Countdown

The digital display reads 05:49:02.

Blue glowing numbers blink back at me in the deafening quiet of the abandoned Control Room Alpha. The high-tech room looks as if everyone stepped out for lunch, chairs neatly pushed in and papers waiting on desks for people who will never read them. It isn't until you look closer and notice the fine layer of dust covering almost every surface that you would know longer than a few minutes has passed.

157 years ago, I doubt anyone thought this day would come. Everyone filed neatly into the sterile halls, fierce determination to save their species colored by the fear and uncertainty everyone was trying to pretend they didn't feel. 70 people - 25 men, 25 women, and 20 of their children under the age of 12 - told that the survival of the human race depended on the best and brightest being locked underground, away from the disease ravaging the world.

No pressure.

To their credit, the original colony not only survived, they thrived. Within a generation their population had doubled, and by the third had more than doubled again. By the time my generation, the fourth, came around, we were sitting at just over 300 people. Not a substantial population, but steadily growing and thriving. The original founders had been left with the tools and knowledge to continue to expand the underground colony, and while the halls and rooms began to look noticeably less clean-cut over time as we expanded, everyone was happy with the only life most of us had ever known. 

That changed almost two years ago.

It started with one person. One of the historians, tasked with keeping the history we had brought into the colony with us and updating the records as time went on, showed up to work one day with a cough. No one thought anything of it - despite technological advancements and relative isolation, we still sometimes had a cold. The next day his cough was worse, and then his temperature spiked. He broke out in a sweat, began shaking uncontrollably, and couldn't control his body well enough to walk or feed himself. By the time anyone realized what was going on and got him into an isolation room, he was coughing up blood and hallucinating. It was also too late to stop what was coming.

Everyone knew what led to the creation of the colony. A plague started spreading across the world, sweeping through healthy populations and leaving behind piles of corpses in weeks. None of the existing treatments and medicines did anything other than ease the discomfort of the infected, and scientists couldn't come up with a cure fast enough. Several countries, allies already, put together a last-ditch plan to save humanity. And now, over a century and a half later, history was repeating itself.

It spread fast. Within a month, half the colony was infected. The healthy half made the decision to essentially abandon those that were sick, sending each person that showed even the slightest signs of infection to live in an isolated part of the colony. No one was brave enough to go in and deliver supplies or help treat the sick population, so things rapidly went downhill. Anyone who went near the door that led to that wing could regularly hear screams and shouting echoing through cold metal. There was no food, medicine, or any other supplies, so the more sick people who were sent into the isolation wing, the more the already sick and terrified colonists fought to survive against people they once called friends.

Things weren't much better on the "healthy" side. Friends and family started turning against each other, pointing the finger of infection at the slightest hint of a cough or sniffle. Several people were sent into the isolation wing that I don't think were actually sick, only cleared their throat or sneezed at the wrong time, but it didn't end up mattering.

In the end, it spread anyway.

The last person died 7 months and 23 days ago. The only reason I know she died is because I stopped hearing her screams echoing down the halls, a response to the hallucinations that haunted her final days.

I avoid certain rooms now. There are several that are sealed off permanently to prevent the stink of decay from leaking out into the halls, reminders of how order broke down in the last few months of the infection. We stopped cremating people at some point, everyone either too sick or too tired to care about the bodies that started to pile up. Most people weren't even moved from the spot where they died, the fear of infection lingering even after death.

I don't need a lot of space anyway. There's plenty of food, the automated farms continuing to work even after the humans they fed started to rot away. The water filtration system still works, and probably will work long past its initial expected date of expiry considering the drastically reduced strain on it now. I spend my days drifting between the same few rooms; re-reading books from the library, experimenting with ingredients in the kitchens, playing games against the automated rec-room, and hoping I don't dream of the screams that filled the halls months ago as our population dwindled to one.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d had a job before, working in the library. I liked it, books had always been my thing. It was quiet, and didn’t have any of the big problems like working in the automated farms or in the med bay or the control rooms. People’s lives didn’t depend on my job.

That might have been why I never got sick.

People stopped coming to the library pretty early on in the outbreak. I guess you don’t have a lot of time for things like reading when you’re worrying about everyone dying. I spent almost a year nearly completely alone in the library, walking to and from my single unit apartment every day in increasingly empty halls. Turns out the less you interact with people, the less risk you run of getting sick.

Now the library is covered in a layer of dust, just like the rest of the colony. 

In the first few weeks alone, I tried to figure out how to run some of the parts of the colony I’d never even thought about before. I considered myself to be pretty smart, but reading the manuals on how to fix the farm robots or make sure the reactors run smoothly made me wonder if I even knew how to read. Eventually I gave up, trying not to think about what would happen if anything broke.

Then the countdown started.

I’m not sure how long it was running before I noticed; after I gave up trying to figure out what the manuals meant, I didn’t visit any of the control rooms often. One morning it was there, though, blinking back at me with calm blue numbers like they didn’t spell out my doom.

34:09:26:39

Thirty-four days, nine hours, twenty-six minutes, and thirty-nine seconds.

I knew what that time meant. That part of the manual had been startlingly clear.

I had thirty-four days, nine hours, twenty-six minutes, and thirty-nine seconds until the reactor that kept the whole colony running melted down.

The computers the colony was equipped with were smart. They could tell months ahead of time how long the reactor or any other part of the colony could run without maintenance. Once the computer in charge of monitoring the reactor detected a problem that meant it had gone without maintenance for a while, it displayed a countdown.

Didn’t do anything for me other than make me aware of the axe hanging precariously over my head.

Now my routine just includes a trip to the control room every day to check the timer.

Oddly enough, I’m not nervous. I was at first, until I realized there wasn’t anything I could do. Once I realized that, all of my nerves just melted away.

I brought my breakfast in here this morning, when the clock still read 00:00:03:29:00. Three hours and twenty-nine minutes until my doom. Eating a plate of scrambled eggs - completely plant based thanks to the farms - while staring at a clock that counts down until your doom.

There’s something poetic there, but I was never good at poetry.

It doesn’t make any sound as it counts down. The blue numbers just silently morph into the next, a stoic witness to the last human alive.

00:00:02:19

Two minutes and nineteen seconds left until the reactor melts down.

What do you do with the last two minutes of your life?

I just continue to stare at the clock.

00:00:01:56

I glance over at the manual on the desk, one of the few things not covered in a layer of dust. Over the last month I’ve looked at it less and less, pages I can’t even begin to understand burned into my mind. If only I knew what the words meant, I might be able to buy myself more time.

More time to do what, though? I’m the last person, I can’t rebuild the entire human race. More time to perfect the recipes I never got around to? More time to try and beat Bobby Mertin’s score against the tennis bot? More time to finish the book I never got around to the last few pages of?

More time to wander through empty halls, remembering the echoes of screams and the people I’d grown up with begging entities I couldn’t see for their lives? 

More time to be alive?

00:00:00:30

I don’t need more time.

00:00:00:20

I don’t want to be alone anymore.

00:00:00:10

The numbers are such a pretty blue.

00:00:00:00