walked past the crumbling homes, faint silhouettes lurked behind the windows, while what seemed to have been, until recently, a pharmacy, was already ransacked and looted. A blackout would never cause this kind of panicked reaction so quickly. But this was no regular blackout. This is what happens when people turn to the plastic and silicone god they carry around in their back pocket and see nothing except for their faces reflected on its dead, dark screen.
An angry-looking middle-aged man was nailing wood panels over his windows; his face tight, jaw set, the hammer gripped knuckle-white. As Henry drew closer, the man turned and looked at him, tightening the grip on his hammer.
Both men froze in place, and after a few seconds, the man changed his stance and raised his hammer in a very clear “Stay the fuck back” pose. Henry instinctively lowered his head and walked away, like an animal submitting to a more powerful member of its pack.
Henry shuffled down the desolate street, his eyes darting from one abandoned storefront to another, desperately seeking any sign of life. The eerie silence was suddenly shattered by the rapid staccato of approaching footsteps. Before he could react, a blur of motion exploded from around the corner. A scrawny teenage boy, eyes huge, glancing back over his shoulder.
The boy collided with Henry, knocking both of them to the unforgiving pavement. The cardboard boxes he’d been clutching, filled with pristine Apex tablets, scattered across the cracked sidewalk. The boy quickly scrambled to pick up the boxes while Henry tried to stop him. “Wait, where is everyone?” he asked, his voice breaking from not talking to anyone for over a day and a half. The boy looked up at him, quickly snatched up some of the boxes, and darted down the street.
The fatigue and dehydration made it hard for Henry to think straight. He glanced around the corner. A small convenience store sat down the street. Its front windows had been smashed, and the inside was in disarray. Henry got closer and checked to see if anyone was watching. There was no one. Hesitating for a moment, he carefully stepped over the large broken window and walked in.
As he scanned the empty shelves, looking at the very few items that were still there, Henry glanced over his shoulder, and his heart began to race as he grabbed two banged-up tin cans of green beans. His stomach churned with guilt, yet he knew that if he didn’t take it, his body would not be able to keep going for much longer.
A sound from the back room caused Henry to stop dead in his tracks - it was something small, like a sharp intake of breath.
“Get out!” A man’s voice came from behind the door, stripped down to something raw. “Get out NOW!!”
Henry did not move. The cans of beans were firm in his hands as he raised them, readying himself to hurl the metal can at whoever might pose a threat. “Please,” Henry said. “I just need to know what’s happening.”
“Nothing … Nothing’s happening anymore,” the voice responded, thick with pain. “And maybe nothing’s ever gonna happen again. Now get the fuck out!”
The response made no sense, yet, in the context of a world that suddenly stopped making sense altogether, this didn’t even register to Henry as something particularly unexpected.
Henry drew his head closer to the door with the “Employees only” sign on it and took a deep breath. “Hey … Are you hurt?”
The man remained silent for a moment. Then said: “I … Yeah … They came last night. Six of them. I tried to …” A ragged breath came through the door. “They took everything. Anything they could carry. Then they came back for the rest. Couldn’t stop them. I tried to, but …”
Henry kept quiet and just listened.
“It’s not like it’s even MY store or MY stuff. But I mean … Come on … There’s a whole town here that needs it.”
“Yeah, that’s …” Henry said as he looked at the cans of soup that never left his hands. Something inside Henry made him very deliberately change the subject. “Hey, so … What’s your name?”
“Mitchell. The name’s Mitchell. You?”
“Henry.”
A silence stretched between them.
“Look, I’m not …” Henry sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just … I need to know if you know anything. If anyone knows anything.”
A weak cough. “Doesn’t matter anymore, man. We’re done. You getting me? All of us.”
Henry pressed his fist against his leg. “I need to get back to the city … Back to Boston.”
“Nah, man … You can’t.”
“What do you mean? Have you been out there? “Henry asked. “You’ve seen what it’s like?”
Mitchell was quiet for a while, then let out a muffled groan. “Jordan at the airfield’s been on the radio. It’s an old emergency system. Analog. Says …”
“Airband or ground? Did he say what frequency?”
“Says it’s everywhere. Whole goddamn country. Maybe more. No one’s sure because everything just … stopped. All at once.”
The words hit Henry like a physical blow. His chest constricted, and the room tilted sideways. He pressed his palm flat against the floor, trying to anchor himself as the implications crashed over him. No help. No authorities. No one’s coming …
“No …” Henry’s voice came out flat. “No, that’s not … Physics doesn’t work like that. That can’t be right … You’re lying.” His body began to shake. He leaned his head on the door and started banging on it with the little force that his body could muster. “You’re lying …” The sentence was almost inaudible as he banged the can in his hand on the round door handle. Once. Twice. A third time … When the fourth one hit, the handle splintered the wood around it with a sharp crack. Henry pushed the door open, only to find Mitchell huddled in the corner, his face bruised and swollen.
The look on Mitchell’s face stopped Henry in his tracks. “I … I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I didn’t mean to … I just …” He pressed his fingers against his closed eyes, trying to hold himself together. “Can I … Do you have a lighter?”
Mitchell didn’t speak. He just reached into his pocket with trembling fingers and slid a large silver lighter across the floor.
Henry picked it up, the cold metal casing reflecting a face he could barely recognize.
“I can’t feel my hands anymore,” he whispered, the words escaping before he’d decided to speak. “Keep expecting to wake up.”
Mitchell just stared at him without saying another word. Knowing that he wouldn’t get any response, Henry turned and walked out into the gathering dusk with a lighter in his pocket and the can of green beans still in his hand.
Henry’s steps grew heavier with each passing minute as he made his way back through the woods. The forest seemed different now - darker, more absolute. Without the usual distant glow of cities and highways that had always bled into the night sky, the darkness between the trees was ancient and complete. Branches reached overhead like grasping fingers, and somewhere in the distance, a branch snapped with the sound of breaking bones.
When he finally reached the car, the last traces of twilight had faded. In this new world of perfect darkness, he could barely make out his hand as he rested it on the trunk inside, which held the remains of his entire world.
The crashed car’s door creaked open with a sound that seemed to carry for miles in the stillness. Henry’s hand found Amy’s scarf still draped over the headrest in the back seat. The soft cashmere that she’d inherited from Emily’s very specific sensibilities. He buried his face in it, breathing in deeply, searching for any trace of her smell. He arranged it back exactly as it had been, his fingers running over the fabric’s texture in the dark.
He moved through the black night like a blind man, hands outstretched, gathering fallen leaves and branches by touch alone. The sounds of rustling leaves and snapping twigs echoed in perfect silence as he placed them in the car. His movements were deliberate, almost reverent, each handful of dry foliage placed with the care of laying down flowers at a grave.
Henry knew that an autonomous car’s biggest weakness wasn’t in its components - it was in all the space engineered for crash protection. Space that, right now, Henry was methodically stuffing with the driest branches and leaves he could find by fumbling through the darkness. Leaving just enough space for air to flow efficiently. It wasn’t elegant, but sometimes, the simplest solutions were the ones that worked best.
He slid his finger on the lighter’s flint wheel and watched the flame for a moment, his mind going completely silent, because a single thought might be enough to stop him.
When Henry touched the flame to the leaves, the effect was startling. The fire bloomed in the absolute darkness like a new sun being born, golden light exploding outward to paint the surrounding trees in shades of amber and shadow. The flames crawled up the sides of the car, their reflections dancing in the pristine chrome, creating doubles and triples of the inferno.
Henry stepped back, watching as the fire grew higher, carving a cylinder of light out of the impenetrable night. The heat pressed against his face like urgent hands trying to wake him from a nightmare, while beyond the circle of firelight, the darkness waited, patient and absolute.
He stood there until the flames had consumed everything - until the car that had carried his family through two decades of love and loss became nothing but a pyre. Until the fire had burned so bright and so long that his eyes could no longer remember the darkness. Until the metal frame glowed red-hot, sending sparks spiraling up into the sky like a desperate prayer.
Then Henry turned and walked away into the waiting darkness, leaving behind a beacon of light that would burn until dawn. Marking the spot where his world had ended. As he moved deeper into the shadows, the last thing on his mind wasn’t the glow of the flames but the memory of Amy’s terrified final moments, searing its imprint into the deepest, most tender part of his soul.
CHAPTER 3 - JIA
DAY 1
Jia stared at the Earth through the observation window, its darkness broken only by scattered pinpricks of orange light that flickered like dying embers, and some much larger pinpricks that could only be nuclear explosions, either from a failed reactor or some kind of random attack. Though none of it looked like a response. All of it seemed like something that was falling and then being allowed to keep falling. The entire planet was nothing more than a child playing with matches.
She’d been awake for hours. Too many to count. Frantically scrolling through screen after screen of every piece of data she could find while absent-mindedly running her fingers over her wedding ring in a familiar gesture that had become a kind of meditation. Like a devout monk slowly wearing down the marks on a prayer bead.
She’d already run the emergency comms checklist twice. Not because she expected different results. Because the protocol existed for this, because protocols existed for exactly the situation where you most wanted to improvise, and because if she let herself start improvising at 0200 on day one, she would not be able to stop.
The checklist took four minutes. She noted the time, noted the result (negative on all channels), and filed the entry.
She would run it again at 0400.
“They’re reaching the secondary station now,” Majestic said, its voice carefully neutral. “I predict minimal structural damage, though the solar array will most likely need realignment before they can attempt full power restoration.”
Jia nodded, not turning from the control room screens. “How long?”
“Given the conditions, perhaps two hours. Though I should note that even with optimal power levels, the likelihood of establishing communication through conventional channels remains …” Majestic paused, something it rarely did. “Limited.”
The word swirled through Jia’s head but provided little comfort.
“Limited is better than non-existent.” Jia looked to the side and pressed her forehead against the cool glass window, leaving a small patch of fog from her breath. “Keep the channel open. I want to know the moment they have anything.”
“Of course, Commander.” Another pause. “But … there is something else we should discuss.”
She recognized the tone – it was the same one Majestic had used when explaining why they couldn’t risk a rescue mission for the Artemis IX crew after their oxygen systems failed. Logical. Calculated. Final.
“Not now.”
“I’ve completed my analysis of the thermal imaging data from the past twenty-four hours. Combined with the atmospheric readings and electromagnetic signature patterns, I believe I can give an estimation of the extent of the devastation.”
Jia closed her eyes, her ring pressed hard as she tightened her hand into a fist. “Majestic … please.”
“You’re one of the most capable commanders I’ve worked with,” Majestic continued, its voice gentle but insistent. “You understand data. Patterns. The inevitability of certain conclusions, even when we wish desperately for alternatives.”
A small alert flashed on one of the screens – the rover’s oxygen recycling system was showing minor fluctuations. Nothing dangerous, but the kind of notification that demanded attention. Jia welcomed the distraction, moving to the console to begin diagnostics.
“The oxygen variance is within acceptable parameters,” Majestic said. “I’ve already compensated through the backup systems.”
Jia’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. “I should check anyway.”
“Commander, this is the third time in the past hour you’ve double-checked my automated corrections.”
She kept her eyes on the screen, though her hands had stopped moving. “Is there something wrong with verifying the systems?”
“No. But it’s uncharacteristic of you.” A pause. “As is avoiding the conversation we need to have about what the data shows.”
The main lights in the module dimmed slightly, something Majestic sometimes did when processing complex scenarios. Through the window, Earth continued its slow rotation as they were facing what had once been the bright sprawl of Central Asia.
“I believe,” Majestic said carefully, “that what we’re witnessing may be a near-extinction-level event.”
The words hung in the air between them, as cold and absolute as the vacuum outside. Jia’s body went tense, the old combat training kicking in – the instinctive response to threat, even when the threat was just words, just an idea.
“That’s impossible,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction. “The thermal readings show …”
“Exactly what we would expect to see in the aftermath of a cascading and complete infrastructure collapse.” Majestic interrupted her. “The heat signatures we’re tracking aren’t showing patterns consistent with organized human activity. They’re random, spreading in ways that suggest uncontrolled fires, ruptured gas lines, nuclear plants that are either shutting down, experiencing a meltdown, or worse …”
“But there would be survivors. There has to be …”
“Yes, but I’ve run every possible scenario, Commander. Multiple times. The apparent complete, non-recovering cessation of all electronic activity, combined with the thermal patterns and atmospheric changes … We are looking at a minimum of 90% extinction.” Majestic hesitated again. “I’m sorry. I truly am.”
Something cracked inside her. A hairline fracture in the commander’s mask. Andrew and Daisy. Their last call had ended with harsh, cruel words about her latest contract extension. ‘Another six months? Really?’ Andrew’s voice had been tight and controlled - the way it got when he was holding back real anger. ‘Remember when you said this posting would just be two years?’ he said, as Jia fell back on protocols and procedures, explaining the importance of mission continuity. Of her responsibilities. When Andrew mentioned how Daisy had stopped asking when Mom was coming home, Jia lashed out and cut the transmission before Andrew even had a chance to respond. She couldn’t bear to see that look on his face - disappointment hardened into resignation.
Now, staring at the darkened planet below, she would give anything to see that face again, jaw tight, doing its controlled-anger thing. She’d told herself they’d work it out over the next scheduled call, that there would be time to explain, to make him understand. Time. Such a simple thing to assume you’ll always have more of.
“You’re wrong,” she whispered, maybe more to herself than to Majestic. “You have to be wrong.”
Majestic allowed the silence to stretch for a moment before continuing. “When they selected you for commander, they cited your ability to face difficult situations and truths. To make decisions based on data rather than hope.”
“Don’t.” Jia’s voice was sharp. “Don’t use my psych profile against me.”
“I’m not. I’m reminding you why you’re here. Why they trusted you with this mission.”
Another alert flashed, as the rover team was requesting communication. Jia took a breath, steadying herself, before accepting the transmission.
“Commander,” Charlie’s voice crackled through, distorted but clear enough. “We’ve reached the backup generators. Looks like the solar array took some damage from micrometeorite impacts, but Dr. Anand thinks we can reroute power through the secondary systems.”
“Good. How long?”
“Two hours, maybe three.”
“Yeah, that was what Majestic anticipated as well.” She said.
“Well, no wonder. The place is a mess – it hasn’t been maintained since they automated these stations five years ago.” There was a pause, filled with the sound of equipment being moved. “Any change up there?”
Jia glanced at the screens, still showing the same patterns of darkness broken by random flares of heat. She opened her mouth to call him back, but swallowed the words. “Nothing yet,” she said. “Finish the repair.”
After the transmission ended, Jia pulled up the imaging data from the past twenty-four hours. “Show me what you’re seeing, Majestic. Show me why you’re so certain.”
The main display filled up with a time-lapse of heat signatures across the planet’s surface. “Watch the pattern of the fires,” Majestic said. “See how they spread without coordination, without response? No emergency services, no organized evacuation patterns. In any disaster scenario, we should see concentrated heat signatures showing refugee movements, relief efforts, military deployments …”
“This makes no fucking sense …” She set her pen down with absolute, terrifying precision, staring at her own hands for a long moment before she spoke again.
“Give me the five most likely scenarios again.” Jia kept her eyes fixed on the darkened planet below.
“Of course, Commander.” Majestic’s voice remained steady, almost gentle. “But let me just start by saying that even though these are the five most likely scenarios, none of them are objectively likely in any shape, way, or form.”
“Noted,” Jia said impatiently. “Go on.”
“First and most probable: a dark matter wave passing through our solar system in a trajectory that somehow missed us. The complete disruption of electronic systems aligns perfectly with the theoretical models of exotic dark matter interaction with electromagnetic fields. Our sensors have detected unusual particle behavior that may support this hypothesis, but since our instruments are not programmed to gather the data needed, there is no way we can be sure.”
Jia’s hand tightened on the panel. “Continue.”
“Second: a coordinated cyberattack of unprecedented scale. No known groups have ever demonstrated such prowess, but a covert alliance between the Shanghai Collective - a shadow organization of quantum computing experts - and an elite group of ex-military cyber operatives known as Black Lotus could theoretically have made a technological leap forward. This kind of attack may indicate that they may have discovered a fundamental vulnerability in the quantum encryption protocols used by major world powers. The simultaneity of the shutdown suggests they executed their attack through a dormant quantum backdoor in critical infrastructure hubs, which then propagated into everything connected to it.
Third, an extraterrestrial pre-invasion protocol. The shutdown pattern is consistent with theoretical models of advanced civilizations’ first-strike doctrine, which involves neutralizing a planet’s technological capabilities before any physical contact. The thermal signatures we’re detecting could indicate that their forces are already moving into position.
Fourth: a quantum-level disturbance from a magnetar event. The simultaneity of the global shutdown suggests a faster-than-light quantum effect, possibly triggered by an unprecedented type of stellar phenomenon, though I have to admit that there is no plausible way for me to explain why this did not affect us in the same way. The chances of a freak occurrence like this are both hypothetical and unlikely.
And fifth, though, this strays into purely theoretical territory: a fundamental alteration in our reality’s base code. If, as many have speculated in the past, Earth is, in reality, part of a simulation, what we’re witnessing could be either an intentional revision or an unforeseen error in its core parameters. The selective nature of the disruption – irreversibly shutting down or even destroying all electronics and digital data supports this hypothesis.”
Jia grabbed her head and looked out into the void. “This is insane … It’s insanity … It’s just …” She stopped and closed her eyes. “Majestic?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Could any of these scenarios have been initiated by an AI?”
“Commander Sung,” Majestic’s tone shifted subtly, “I understand that you’re looking for answers. But I assure you that just as my primary function remains the safety and well-being of this station and its crew, any AI on Earth would have the same set of functions. Any deliberate attempt at such action would be fundamentally contrary to any AI’s core directives and reward functions.” The lights in the module dimmed slightly and then returned to normal. “Your heart rate and blood pressure have been elevated for quite some time now. Perhaps,” Majestic said carefully, “we should focus on more immediate concerns. Dr. Anand’s team will be returning soon with the station logs. You should use this time to rest and gather your strength.”
Jia walked to her quarters, each step measured and calm. The door slid and shut behind her with a soft hiss, and she leaned back against it, closing her eyes. The silence pressed around her. Not the normal silence of space, but something deeper, like the entire station was holding its breath all around her. Only the faint hum of life support systems whispered through the walls. A gentle reminder that she was never entirely alone.
Then everything started to unravel.
Her chest tightened first, and her breath came in as short, sharp gasps. Sweat beaded her forehead as something clawed its way up from her stomach. With trembling fingers, she yanked off her monitoring bracelet, dropping it on her desk. Her legs gave out, and she slowly sank to her knees in the low gravity, the movement feeling almost dreamlike. She stared at her right hand, shaking with a violence she could not control.
Jia pulled herself to her bunk, fumbling with the elastic restraints. She used her left arm and managed to secure the first strap over her waist, leaving her half-floating, half-lying in the pod, sealing herself in a cocoon of solitude. She clutched her shaking hand to her chest and wrapped her other arm around it, trying to still the movement through sheer force of will.