The Last

(I apologize as I am very tired. I put this short story together after listening to a cover of Radioactive. Video below.)

The sun was bright like the illumination of lightening, a white hotness above obscuring with its light. All was bathed in its monochrome intensity. The parched land beneath my feet—all is desert, a vast dry desert—this hard rock, burns as a frying pan. Kicking a diamond out of my way, I listen to it rolling out of sight. Finding the graves, I sit between them.

“You were right,” I laugh. “It can support life. About another hour of it or so.”

The computer’s display is impossible to read in this extreme light, but the audio works, mostly.

“Computer, calculate . . . ” I stop, noticing the horizon. Like a surgeon had separated the earth and sky a wound showed: a long sliver of purple cleaved the white of the expansive plain and the white of the expansive dome. “. . . calculate how long I have.”

“If current trends—” garbled static rages over the voice, “twenty eight minutes,” she concludes with the same tone she would use if I had asked when dinner was.

“You have a real sweet bedside manner, Doc.”

Lying down, I stretch out between the two bodies. I still see their vague forms dormant under the millions of dollars worth of diamonds I’d piled over them. It feels like a dream. I stare into the sky. The goggles, just about the only equipment unaffected by the radiation, too simple for anything to go wrong with, I pull over my eyes, quietly gazing into the bright star above. Sitting up, I remember why I came.

“Oh, you’ll be happy,” Unlatching my bag, I begin rifling through it. “I think these will interest you. They’re flowers, or the closest thing this planet has to them.” Pulling out a multicolored crystal the computer was no help in identifying, I stick it over one of the graves. Finding a second, I likewise adorn the other mound of carbon on carbon. “They’re very plentiful, and I’ve never seen the like before.”

Inside each burns a fire; the computer said they were radioactive. Finding a third, I whisper, “And this I’ll keep for myself.” Falling back down, I lay the crystal over my chest. “Computer . . . ”

After a minute of silence, the computer responds, “I’m sorry, I did not catch that.”