Red Skyline

Arch-chancellor Kemet Nova traced the release latch with his finger, staring at the button beneath the clear plastic shield. He briefly entertained the grim possibility that, should he decide to press it, he would go down in history as the man to bring about the end of the world, an idea which sent a stab of pain through his gut. He looked out the window at the dim, once-bustling metropolis of Hallas, ancient capital of the Astenethan Empire. His country in ruins, due not to conquest, but to the dying embers of what used to be the sun. He realized it didn’t matter how he went down in history. Soon, there would be no history.

He tossed the key to the latch aside and leaned back in his chair, adjusting the collar of his red kurta. He sighed. Parliament had convened two days ago, and they still hadn’t finalized their rulings on the new emissions protocol. The Disciples of Yevenna had spread their influence too far and too fast, and their ideas had infected even some of the highest ranking officials in government. They wanted to keep digging into the ground with reckless abandon, searching for a promised land near the core of the planet which would shield them from the sun’s radiation—not caring what kinds of toxic fumes they pumped into the atmosphere in the process. The science was out on this, it had been for decades. Put simply, anyone who knew anything agreed it was a bad idea.

But, as had always been the case since the dawn of civilization, crisis bred conspiracism. And for doomsday cults like the Disciples of Yevenna, nothing was better for business than a real, actual apocalypse. People were at each other’s throats, battling over their plans to save the world. The result—the entire species was accelerating its own demise. Which brought Nova back to the button.

It would be so easy to pull the plug on it all. No more conspiracies, no more riots, no more death, no more anything. Just an all-consuming nuclear winter to put everyone out of their misery. An off switch for the planet.

There was a knock at his door. Arden Voleth, the Astenethan Minister of Ecology and long-time personal friend of Nova’s, stepped into his office. He wore an indigo silk cape with seven silver buttons trailing down the right side, draped over a Tyrian purple kurta and bronze pants. Elegant but conservative, with a tasteful amount of gold embroidery appropriate for a man of his rank. He held up a blue folder containing a packet of papers. “Sir, we finally received word from Parliament about—”

He froze when he saw the button on the Arch-chancellor’s desk. Nova followed his eyes to the button, then looked back, giving Voleth a cold stare. “What were you going to say, Minister Voleth?”

Voleth swallowed, then gently closed the door behind him. “Whatever you’re planning on doing,” he said, “please think it through first.”

“It might help to know what Parliament decided on,” Nova replied coolly.

Voleth exhaled, his brow knotting as he examined the Arch-chancellor. “Kemet,” he said, dropping all formalities. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Nova ran a hand through his gray-streaked hair, exhaling roughly. He gestured to the chair across from him, and his old friend lowered himself into it, as if expecting a land mine beneath the cushion. “People don’t listen to reason,” Nova said, his forehead wrinkling. “They don’t care about the evidence, no matter how many times we map it out for them. And even if they did, the solution with the most scientific backing would only extend our livelihoods for a few more decades. In less than a hundred years’ time, we’ll be extinct.” He threw out his hands in exasperation. “Short of sending a spaceship out and gambling on finding a habitable planet, there’s no future for us.”

As Nova spoke, Voleth’s face hardened into a stern glare. “You act as if a few more decades doesn’t constitute a future,” he said tersely. “There are still people out there, living their ordinary lives. There are scientists working towards more solutions, historians coming to new understandings of society, artists and writers and musicians all capturing the mortal experience and bringing people together. There are babies being born as we speak, to parents who still hope for something better. Do they not deserve the little time they have left?”

Nova narrowed his eyes. Voleth’s implication that Nova didn’t care about the lives of Asteneth’s citizens was an unanticipated insult. He banged his fist on the table. “They would have more time, if everyone would just make the rational choice!”

A few drops of sweat formed at Voleth’s temples. “No one, in all of history, has ever made a purely rational choice.” He swallowed, glancing at the button. “And I don’t think you’re any closer to making one than the rest of us.”

“Arden,” Nova said with a sigh. “I know you mean well, but…look at everything that’s happening. We’re spiraling towards our own demise. Wouldn’t it be better to just end it quickly?”

“As an expert on environmental science,” Voleth began, stroking his graying beard, “I can say with absolute certainty that launching nukes on everyone wouldn’t ‘end it quickly.’ Many people in rural areas would survive the blast, possibly even for a few more decades if they can work around food shortages. While it would kill everyone faster than the dying sun, it wouldn’t kill them all at once. They would only go extinct after years of famine, war and disease. Therefore, as your Minister of Ecology, I would be remiss to point out that the decision to nuke the planet as an ‘act of mercy’ is, itself, a decision informed by emotion and not by any measurable evidence.”

Nova was about to open his mouth, but Voleth raised a finger to silence him. “As your friend, however, I would tell you this one thing.” He placed the folder containing the brief from Parliament on the Arch-chancellor’s desk. “Before you go pressing that button, talk to your granddaughter first.”

The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. Voleth went back to his own office, leaving Nova alone at his desk. Button on the right, folder on the left. He glanced out his window again. Protestors stood waving signs outside the fence, as they did every day, wearing their yellow and white linen robes and shouting about the seven prophecies of Yevenna. Beyond them, the sun was setting, smoldering like a pit of embers in the black sky and illuminating all of Hallas in a dim, red glow. It used to be bright blue—so his history textbooks had said, anyhow. But even when he started school sixty years ago, the sky looked more or less the same. Celestial death took a long time.

He wondered how many living things, on how many planets in this vast and ever-expanding universe, had experienced the same view of the skyline. By sheer law of large numbers, there had to be some other planet with life forms like him, staring out their alien windows and watching their alien suns slowly crumble into galactic ashes. Did they not matter? Did nothing matter?

Nova blinked, then turned back to his desk, tapping his fingers. Arden’s advice echoed in his head. Talk to your granddaughter first. An image of her, Khasbeth, materialized in his mind—gripping her favorite stuffed tiger, dark hair wound into braids and gilded with glittering beads, eyes like the emerald waters of the Astenethan coastline. A memory of lifting her into the air, hearing her peals of laughter like a hundred little bells. 

A smile crept up on the Arch-chancellor’s face, and he pulled his communicator out of his left-hand drawer, scrolling down to his son’s contact line. For now, Khasbeth still had a future. And he was intent on keeping it that way.