The First Shall Be Last

In sixteen hours the human race would end.

Tav reached over to turn the clock on the nightstand towards himself. Sixteen hours, twenty-three minutes and some number of seconds not shown by the clock’s interface. Part of Tav’s mind wanted to know the tally to the microsecond—to feel them flowing past him like grains in a glass—since they were the last seconds a person could know.

But, there was work to be done. Somehow, here at the end of all things, there was still work to be done.

For a moment, while staring at his feet on the floor beside the bed and feeling the ache in his lower back, Tav contemplated the merits of skipping his morning routine. He could be dressed and out the door in a little under twenty minutes. And what did it matter? If he brushed his teeth, or showered—what did it matter?

In the end, he did it all, because he didn’t like the way his mouth felt with the sleep in it, or his face with the night’s oils on his skin, and because there was comfort in the familiar when on the precipice of the unknown.

Tav emerged from his cabin into pristine white corridors, dressed in his uniform, and headed for the observation deck. That was where they had agreed to meet.

When he arrived, the doors slid open at his approach, and revealed that she was already there. She stood with her back to the door, staring out the wide floor-to-ceiling windows that gave the deck its name. She wore shorts and no shoes. A baggy shirt hung off one shoulder and was wrinkled in a way only a night in bed brings about. The tousled dark curls rioting down her shoulders had the same slept-in aesthetic as the shirt.

Tav’s eyes widened a bit at the sight. He had never seen her like this—always tight, always professional—never this morning-after slumber-party aura.

At first she did not turn when Tav came to stand beside her and share in the view.

“There it is. It’s bigger.”

“Yup,” she said.

“I knew it would be, I guess, but—Christ, it’s big.” There was a tremble on the edges of his voice and he hated himself for it.

“Yup.”

Tav heard the same tremor in her voice and was suddenly calmed.

She turned to Tav then, and a bark of laughter exploded from her.

“Oh lord! Of course you—” she shook her head, stretching out one hand to pinch the fabric of his uniform, “Tav! Today? Why?”

Tav’s cheeks heated up, and he felt an embarrassed grin spread across his face.

“You, sergeant, are out of uniform,” he responded with mock severity.

“Yeah?” her grin collapsed into a lopsided grimace and she turned back to the viewing window, “no shit.”

They both stared for a moment longer, until she broke the silence.

“Are we doing this?”

“Look, Khavah, we don’t—”

“No. No, you were right. I hate it, but it feels… Well, it just seems like the right thing to do. So? Are we doing it?”

Khavah turned back to him, the smirk back in place.

“Leave it to you Tav, to give me work on my last day.”

And before Tav could fall back into the melancholy that statement stirred up, Khavah, spun around and started for the door.

“Come on Tav, I don’t want this to take all day!”

It didn’t.

The Ark had only six small life-raft vessels docked along its hull. Six last hopes clinging onto the side of a desperate chance. Neither Tav nor Khavah knew why the Ark was not responding to commands—only that for the last month since the two had awakened from cryo nothing either of them had done seemed to have made any difference. And now, sixteen hours before the Ark collided with an unnamed sun, Tav and Khavah had to do something.

They had asked all the questions. Why had they been brought out of Cryo? Why not any of the others? How had their trajectory gotten so fucked? And perhaps most concerning, why wouldn’t the Ark accept any of their commands? They had asked the questions. It was the answers that were the hard part.

Because of the Ark’s stubborn refusal to accept any commands, each of the life-rafts required manual launch from within the Ark itself. The two had argued long over which of them would be the one to stay behind and pull the levers, until it became clear to both of them that neither would be the one to save themselves at the cost of the other’s life.

Tav’s plan was simple. Load up the life-rafts with as many of the frozen crew as they could fit, and launch each one into the void. Then, maybe.

The futility of it had rankled Khavah at first, but she had conceded that twelve human souls adrift in space was better than the last of the human race burning in the heart of a star.

In the end, it only took a little over fourteen hours before the two of them were shoving on the last cryo coffin to get it into the sixth life-raft.

“One more push!” Tav groaned as he ground his shoulder into the smooth metal side of the capsule. He heard Khavah’s grunts and knew she was giving it all she had. The day had been long.

With a final roar of effort from the two of them, they were rewarded with the snick of the latch accepting the coffin’s base. Tav stood with another groan and drove his knuckles into the aches in his lower back.

He and Khavah stared at each other panting. It had been a long fourteen hours. Tav’s uniform had long since come untucked and now hung about him wet with sweat. Khavah, for her part, looked much as she had at the beginning of their great labor.

Without a word the two of them shuffled from the small life-raft. The rhythms of their motions for this last launch were executed with a seamless practice. Khavah pulled the door’s manual release as Tav tugged on the large round door to roll it into place. Once it was aligned, he and Khavah both pushed on the door hard until they heard the hiss of a good seal.

Then it was a matter of a few coordinated buttons pressed in panels to either side of the door, and then it was done. The last raft was jettisoned with the frozen remains of the human race.

“That’s it then,” Tav reported, lamely.

For a moment the two of them just stood and stared at the door that now had nothing behind it. What next?

“How long?” Khavah asked, her voice uncharacteristically small behind that question.

Tav touched his wrist display on the cuff of his uniform.

“A little over an hour.”

“I’m spent. I am going to go and watch the big show.”

Khavah turned to shuffle off back to the Observation Deck.

Tav hesitated to follow, and Khavah paused at the door, quirking an eyebrow to Tav in question.

“I just—I didn’t know if you, maybe, wanted to be alone?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Me? Not a chance.”

The two of them stood for a long time before the large windows, in a room that was far brighter than it had been fourteen hours before. Tav put a hand to his eyes in a futile attempt to shade them. He heard what must have been crying from Khavah, but he did not look over to her.

“I just can’t believe it came to this. You know? You know how many things had to go sideways for us to end up here?”

“Everything,” Tav murmured in agreement.

“Everything,” he heard her voice, small again.

“Is it, you know, going to be fast?”

Tav nodded, and then not sure if she was looking at him, added aloud, “Our shielding will hold, until it won’t. It will be all at once.”

“Ok then. Ok. That’s good.”

Another long silence stretched. Tav began to wonder about how much longer, and almost brought his arm up to check. Khavah reached out and caught his wrist and he turned to look at her. She had tears in her eyes.

“No, please. I don’t want to know. It’s soon, you know it’s soon.”

He nodded again. Tav felt wooden. He wanted to move, to do something to stop all this. But what was there?

“You know—” Khavah began, but was cut off by an alarm blaring over the ships speakers.

“Oh God!” she yelled, as her face broke into a smile. “Are we really going to have to go out listening to an alarm?”

Tav felt himself pulled back into the moment, and was grinning back at her—at the absurdity. On an impulse he reached out his hands and covered her ears, causing a laugh to bubble out of her. Still grinning she reached up her own hands to cover his ears. The rude rhythm of the blaring alarm faded under her hands.

They stood like that, grinning stupidly at each other, hands on the sides of each other’s face.

It was a twinkle in her eye, Tav was sure. It could not have been his own idea. But the pose shifted in an instant from silliness to tenderness, and they both knew with certainty they were going to have their first kiss.

He pulled his hands forward and she allowed him to guide her face to his. He felt the same tug of her hands on the side of his face, pulling him down to her. His heart was thudding rapidly, and his body flooded with all the chemical hope that a kiss brings forth.

There was an enthusiasm in Khavah, as she pressed her lips against his, that echoed and amplified his own. The confirmation of a longing in him that had only been born in that instant but had been pregnant in him his whole life. To give love, and receive love. A longing to be more than a solitary being.

As their lips broke, he pulled back from Khavah just enough to take in her whole face. The same ecstatic joy he felt in his own chest played across her features. He wanted this forever.

Then the moment came back to him, and he saw it return to her, as her lips closed around her smile. The blare of the alarm registered, loud and blasphemous in that sacred moment.

Tav saw in Khavah’s face the same aching knowing that shot through his own being.

Their first kiss would be the last.