The May-Flower Project

It’s 2 a.m. when I peer through the dark curtains which shade my room from the blinding sunshine outside. Without hesitation I drop the cloth as the heat and light shocks my eyes. I open my closet to decide on the clothes no one will see me wear. It has been three years, eight week, nine days, twelve hours and fifty-two minutes since Mercury fell out of rotation with the sun and collided with Venus, sending both bodies hurtling into our celestial life and light-giver.

Because of this catastrophe, our home planet has slowly begun to, well not too slowly, travel towards the sun. We’ve now cut the distance between Earth and Sun by about one percent; this means that experts expect us to collide with the large star in roughly three hundred years. Of course by then, it won’t matter to us because all life on Earth will be extinct. In fact, government officials have estimated that by then end of 2027, just six years from now, the surface of the planet will no longer be suitable for any life as temperatures will have risen 5,000 degrees. Not only will all of the ice on the planet have melted, it will effectively have evaporated for eternity. The surface of the earth, they say will be intolerable to walk upon in less than 6 months. Already the temperature outside is up 40 degrees from the average before the collision of Venus and Mercury.

As I look at my computer I see that the temperature outside is 160 degrees and the government has put a ban on excursions outside. On average we only have about 15 minutes of cool weather when the location one lives turns away from the Sun. It may seem implausible, but during those 15 minutes every evening, the temperature drops to negative 23 degrees. It is either feast or famine for us now, but boy do we remember the past. Every day when I wake up and attempt to look outside, I remember being too busy to stop and enjoy the reasonable warmth of the sunshine, the available cool water or a gentle softness of a spring breeze. We have no breezes now, only burning winds which whip through the streets and tear down trees and lampposts. Even if the temperature was not barbeque hot, the winds would discourage, ne deny anyone from stepping outside.

I haven’t been out of my front door in three years. Food is delivered to us each Tuesday and we must keep windows and doors barred at all times to keep out the heat and the wind. I sit at my breakfast table eating my fiber cereal – there’s no reason that just because the world coming to an end, I should stop being regular – and read the news online. Another couple hundred thousand people have died of hunger or heatstroke. People have been dropping more and more each day as the temperature rises and supplies run short.

My eye catches a story about another shuttle launching Wednesday from Minnesota carrying more fortunate refugees from Earth to vast stations on the other side of the galaxy. I sigh and know that it is only a matter of time before those people will need to find themselves someplace else to live. Subsequent to the events of “The Collision” as people have come to call it, the government has tried to colonize other planets such as Mars, Neptune, and even Pluto to no avail. I was surprised to hear about that last one as Pluto was deemed too distant from our home, but I guess it turns out that the leaders of the most affluent countries – the United States, China, Great Britain and other European nations, and Australia – have known about the possibility of the end of Earth for a rather long time and have advanced in space exploration and travel but have failed to inform the rest of the population prior to the incident. It costs several million dollars to charter a seat on one of the spacecrafts and that’s far more than any of the general population has to spare, especially since the banks and stock market have been rendered irrelevant. Like me, most of the public are doomed to live out our sad lives here on our soon-to-be grave.

But I have resigned myself to the fact that I can’t do anything about anything so I live in peace here in my apartment, alone. Most of my family has passed on. I have some relatives in Oregon but it is too extreme outside to venture anywhere. I’ve been alone for the past two and half years, not even a pet or neighbor to speak to. Two and half years of solitaire, TV dinners, Lifetime reruns, and a rather large stockpile of liquor. I finish my bowl of cereal and check my email, ready to see nothing but advertisements for a chance at a long and happy life in space – our new “Heavenly Home” – and sigh as I read just what I expect. About to close my email account, I notice a little exclamation point – an urgent message symbol – next to an email from the May-Flower Project, one of the better, more successful re-colonization projects. I lose my breath as I click on the email and a message pops open – “You’ve Been Selected!”