Content warning: This story contains themes of death, isolation, and loss.

PROJECT DOME  

Chapter one.

One is the loneliest number.

     It wasn't supposed to happen for at least another fifty years. Stars like our sun are supposed to last ten billion years. To say we on earth weren't prepared for this event was an understatement. Most of the population still didn't believe that our sun was on its way out. The population figured it was another scheme to get people to save energy the ozone layer, or recycle more.

      The day the World Leader verified the terrible rumors, he downplayed the harsh reality with promises of underground safety and dome-type structures in place to house the population. Not many seemed to address why anyone would want to live through such a catastrophe.

     Earth's sun burning out wasn't something anyone could fix except God. It didn't look like He was going to intervene, and He didn't. Even with the cooling temperatures and the sun flickering, the people went about their lives like nothing so devastating and life-ending was coming. 

    Many dome-like structures were supposed to be built, each housing several thousand people, but we didn't get started soon enough. 

      On this particular day, I and five other scientists were working in Dome One, trying to figure out the glitch in the water system. This unit was to house five hundred people. The six of us had been working most of the day, and we had fixed the water system. We were ready to head home when it happened. 

     The sun started flickering, going dim, then bright. We were standing in the main room at the entrance of the Dome. A giant room with mostly windows. Huge panels of unbreakable glass-like material. The flickering sun was still going from dim to bright, but the dimness lasted longer each time. Then the flickering stopped, and it was like it was late afternoon again. We collectively let out our breaths. We all felt a little shaky and started talking simultaneously, nervous and relieved, and that's when the unimaginable happened. The sun flicked off for the last time. We stood there looking up at the strangest sight. The sun was a dark mass, but the day still looked sunny. The light from the burned-out sun was still traveling. When the last traveling light reached us, utter, complete blackness would be beyond the Dome walls.

Chapter two.

Hello darkness.

     No one said anything. Our brains were trying to process what had just happened. Then, instinct told me I needed to get to the panel at the entrance of the Dome and get it locked. I started running as I heard a noise outside, getting louder by the second. But I was running on instinct. Then, the reality slammed into my head. I had to get to the panel and lock the entrance before people running to the Dome could get there. Because if I couldn't lock the entrance door, we would all die. 

   Those outside when the sun finally burned out were already dead. Men, women, and children, walking or running, were dead. I hit the panel seconds before the masses hit the Dome. We six were silent as the chaos outside the Dome took place. The people were pounding and screaming at the door, demanding to be let in. We couldn't let them in. There was room inside the Dome, but if we let them in, we all would die.

  You see, you had to undergo a sterilization process before entering the Dome. A process that took five minutes. We could have let four hundred and ninety-four more into the building, twenty at a time. But the scared, panicked people outside wouldn't have counted off twenty and stopped. They would have all rushed in at once, and we couldn't stop them. Listening to the screaming and pleading people outside was agony. The only saving grace was that we couldn't see anyone after eight minutes because it was pitch black outside. It took eight minutes for the light from the sun to reach us after the sun burned out. In those eight minutes, we saw our friends and, worst of all, family members outside begging to be let in. We had to endure this for several days. It took days for the earth's temperature to cool, so life was no longer sustained.

      I've considered why we didn't prepare for this sooner so more people could have been saved. And then I think, save for what? For life inside a Dome module? Watching what some people were capable of while trying to get in gave me an idea of what they might have done if they knew there could be no long-term consequences.

  Perhaps we thought we might be rescued by another life form. This is the only reason I can think of for proactively surviving a disaster of this magnitude. But we stayed alive by keeping the others out. I know that memory stayed with us.

Chapter three.

Table for six.

     We six, consisting of three men and three women, lived alone on the face of this planet in what was known as Project Dome. The rest of the earth was a frozen ball of blackness. The scene that lay beyond our walls, thank God, could only be imagined. Unless rescued, we knew we would live together in this Dome until old age. There are no germs in our environment, nothing to end our lives prematurely. This was the only way to eliminate the need for hospitals and medicine.

   Our computers supply synthetic water and the only sustenance required for our bodies. The latter is in pill form, which we swallow once a day. We will either have to be rescued or become old and feeble and eventually be unable to care for ourselves.

  There will be no procreating in Project Dome. The sterilization process we must engage in before entering the Dome eliminates the reproduction capacity. I am sure we would all have agreed not to reproduce; however, this subject was never discussed. It reminded us of our mortality. 

    We six weren't alone in Project Dome. We lived with fifteen robots, who carried out some of the tasks required for the upkeep of the Dome. The robots weren't needed for much more than simple housekeeping and grounds maintenance, and we didn't interact with them much. They were programmed while the people slept.

     The one thing that weighed on our minds and contributed to our endless bouts of depression was the fact that we would never eat solid food again. Once a day, one gray pill was all our bodies required to sustain life. A scientific miracle, yes, but an unintended torture nonetheless. I know the luxury of sitting down to a meal must seem trivial. But while we endured months of meaningless existence, dreams of real food governed our thoughts. We knew our lives were over; it was a matter of time. There were no simple pleasures to look forward to aside from sex, and this lost its ability to overcome after a short time.

We had no vacations or picnics to look forward to. No birds flying overhead, no babies to bring joy to our lives. Nothing but this circular Dome with six people living inside and black frozen nothingness outside, forever. Yet, live on, we did, and we endured the same monotonous routine time in and time out for months. For we have no day or night. We have no summer, spring, fall, or winter. Only time. I know there were times when I didn't think I could hold it together. I'm sure that had to be true for everyone. We did have a library in the Dome, where one could read just about any book one could think of. But I found it made me homesick for my old life. We could watch movies to fill the endless periods, but the feelings when the movie was over are hard to describe. For there was nothing left. No cars, no airplanes, no lakes or rivers. No fishing or hunting or going out to dinner. No ordinary life problems to solve. There certainly wasn't any need for money. The magnitude of the loss we have experienced goes on. So why was food and the need to eat something so prominent? I can't understand. Only that it was.

Chapter four.

Green eggs and ham.

     We were consumed with thoughts of real food. I guess there were many small luxuries of life we could have chosen for our thoughts to be consumed by, but I think this particular one picked us. Our existence was over, and we couldn't think of anything else except eating real food. We had accepted the reality of our lives; why couldn't we accept that we would never have a real meal again? We just couldn't. We would torture ourselves and each other with food conversations, describing in minute detail the textures, colors, aromas, and tastes of every food we could think of. Looking back, I think these conversations helped to alleviate some of the cravings. We were being ridiculous, but we couldn't stop. I don't know if anyone will ever find us or read this journal, but I still have to write mainly for myself. 

    You see, we found the answer to our dream. After endless months of a gray capsule swallowed once a day, one of us stumbled across a large crate marked 'experimental vegetable seeds.' Perhaps the scientists had thought to provide a more naturalistic environment within the Dome, thus providing gardens and gardening for the people. We didn't care why. All we cared about was that they were here and we had found them! We do have artificial soil and plants. These are almost like the real thing, yet not real. But the seeds were real, the product they could produce was real, and finally, we felt we had something to look forward to.

    They were found in the entryway, in a sort of closet-type compartment on the other side of the sterilization chamber, a place we had never had any reason to explore, waiting to be discovered, planted, nurtured, harvested, and eaten. Yes, eaten. Our tortuous make-believe food conversations took on a whole new meaning. We were fairly confident that the artificial soil could support the cultivation of vegetable seeds. The environment we lived in was constant and virtually ideal for growing a garden. 

     So, grow a garden we did. We selected one of everything in the crate. There were carrots, lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and potatoes, a virtual smorgasbord of delights. We had decided to let some vegetables go to seed so we could continue to have real food for as long as we lived. Our existence finally had meaning, for we had a garden to grow.

      We held our breaths in anticipation to see if the artificial soil could produce a live plant. We felt the synthetic water wouldn't harm them, for it didn't harm us. We refused to believe that we had stumbled across these jewels, only to have our hopes dashed from the soil unable to support life.

      Our fears were unwarranted. The feelings that the green mist of seedlings poking their heads above the soil gave us were not unlike the feelings a mother has when she looks at her baby, I'm quite sure. Weprettyasized about our vegetarian feast that wasn't so far off. 

     During the waking hours, we laughed and joked, something we hadn't done for quite some time. We tended to our seedlings and later full-grown plants. We disciplined ourselves not to pick the vegetables before they were ripe, surprisingly well. We had agreed that in one more week, we would harvest. None of us slept well in anticipation. The thought of getting to experience these vegetables was unequaled to anything I had ever dreamed of in my entire life. 

Chapter five.

I robot.

     None of us had expected what happened next, but we should have. As I write in this journal, I weep at the memory of it. For during the so-called night of our damned domed existence, the robot maintenance crew leveled our beautiful precious garden. Once it had happened and we got over the initial shock, it made perfect sense. Any foreign matter was removed while we slept with the meticulous care of the robots. We didn't see them much because they only came out while we slept, or we might have realized the potential threat and been able to save our exquisite garden. Why they hadn't discovered it sooner, we weren't sure. It definitely would have been less painful had they found it sooner. For we were less than a week away from harvest.

    We felt defeated and depressed beyond belief. We all did nothing but lay in our bunks for days. If someone had told me a few months ago that a carrot, or lack of one, could have triggered such enormous feelings, I would have thought them insane, but it was real.

    After we wallowed in our misery for a few days, the verdict was unanimous: we would replant. This time, we would watch our garden with vigilance. We would rotate on all-night shifts to keep a 24-hour watch. Our precious tomatoes, onions, and peppers would reach maturity this time. We could intervene with the robots' work, but our expertise didn't include programming the damn things, so we had no choice but to keep an ever-watchful eye. It turned out it was easy to intervene with the robots. We wished we had known because we would have been eating by now. So now we had months to wait again. The good news was we had nothing else to do and nothing but time.

Chapter six.

Let's get ready to rumble.

     I don't need to articulate the procedure again. Our hearts were in it because what else did we have to look forward to except our garden and the much-anticipated meal? But it was different this time, and we were anxious and afraid instead of light-hearted and cheerful. So, night after night for months, we took turns rotating on a night shift, and we were able to intervene when the robots came again.

      Well, were we successful? Did we finally produce a garden with a crop fit for a king? After months and months of waiting, did we get our payoff? Yes, we did. Our first meal was the most memorable, and we made absolute pigs of ourselves. We crunched and chewed carrots and broccoli and tomatoes and potatoes for hours. It was a little like heaven in the hell we lived in. We ate until we were full, then we ate and ate some more.

     I think we were all anxious to go to bed so we could wake up and have breakfast to look forward to. We all ended up throwing up and having bouts of terrible diarrhea, but we didn't care. After we recovered from our belly aches, we could verbally reflect on our first great disappointment with the garden. We felt melancholy and deliciously full for the first time in a long while. We spent several months experimenting with every vegetable recipe we could think of, and we were truly content.

    We had no cookware because the gray pills replaced any need to cook. We managed to come up with pots and vessels to cook in. Then, we created a stove that produced enough heat to bake, fry, and boil. We mutually painstakingly avoided any talk of our dismal surroundings, and it was beautiful to enjoy conversation.

Chapter Seven.

Down with the sickness.

     The happiness was relatively short-lived. After about a month, the first signs of sickness started showing up. We thought it was just our bodies adjusting to the food introduced into our systems. We tried slowing down on our real food and ate every other day. On the off days, we took our gray capsule. This seemed to help, but within another month, three of us were dead. There was nothing we could do; we had no doctors. 

     The three of us that were left didn't take time to grieve. We were too busy trying to find the cause of the sickness, which might tell us how to cure it. We ran tests on everything and came up with nothing. We knew if we had the same sickness as the other three, we didn't have much time left, so we did the one thing we had hoped we wouldn't have to do. We ran tissue samples on our dead. The computers told us something our brains couldn't comprehend: that the tissue and, ultimately, the body had been killed by germs. The sterilization chamber removes the immune system, so even the common cold could kill us. But since we live in a completely germ-free environment, we need no immune system. Everything that comes through the chamber is freed of germs, so how did these germs leak in and kill us?

Chapter Eight.

Time is on my side.

      I'm the only one left and don't have much time. I'm hurrying to finish this journal before I, too, die. I have figured it out. You see, the one specific we overlooked too late was where we found our crate of killer seeds. They were in storage outside of the sterilization chamber, and we didn't stop to spend the five life-saving minutes required to protect us from the germs they carried. Oh sure, I think I can step into the sterilization chamber, and all the germs that are living inside my body would be destroyed. But I don't think I'm going to try that. I would rather be dead than live my life out alone in Project Dome. So, in another day, two at the most, I too will be killed by the germs, and the human race will be extinct.