MJ #12: Apocalypse Myth: The Day the Universe Blinked

Holly pulled her jacket tighter around her. It was strangely chilly for a summer evening.  The air sank its fangs into her cheeks and sucked the heat from her breath, teasing her with the fog of exhaling.

I shouldn’t be able to see my breath.  It’s mid-July!

Holly quickened her pace and flung herself into the heated dome of The Observatory.

“It’s freezing out there!”  Holly untangled the scarf from her neck and shed her layers.

“The thermostat’s reading twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit but that’s the least of our worries. Come take a look at this.”

Billy Rosemary was not having a good day and Holly could tell.  He led her through the lobby and into the Beast room.

“How’s the Beast-ie this evening?” she gestured to the massive telescope perched in the center of the dome.

“Out of a job.”

“What?”

Billy sighed and turned towards her, eyes wild and puffy as if he’d been crying.

“Billy?”

“Take a look for yourself.”

They strode up to the platform in silence except for the clicking of Holly’s heels on the tiles. Billy hit the controls with trembling fingers.  He nodded.

“Okay.”

“Holly glanced one last time at her partner before plunging her eye into the telescope’s.  Every time Holly gazed into the beast it felt like the Beast gazed back. But not this time.  Or maybe now more than ever.  She pulled back in confusion.

Running her eyes over the computer simulation and diving back in, she understood why Billy was panicking.

“Billy, please tell me this piece of shit is broken.”

“It’s one-hundred percent operational. I’ve quadruple checked.”

“No.”

Holly’s knees bowed to the earth as she crumpled.

“No.”

“I know it’s hard to take but…. We need to tell someone about this.”

Adrian stared up at the sky in amazement.  It was as if the eyes of heaven were turning away in shame, closing forever on the sin of humanity.  His wife, close and familiar, huddled under the jacket they shared.

“Is that…?”

“The stars.  The stars are going out.”

As the spirits of the great universe abandoned their children in the pursuit of darkness, the Sun wondered at its path.  The Earth cried out and decreed Importance and tossed little trinkets of invention as offering into its depths, but the Sun couldn’t resist heavy eyelids.  When the Sun closed its eyes, so did the Earth.  And tears fell like rain.