THE LAST 8 MINUTES OF MANKIND

Ira Mac

7:00:00’’ AM, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

Dianne, busy as usual even so early in the morning in her office was not about to be annoyed by the constant beeping of the central console, as solar flares routinely as ever tend to beep the hell out of the lab’s machinery on a very regular basis. She sipped her morning coffee sitting comfortably by her desk surrounded by machines that tirelessly recorded all kinds of activity of the sun. Her lab was on the last floor of the main building of the complex and it was her workplace, her home away from home for so many years.

Dianne did not let herself become annoyed even working with Josh Clemens, probably the most meticulous man on the planet (and possibly the known universe for that matter, a man so methodical and robot-like that everyone jokingly called him Dr. Intel Inside). Sharing the same lab for so long, she knew all his little quirks and nuances and she supposed he knew hers. They respected each other and knew most of the time what each would say before even finishing their own sentence. His youth, combined with his brilliance as well as his attention to extreme detail reminded her of Dr. Sheldon Cooper in the Big Bang Theory television series she so much enjoyed on her free time.

The main hub to her right was once again beeping furiously, flashing maniacally its red lights, demanding her attention. Same flares, different day, she thought. The sun’s activity had increased in the last few weeks and this constant beeping was nothing other than absolutely normal and to be expected.

-Josh look at that will ya? Dianne said. It’s going on all morning, I thought I reset it but they must be getting stronger and stronger. Just print the readout and classify it.

The classification folder was where everything was stored. Eruptions, flares, radiation, magnetic field shifts, the works. This particular folder was being replaced almost daily with a new one as reports and printouts very quickly filled it up due to the frequency of these activities. Of course there was an automated electronic backup system but paper was an old friend, one Dianne was not ready yet to let go despite the ITs assurances that computers never lose backups and that cloud computing is God’s gift to IT professionals!

Immersed in her work, Dianne who wasn’t easily annoyed and very few things in life and especially in her work surprised her, did jump on her feet and almost fell off her chair when Josh suddenly started screaming as loud as a million bats out of hell, a scream so sudden and so terrifying that made her skin crawl. Bewildered, she glanced at Doctor Intel Inside’s pants as he was standing there wetting himself, still screaming, his glasses half-cocked to the right and his empty hands in mid-air posed as if holding a piece of paper that was now descending to the floor. She turned her gaze downwards at the printout. The chart that was on it was clearly revealing an imminent build-up on the sun’s core which would result in an x-class radiation wave, the mother (and possibly the father) of all radiation waves. The chart was off the scale and it was so absurd and impossible that initially her brain refused to process it (Josh’s continuous screaming was not helping either) and it wasn’t until she looked at it again and again that brutal realization settled in as her knees started to give way to gravity. Humanity would cease to exist in about 8 minutes, the time it would take the radiation wave to hit the Earth. Her mind, trusting the machines and their printouts for so many years, didn’t consider even for split second that this could be a technical or computer error and the absolute certainty of that cold fact was enough to drain all the blood from her face and her brain.

Dianne, who was not easily surprised or annoyed, finally fainted as Josh screamed on.