By Jemma Pollari

The day before the end of the world was announced, Raina and Harry waited, watching, in their government-appointed apartment. Below, activity silenced by thick glass swarmed in the concrete expanse bounded by chain-link and razor wire.

‘What will happen?’ Raina said, for something to say. She knew the answer. Panic. Riots. Disbelief. Denial. 

Her husband didn’t reply. The script was open in his hands. Preparing, practical, as always.

Raina’s fingers tightened on her copy. Her life’s work, filtered down to a single sentence of a paragraph that began Possible avenues for saving humanity include…

Harry’s life work: same paragraph, different sentence.

She leaned her forehead against the window. Juxtaposed at either end of the concrete world were the Doors. Doors that would be forbidden to all but the minutest fraction of humankind. Her Door went up, white and gleaming. Harry’s Door went down, steel and basalt-grey.

Two chances. 

She sighed, closed her eyes. ‘What are we going to do?’

***

She had worked through her pregnancy with Ronin. No allowance in the Timeline for human pauses. She breastfed through meetings. Slept between conference calls. Stole moments with him as a chubby toddler, curling around his sleeping form in the blue-grey predawn. Waved as his nanny took him to kindy, to prep, to first grade.

The day after the announcement, Raina closed her browser on the headlines, the denials, the memes. She left her team and went to the faculty park with Harry and their son.

In the square of corralled nature, she watched as Ronin ran. He spun, shouted, fell to the plush grass with a laugh. 

All of this would be gone. 

Her beautiful boy would never see the sky again.

‘We can’t lock him beneath the ground,’ she murmured.

‘At least he will be on Earth,’ Harry replied. His knuckles turned white. ‘Isn’t that worth it?’

‘Worth never seeing the Sun–any sun–again?’

‘This is home,’ Harry said. ‘Home has to mean something.’

Ronin returned triumphantly, something in his fist.

‘Look, Mumma,’ he said, opening his fingers. ‘For you. D’you like it?’ He flopped down, limbs colt-like, and gazed at her, eyes bright and blue as the ozone above, full of future and hope.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she agreed in a whisper, holding the bruised dandelion bud tight.

***

‘The Trappist-1 system is 41 light years away,’ Raina said. ‘The Soteria will be staffed first by a stewardship crew. Over time,’ she cleared her throat, ‘the ship’s operation will be passed on, to younger generations. These stewards will protect the precious lives of our fellows, who will sleep through the journey unaware, and wake when’–she withheld the if –‘we reach planet Trappist-1e.’

She laid out the mission specifics. Details of the lottery. Systems to let future generations join the sleepers. Took questions, the same, over and over, spiraling, because this was insane. Impossible, yet reality.

When she could take it no more, she said, ‘Final question, please. Rosalie?’ 

The journalist stood. ‘What will your place on the Soteria be?’ Rosalie asked. ‘Steward or sleeper?’

‘No final decisions have been made,’ Raina said. The prepared remark.

‘But you’re head of Project Soteria,’ Rosalie continued, voice ringing. ‘Your husband is Harry Caspar, head of Project Chrysalis. Where is your son going to grow up? In space, in a madcap dash for a new planet? Underground, in a bunker, maybe outlasting the destruction on the Earth’s surface? A lottery for Soteria, a lottery for Chrysalis: each a chance of a chance. What do you have to say to families out there who have no idea how to choose? What are you and your husband going to do?’

Raina’s gaze found Harry at the back of the room, waiting his turn to take the stage. His face was infinitely sad.

‘We don’t know,’ she said.

***

Endless hours. Discussion. Pros. Cons. Ronin finished first grade. The Timeline moved forward. Panic increased. So did denial. Cities fell. Others were abandoned. 

‘We’re out of time,’ Raina spoke the words to cameras, to Harry, to her team. ‘The ship is ready.’ She saw Soteria in her geosynchronous orbit on the back of her eyelids when she tried to sleep, the long ovoid gleaming against the blood-streaked grey of Earth’s failing troposphere below.

‘Chrysalis is ready.’ Harry didn’t voice his arguments anymore. Nor did she. They had all been made.

‘The time’s come.’ Raina’s boss called her and Harry into his office. He stabbed at a Timeline calendar thick with red crosses. ‘Soteria launches next month. The Chrysalis is going to be sealed. Where are we putting you?’

At home, with Ronin, they sat, hands held, one to the other, a circle.

‘And that’s where we’ll live?’ he asked, when Raina and Harry finished speaking.

Raina nodded. 

‘And… we’ll be ok? We’ll be together?’

‘Always,’ Raina said.

Harry brushed the boy’s dark hair from his eyes. ‘We’ll keep you safe.’

*** 

The Door closed with a hiss, a thrumming thud. The base note of a dirge. Their decision echoed in the dim space of the inner lock. The background machines whirring, keeping them alive, would be a sound she’d learn to ignore as the days turned to weeks, to months and years.

‘Did we do the right thing?’ Harry’s hand tightened on hers.

‘We did it for him,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Together,’ he said, voice thick.

‘Together,’ she whispered. She laid her head on his chest. Felt the thrum of his heart. Her feet, Harry’s feet, would never touch a planet’s surface again. The hard shell protecting them from death outside would be their coffin. They would die here, after a life lived for others’ futures.

If they were lucky, their son would run free again, one day. Breathe real, unfiltered air. Feel starlight on his face. 

Voices on the intercom filtered through, calling her, calling Harry, to their posts. It was time for this new existence to begin.

It would be a good life, she decided. They would make it so. Together.

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