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A burst of white light flashed across the horizon as the sun concluded the third of its sixteen pilgrimages for the day. Darkness washed over the blue orb below, revealing the vast capillaries of light that marked the domains of humankind. Aboard the Destiny module of the International Space Station, bright LED lights illuminated coils of wires hanging from the walls and ceiling, fighting for space amid organized lengths of hose, panels of switches, and zip-locked bags filled with various instruments clipped to whatever little surface area remained.
Commander Isaiah Knight floated before an array of computer screens, wearing a red golf shirt and navy blue trousers. His brown eyes scanned each monitor while a keyboard clattered beneath his fingers. Everything looked normal. He stopped to stretch, his muscles burning from a two-hour workout.
Then something caught his eye.
He picked up the radio. “Houston, this is Station. Do you copy?”
“Station, Houston. Go ahead.”
“Houston, we’re picking up some strange readings on REM2. Over.”
“What do you see, Station? Over.”
“Houston, the REM2 is detecting radiation all over eastern Asia. Do you copy?”
He was met with radio static.
“Houston, this is Station. Do you copy?”
More static.
“Houston. Do you copy? Houston?”
The radio fell silent.
No static.
Nothing.
A high-pitched warning tone filled the module. Isaiah flipped through each channel, calling for Houston, his voice calm. Then he switched to the ham radio. Still nothing. Every single channel was dead. They lost all communications.
“Hey Anton,” he said into a walkie. “Get in touch with Moscow. We’ve lost contact with Houston. Over.”
After a few moments, the flight engineer replied. “Nothing, Isaiah. It’s dead. You think it’s the computer?”
“We’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, get over to Destiny. Call Sakura, too.”
“What about the tourist?”
“Leave him be. He’ll just get in the way.” Isaiah checked the radiation detector that precipitated his call to Houston. The monitor displayed a yellow circle encompassing the continent. Its circumference grew bigger and bigger, the readings from REM2 showing ever-increasing levels of radiation.
He began to switch over to the backup computer, hoping it would restore contact with ground control.
“Commander, get over here,” called Sakura, their science officer. She’d only been with them two months, this being her first mission aboard the ISS. She was typically reserved and soft-spoken, but something was peculiar in her voice.
Isaiah untethered himself from his workstation and pushed himself towards his fellow astronauts hovering before the circular window. Looking at their faces, he knew something was wrong. Sakura’s eyes were wide with terror while all the color had drained from Anton’s face, rendering him as pale as their spacesuits.
He huddled beside them and gazed through the window. Fireworks erupted through the veil of night, snuffing out the networks of light stretching through Asia. But unlike most firework shows, there was no sound of explosions, no jubilant crowds cheering each successive burst. The only sounds were the constant whir of the fans supplying their oxygen and the high-pitched beeps signaling the loss of communications.
They looked at each other with grim realization. Those weren’t fireworks they were witnessing. They were mushrooms clouds.
Anton was the first to speak. In his mid-thirties, he was clean-shaven with sandy hair, wearing blue overalls with the Russian flag embroidered on its sleeve. “What now?”
Isaiah forced himself to look away from the ghastly spectacle. He pondered Anton’s response. What now? What kind of question is that? Anton was as cool as they came, always thinking one step ahead. Before becoming an astronaut, he was a test pilot, flying some of the most experimental aircraft on the planet. If this were any other situation, he already would've begun planning to get them out of it.
There was only one thing they could do. “We need to find out what the hell is happening down there,” Isaiah said.
“And how do we do that? All comms are down with Houston and Moscow.”
Isaiah glanced over at Sakura. Her eyes were fixed on the window, her short-cropped hair floating all around her.
“Sakura,” he said, receiving no reply. It was like she was hypnotized by the multitude of explosions flashing over the dark continent. Then he realized that Japan lay just beyond the curvature of the globe. In about ten minutes, her homeland would come into view. “Sakura!”
She flinched, gasping ever so slightly. “Yes, commander?”
“You need to get to Kiba and contact Tokyo.”
“But -”
“Sakura, I know,” he said, trying his best to not look through the window. “We need to see if you can make contact.”
She nodded and propelled herself forward, sneaking back a glance before disappearing through the hatch.
“What’s all this racket?” called a voice from the opposite side of the module.
Isaiah and Anton exchanged a look. Floating towards them was the billionaire Luke Davis, the tourist who’d been with them for the past two weeks. NASA preferred they called them “space participants” but that would imply he actually participated in something useful.
He wore a flower-print Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, a NASA cap atop his head with a pair of AirPods in his ears. But that wasn’t all. The guy was wearing sandals like he was on a beach instead of a multibillion-dollar space station.
In his time as commander, Isaiah had shared the company of some great space participants. Most were scientists or tech innovators who conducted their own experiments aboard the station. Davis did none of that. As he constantly reminded them, he made his money with a software company he started for thousands and sold for millions. He was just here for the ride. Well, that and space selfies.
If the ISS was Luke Davis’ personal space hotel, then its crew was his glorified housekeepers. Isaiah found himself cleaning nail clippings out of the cabin air filter, discovering errant spoons and empty food packages floating through various modules. And the mess he made in the bathroom...when Isaiah opened the door, he was bombarded by tiny piss bubbles. Even worse, Davis kept leaving his bags of excrement in the toilet, forcing the crew to dispose of them.
They weren’t babysitters. They were astronauts. Pilots. Scientists and engineers. Hand-picked because they were the best at what they did on the entire planet. They didn’t need this foolishness.
“So what’s going on, guys?” Davis asked as he floated closer. “Whatcha looking at?”
Anton muttered something in Russian, Isaiah’s working knowledge of the language adept enough to know it wasn’t hello.
“Nothing. Get back to your quarters,” Isaiah ordered.
“I paid my $60 million, I want to see,” he replied, floating closer. “Holy crap, what a light show!” When the realization hit him, it looked like he’d been kicked between the legs. “Wait,” he blurted, his voice becoming high-pitched. “What’s going on here? Did we -”
“We don’t know what’s going on,” Isaiah interrupted him. “But it appears we’re witnessing a nuclear war.”
“And what about America? Are we okay?”
Anton’s face twisted into a scowl. “What do you mean we?”
“All comms are down with Houston,” Isaiah explained, his patience already beginning to expire. “We’re waiting on confirmation from Tokyo.” He glanced through the window at the fireballs erupting over the landmass below. Deep down, he knew Tokyo was gone.
Before Davis could reply, Sakura reentered the module.
“Commander, I can’t reach Tokyo. All comms are completely dead.” She floated closer to the window, trying to peer over Davis’s shoulder.
“Get out of the way, man,” Anton ordered him. The space tourist didn’t budge. “Are you deaf, I said move.” He shoved him, sending him flying down the cylindrical module.
Davis caught himself on the frame of the hatch. “Listen, Ivan,” he said. “I don’t know what you Russians did to piss us off, but you’ve had it coming.”
“You Americans have been out to get us for a hundred years,” Anton replied, his blue eyes piercing into him. “You always need a babayka to fight, and we fit the bill.”
“For Christ’s sake, everyone calm down,” Isaiah ordered, glancing over at Sakura. She floated before the window, pressing her hand against the glass. Not a breath escaped her lungs as she waited for her homeland to appear on the horizon.
After a few minutes, it did. The bright lights that ordinarily illuminated the island chain were extinguished, a faint glow remaining in a few small areas. Sakura gasped in terror, little bubbles forming in the corner of her eyes.
“How much longer till we see America?” Davis asked, not even bothering to look at her. Anton put a consoling arm around Sakura, speaking in soft tones while she continued to stare out the window.
Isaiah clenched his jaw and floated toward him. He knew he had to keep his cool, but this guy was pushing him hard. Pretty soon he’d be locking him in his sleeping quarters.
“Listen,” he said, trying to speak matter-of-factly. “We have two astronauts who’ve just seen their homes utterly destroyed. Now I get that you’re upset, that you want to see what happened to our home. But have a little consideration.” He glanced back at his comrades, now embracing. Anton wept on Sakura’s shoulder while she squeezed her eyes shut, trying her best not to cry.
“I don’t care,” Davis continued. “I got family down there. A business. How much longer?”
Isaiah shook his head. He wanted to knock this guy’s head off his shoulders. “About forty minutes. Now shut up and wait.”
The wait felt like the passage of time from the big bang until now. It was only then Isaiah had a chance to think about his family. And when he did, it hit him with the force of a meteorite. His wife, Jasmin, his boy Darnell. They were down there. Alone. Gripped by terror. While he was up here floating, helpless, unable to do anything. He couldn’t even make contact with them.
Before he left, he’d given Darnell a ham radio. Whenever Isaiah had the time, they’d chat in the evening for an hour, sometimes longer. About anything. His studies, what he was up to with his friends, answering his myriad questions about space. Isaiah knew if America had suffered the same fate as elsewhere, he’d never see or hear from him again. And Jasmin. He could smell her perfume, feel his hands gripped on her waist as they embraced. It left him with an emptiness greater than the void between stars.
Eventually, the veil of night lifted. White light flashed on the horizon, the sun revealing the vast Pacific Ocean before them.
And they got their answer.
A thick blanket of black smoke hovered over North America, its cities no more than smoking ruins.
Davis shouted, pointing his finger at Anton. “What did you do to us?”
“No one did anything,” Isaiah said. He glanced over at Anton, too weary to even feign anger. “You think the blame game is going to change anything?”
“C’mon, brother,” Davis replied. “I know you’re black, but we’re both American.”
“Nah, nah. Don’t be playing that game with me. Not now.” Isaiah was ready to throw this guy out the airlock. “You people are always breaking stuff and we’re the ones cleaning up the mess.”
“What do you mean you people? We’re all humans. Now more than ever.”
“Don’t be talking that ‘we all human’ crap after what you just said.”
“You wouldn’t be up here if it wasn’t for white people.”
“Motherfucker, you wouldn’t have the economy to build a space station if it weren’t for the free labor black folk gave you.”
Before Davis could say another word, Isaiah grabbed him by his tacky shirt and pulled him towards the sleeping quarters on Harmony.
“What are you doing? I paid $60 million. You can’t do this to me!” Davis shouted, struggling to break free of Isaiah’s grasp.
“Time to let the adults figure things out.” Isaiah glanced over at Anton. “Care to help me with this guy?”
Anton pushed himself forward. “With pleasure.”
A few minutes later and Davis was locked inside his sleeping quarters. He wouldn’t be getting out any time soon.
They rejoined Sakura on Destiny. By now they were orbiting over the Atlantic, black smoke creeping over its waters from the west. Soon they’d be over Africa. Isaiah wondered if they’d been spared the nuclear holocaust. But even if they were left unscathed, they wouldn’t be spared its aftermath. It didn’t look like anyone would.
“Let’s go over our options,” Isaiah said. “Ground control is gone. We’re flying blind.”
A silence passed over them and they found themselves staring out the window once more. Isaiah could see why they were transfixed on the destruction of their planet. They were so far removed from what was happening that it didn’t feel real. Like they were gods witnessing the handiwork of their mortal counterparts below. In a way, Isaiah could just stay here, watching the world succumb to a slow death.
Anton spoke up first. “We have no way of knowing if we’re in conjunction with debris. We’re sitting ducks.”
In over twenty years, the ISS had made twenty-seven avoidance maneuvers to dodge space debris. It was a problem that grew worse by the year. Last year alone, the crew made three such maneuvers. When it did happen, they were warned more than a day in advance. Working with NASA and Russian flight controllers, they’d use the thrusters from Progress to boost the station. The impact from a small piece of debris – even one as small as six inches - would be catastrophic.
“Not only that - we have enough propellant on Progress to boost us maybe twice more,” Sakura said, referring to her logbook.
“What about the main thrusters?” Isaiah asked.
“Two, maybe three boosts,” Sakura replied. “Then we begin the slow descent home.”
“We could always hasten the process,” Anton shrugged.
Isaiah knew that meant thrusting the station into the earth’s atmosphere and burning up on re-entry. It’d be a spectacular way to go out, that much was certain.
“In terms of supplies, we have enough to last six months - if we ration.” Sakura flipped through her logbook once more. But once that’s gone...”
They gave each other a knowing look. Sure, they could wait for ground to reestablish communication. But what were the chances? The United States was a nuclear wasteland, Russia no more than a smoking crater. Who knows what happened to Europe?
“So we either go out with a bang or a whimper,” Isaiah said.
Another silence fell over them. For what seemed like hours, they floated before the nadir window, watching the dark cloud of ash spread over the globe, once again hypnotized by the destructive beauty of Armageddon.
The earth had existed for billions of years. And in the span of a few hours, it was destroyed by the species it saw fit to create. As soon as the first Homo sapiens evolved, it was only a matter of time and technology. And now they were spectators to its death knell.
“What about taking the Soyuz home?” Anton said, breaking the silence.
“With no ground control, we can land just about anywhere,” Isaiah replied. “How will we know when to descend once we undock? With nobody crunching the numbers for us, we could end up in the middle of the ocean.”
Isaiah glanced down at earth. The west coast of Africa should have been directly beneath them. Instead, he saw nothing but a thick blanket of smoke.
“Would you rather take the chance, or slowly starve up here?” Anton asked him. “At least we have a chance of surviving if we use the Soyuz. But we have to move fast. There might still be land visible. If not, it could be more than a year till the smoke clears. Let’s monitor the ham radio, maybe we can pick up a signal.”
“And say what?” Isaiah asked him. “We’re coming in hot, where’s a good place to land?”
“How long exactly can we survive on earth?” Sakura asked. “We’ll be flying into a nuclear winter. We’ll die anyway, only more horrifically and painful.”
“And what about the tourist?” Isaiah asked. “There’s only room for three of us on a Soyuz. That means someone needs to ride with Mr. Billionaire.”
“Well, he did pay $60 million,” Anton replied. “I think he should get his money’s worth.”
They burst into laughter. Isaiah slapped his leg so hard it hurt. Sakura covered her mouth, trying to smother her awkward giggles. Anton leaned back and howled, tears bubbling in the corner of his eyes. He didn’t know how long it went on, but Isaiah wanted it to last forever. Because when this moment ended, he knew they’d have to make their decision.
“So, what’s it going to be?” he said, once the last of their laughs faded away. “Are we going out with a bang or a whimper?”
CONTRIBUTORS
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Anastasios Mihalopoulos is a Greek/Italian-American from Boardman, Ohio. He received his MFA in poetry from the Northeast Ohio MFA program and his B.S. in both chemistry and English from Allegheny College. His work has appeared in Blue Earth Review, West Trade Review, Ergon, The Decadent Review and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of New Brunswick.
Sabina Malik is an author of speculative fiction. Originally born in the States and raised in Canada, she leads a nomadic life, writing stories in airports, buses, and hotel rooms around the world. Her most recent fiction credits include Sci-Fi Shorts and Flash Fiction Magazine. You can find her on Instagram @lazyfiction and linktr.ee/lazyfiction.
Shana Waldman studied sociology in Portland, Oregon, and has spent the past three years working in environmental tourism and wildlife policy. Her other interests include playing the guitar (poorly), baking (passably), and backpacking (skill level unclear).
Joseph Hirsch’s speculative works have appeared in numerous venues, including Zahir: A Journal of Speculative Fiction; The Vanishing Point; and Hellbound Books. Other stories of his have appeared in 3 AM Magazine and Underground Voices. His nonfiction has also found a home in various outlets, including Film International and Fight Hype. He served four years in the US Army, in which his travels took him to locales as diverse as Germany, Iraq, and Texas. He is the author of more than ten published novels and is online @ www.joeyhirsch.com
Wayne Kyle Spitzer is an American writer, illustrator, and filmmaker. He is the author of countless books, stories and other works, including a film (Shadows in the Garden), a screenplay (Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows), and a memoir (X-Ray Rider). His work has appeared in MetaStellar—Speculative fiction and beyond, subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, among others. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from Gonzaga University, and an A.A.S. from Spokane Falls Community College. His recent fiction includes The Man/Woman War cycle of stories as well as the Dinosaur Apocalypse Saga. He lives with his sweetheart Ngoc Trinh Ho in the Spokane Valley.
James Austin McCormick is a college lecturer from Manchester, England and has been writing speculative fiction for over twenty- five years. Where possible he likes to blend genres, with science- fiction and horror being his favourites. James has had several short stories published in various anthologies and some novellas and novels published by Class Act Books.
David Blitch lives in Fleetwood Pennsylvania and has enjoyed reading science-fiction most of his 63 years. This is his first acceptance.
Argus Burton is an archaeologist turned librarian who enjoys all things speculative. In his free time he can be found playing music with numerous bands around Jackson, MS, or hiking and playing with his dog, Ringo.
Paul Lee was a columnist for his home county's newspaper. He grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, where he developed an early love for storytelling. His fiction is published in Black Petals Magazine, Grim & Gilded, Dark Horses Magazine, Mystery Tribune, and more. His ultimate goal is to help spread the love of literature.
Matt Dennis is an English teacher and part-time author. When he’s not marking essays, he’s writing short stories and putting the finishing touches on a speculative fiction novel. Matt is a graduate of York University, earning a BA in English and History with Magna Cum Laude honors. His short story, “Breaking the Order,” was published in The Dillydoun Review. Another of his short stories, “Poaching Hunters,” was chosen as the story of the month in The Horror Zine.