Meanwhile, around the Sun.
The detectors launched by the imperial space agency that had first discovered the signs of the impending disaster finally let out an alert as the sunspot stretched to the verge of breaking. Shortly after, with a flash of light, all of the detectors vanished as the eruption began.
A mass of nearly liquid hydrogen and helium the size of Earth was ejected from the sun in a 120 degree arc. Its velocity was such that it would reach Earth in just over twelve hours, and Mars about two and a half hours after that.
And all of it was being broadcast live to everyone in the solar system, courtesy of the imperial space agency.
......
Some people believed that, if something beyond their control was about to happen to them, it would be better if they were caught off guard by it. That way they wouldn’t spend the time leading up to the event in anxiety and panic. “Ignorance is bliss,” they claimed, and in a sense it was the absolute truth, because the moment one was notified of a crisis they could do nothing about, the panic would set in. That was why, in the face of crises in the past like pandemics, people would make some truly weird decisions... like buying all of the toilet paper in stores everywhere.
And now, everyone in the solar system was experiencing that sense of deep, visceral, hopeless terror while they awaited their devastation at the hands of the Sun and the knowledge that there was nothing they could do to stop what was coming.
The imperial space agency, in conjunction with the imperial press corps, was even doing everything they could to ensure that everyone could see what they thought was their doom approaching. There was a timer in the corner counting down to when the CME would arrive at Earth and end everything they knew, and the past eleven-and-a-half hours had seen people glued to their screens with a sense of morbid curiosity as expert after expert was paraded past their eyes, all of them virtually shoveling doom and gloom into viewers.
Some were questioning what the empire wished to achieve with the morbid spectacle. Was it just Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burned? Or was there some deeper meaning to it? Even people who were the proudest of their skepticism when faced with conspiracy theories were finding it difficult to believe that there wasn’t some conspiracy behind the news coverage. Especially since the empire was going out of their way to sow anxiety, when previous governments would have put their best effort toward hiding the news as long as possible, then make herculean efforts toward keeping the people as calm as possible.
Most of the conspiracy theories died stillborn, though, as people were too busy discussing the kind of damage they could expect rather than the whys and wherefores of the empire’s actions.
Thus, if the empire’s aim was to incite fear and panic, it was becoming ever more obvious that their goal was being achieved... at least among a specific group of people.
……
A man in his thirties was watching the broadcast on a small TV that was suspended over a hospital bed. The TV was muted, so he had no idea what they were saying; he hadn’t even bothered turning on the closed captioning. He was dressed in a sterile suit that covered him from neck to ankle, his shoes were covered in sterile booties, and on his head was a sterile cap and a face shield. His face was half covered by an n95 surgical mask and surgical gloves covered his hands. The only sounds in the room were the soft hissing and beeping of monitoring equipment.
On the bed was a woman with dozens of wires and tubes attached to her body. A PICC line connected her to a dialysis machine, a nasogastric tube was connected to a hanging bag of liquid food, and a dozen different wires attached to her chest connected her to the 12-lead EKG machine. Another wire ended on a probe that connected her fingertip to another machine, and a sphygmomanometer cuff was connected to the same machine as the fingertip probe. She had been intubated and was breathing via ventilator, and on her head was a tight-fitting cap that gathered data and displayed it on the screen of an electroencephalograph machine. Running from under her hospital gown was yet another tube, through which her waste flowed.
If one were to pick up the medical chart hung on the foot of her bed, they would see a bright orange sticker that read “DNR: DO NOT RESUSCITATE” and the diagnosis of end-stage multiple organ failure. Her prognosis was grim, to say the least, and she wasn’t expected to survive the oncoming crisis.
Suddenly, the wail of a baby overpowered the sound of machinery and the man looked at the incubator next to the hospital bed, within which lay a prematurely delivered baby swaddled in a light blue blanket and wearing a matching beanie on his head.
The man crooned a soft melody and rocked the baby from side to side by pushing and pulling the incubator. “Don’t worry little guy... mommy will be just fine. Shhh, shhh, shhh...” he continued, trying to soothe the baby that was barely bigger than his two palms combined.
That continued for a little over ten minutes before the baby ran out of energy and fell asleep again. The man drooped in his chair, obviously exhausted, and lay his head on the side of the woman’s bed and gazed at her hand. He prayed for it to move, and... it remained still, just like the last thousand times he had prayed for her to show a sign of survival, some evidence that she was fighting for her life and hadn’t given up yet.
His eyes moistened, then tears dripped on the blanket covering the woman and his shoulders shook in silent sobs. He wanted to wail at the top of his lungs and shout curses to the sky, but every time he was tempted to give in to that urge, he couldn’t help but remember the premie that was currently struggling to survive, or the woman on the bed who was doing the same... he hoped.
