His eyes darted between myself and the Titan Project out the window as he back away. Then the door opened, and a security officer came through. He placed his hand on Mr. Drayton’s shoulder and escorted him out of the office.
As soon as he was gone, I slumped back into my chair and exhaled. Even good interviews took a lot out of me. I closed out of his information, and my computer screen reverted to my list of candidates. I had to strain my eyes just to keep all the text from looking like one big blob. Like Mr. Drayton, I’d selected every single person. There were doctors, theoreticians, physicists, engineers, artists, self-made billionaires and anything else you could imagine, from everywhere around the globe.
I scrolled through the list. As many as there were, I could remember the face of everyone I’d talked to—accepted or rejected. I always did it personally, though with a cohort of armed guards for rejections since there was no telling what desperate people would do. Only four hundred interviews remained. Five of them were experts in the same field as Mr. Drayton interviewing later that day—so I couldn’t be sure if he made the cut yet or not—but I had a good feeling about him.
With less than a week until the doomsday clock struck zero, I knew I was cutting it close. But I had to be meticulous. I owed humanity that much at least.
Before I could scroll down to the next candidate on my list, an email popped in the bottom right corner of my screen. I didn’t recognize the sender, but the subject read: take my son, and you won’t regret it. I forwarded it to my junk folder, where thousands of similar emails remained in purgatory.
“If only I could,” I whispered.
I grabbed a half-empty bottle of whiskey from under my desk and refilled the glass sitting by my keyboard. It was the only thing that quieted the voices bouncing around in my head of everyone I already had or was planning to reject. I was inches away from a much-needed sip when my door swung open.
Kara, my assistant, froze in the entrance. Her expression soured when she noticed the glass I held. She’d been with me since her parents died in a car accident, leaving her an orphan at only ten years old. My company was working on implementing the automated vehicle network at the time, so I legally adopted her. At first, it was admittedly a publicity stunt, and then I fell in love with her.
I always found myself shocked upon realizing what a beautiful, intelligent young woman she’d grown into. She had the brains to take over Trass Industries from me one day… if not for the end of the known world.
“I thought I told you to knock?” I grumbled. I didn’t mean to take a harsh tone with her, but the whiskey’s pungent aroma wafted around my nostrils, and all I wanted was a drink.
“I did. Three times,” she said, unable to take her eyes off my glass. I was glad she didn’t comment on it for once. I had too much on my mind without worrying about disappointing her again.
“Oh... Is everything alright?”
“Fine. I wanted to let you know that your next appointment is almost ready. She just passed her physical.”
“You could have buzzed me.” I noticed her gaze drift away from my full glass and scan the entirety of my messy office. “Checking up on me again?”
“It’s almost five.” She took a few long strides into my office and picked up a pile of loose papers. “You need to eat, dad.”
“I’ll find time for that eventually,” I said.
Kara bit her lip in frustration but decided to move on. “How did Mr. Drayton do?” she asked.
“You know I can’t tell you yet.” I never allowed her or anyone else to be involved in my decisions. Truthfully, I didn’t even want her to have the burden of knowing their names, but I couldn’t run both the interviews and the physicals alone.
She stopped cleaning and regarded me. “I can help you if you let me. I’ve met thousands of candidates. I know what you’re looking for.”
I shook my head. From the corner of my eye, I spotted someone in the desperate crowd beyond the fence of my compound standing on the back of a truck and flashing a sign large enough for me to read: let me in.
“No,” I said. “It’s my responsibility and mine alone.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You’re not Noah, you know. Hundreds of us have been here with you every step of the way.”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is anything like some fable, Kara,” I scolded. “His task was easy. The animals he marched two-by-two couldn’t speak to him. They couldn’t beg or offer their billions for a spot. They couldn’t send in pictures of their children who now have six days left to live!” I slapped the glass off my desk. Kara yelped when it shattered on the floor.
For a moment neither of us made a sound. Layer upon layer of silence folded over each other until the tension in the air had my neck itching.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I bent over from my chair to start picking up the pieces until I felt her slender hand fall upon my shoulder. My racing heart immediately slowed. She had a way of calming me which I’ll never understand.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said.
“It’s not you.”
“I just want to help as much as I can.”
I patted her hand. “You are. More than you’ll ever know.” I stared into her bright green eyes. “It’s not because I don’t trust you, Kara.”
“I know.”
“Every person I accept means there’s another one who won’t be coming. I can run across the solar system to Titan, but I’ll have to remember everyone who sat across from me and didn’t make the cut. I’ll hear their voices and see their faces every time I close my eyes. You don’t deserve to have that on your conscience.”
By the end of my venting, Kara sat beside me on my desk, furrowing her freckled brow. “And you do?”
“Better me alone than all of us.” I forced another smile. “Now, I think I’ll take you up on that dinner offer. Why don’t you pick something for us from the café? We’ll eat after my next appointment.” I’d been sick of the food in my compound for months, but since we were in the middle of the Arizona desert and I couldn’t leave, options were limited.
“I’m on it.” She started toward the exit, then stopped and glanced back at the wet spot on the floor. “Should I pick you out another bottle?” she asked.
I didn’t have to work hard to smirk after hearing that. “Make it two,” I said. “It’ll be a long week.”
“Don’t push it. I’ll have security send the next candidate in on my way down.”
“Thank you, Kara.”
The door shut behind her. I stood and stretched my old legs. I spent so much time in my chair that sometimes I wondered if I’d pass the physical necessary to make it onto the Titan Project.
I stepped over the spill and opened a cabinet where I kept more glasses. I grabbed one and held it up to the light. The bottom was dusty, but it was clean enough. I carried it back to my desk and filled it until the whiskey bottle was empty.
Three knocks sounded at my door as I sat back down, along with another useless, pleading email on my computer. I closed my eyes and took as long a sip as I could handle. I coughed, wiped my mouth, and pulled up the next candidate’s information.
Jillian Stark was a nuclear physicist who worked directly beside a Nobel Prize winner back when that was a thing people cared about.
“Come in,” I said.
22 Hours Until Impact…
Less than a single day remained before the asteroid would hit Earth and the Titan Project was running behind schedule. Finishing touches to the ship took longer than expected, and the candidates were finally being loaded into their pods.
I stood on one of the upper decks of the tremendous vessel. The inside was little more than a ring-shaped corridor wrapped by glassy sleep-chambers, with a lift in the center. Every occupiable level except for the command deck was identical. The highest level was the only place I could go where I couldn’t hear the echoes of gunshots and screaming. As the orange mark in the sky grew, the mob out
side of my compound’s walls intensified. I had to divert every member of security I had to keep them back.
I ran my fingers along an empty sleep-chamber as I strolled by. Exhaustion had them trembling. For the previous week, sleep had proven difficult no matter how much I drank. I found myself up every night, watching the few remaining newsfeeds as they talked about the chaos rampant throughout the planet. From America to China and everywhere in between—the entire world was tearing itself apart. Just one night earlier there were reports that a Russian Space Station scheduled to be launched into Earth’s orbit had been ripped to pieces by a mob. Now, a similarly angry mob stood outside my compound.
“It’s going to work, dad,” Kara said behind me, her voice echoing throughout the wide, vacant hall.
I turned to face her. Her face and clothes were covered in dirt, but my eyes were immediately drawn to the drops of dried blood on her right cheek. There was no wound from what I could tell, which meant the blood probably wasn’t hers.
“It’s not the journey I’m worried about,” I said. “How is it out there?”
“Not as bad as I look,” she said. “We’re holding. Security is sticking to your orders for now. Just warning shots.”
“So, you came here just to check up on me again?”
Her lips pursed and she looked to the floor. “There’s been a complication with one of the candidates. He smuggled… Well, you’d better come see for yourself.”
I surveyed the empty level and its hibernation compartments one last time, then nodded. I started walking toward the central lift. Kara placed her hand on my chest with enough force to stop me. Her features darkened.
“Is everything okay?” she questioned.
I didn’t need to see my reflection to know I looked terrible, every bit my age. My eyelids felt like they had stones tied to the bottom of them. I managed my best smile and said, “I’ll be fine, Kara. Nothing a few drinks can’t handle.”
I ignored her disapproving scowl as I brushed her hand away and continued on. The lift carried us to the lowest deck where the ship’s exit ramp awaited. There, the sleep-chambers were busy being loaded by my staff.
A line of candidates extended down the ramp and across the compound grounds. They appeared as exhausted as I was.
“Director,” said the next candidate to be put under. She bowed her head deferentially.
“Good to see you again—” It took me a second for her name to come to me, but I remembered before she helped me. “Ms. Stark.”
The staff slid her assigned chamber out. They stowed her bag below and hooked her up to IV tubes and restraints. Two years and plenty of dreams later, she’d wake within the orbit of Saturn.
I received a similarly reverent nod from every other candidate I passed. They probably didn’t think I knew who they each were, but they were wrong. Every face had been ingrained on my mind. I nodded approvingly to all of them until Kara, and I emerged from the ship.
My cheeks were instantly blasted by the cold Arizona night air and pricked by sand caught on a strong breeze. The spotlights of security drones filled the dark sky, aimed over the manned wall surrounding my compound at an unruly crowd of thousands.
I stopped and looked up. The moon glowed in the night sky as it always did, but off to its side was an orange-hued light brighter than all the stars. The asteroid had only recently become easy to spot, but now it was impossible to miss. An eye of condemnation staring down upon all of us.
“This way, Director,” Kara said, addressing me formally since we were in public.
She tapped my arm and led me at a brisk pace in the direction of the dormitory where my chosen candidates were staying. It was the only building in the compound with lights still on. The line of candidates snaking down from the ship toward it offered me their regards.
We passed the compound’s only gate. A row of armed soldiers stood in front of it. A rioting mob of angry citizens of Earth was on the other side. The bobbing sea of heads extended as far as I could see, illuminated by car fires. They flung rocks, bottles and whatever else they could at the gate. Warning shots resonated from manned watchtowers and from automated drones zipping over their heads, but the mob had a mind of its own.
Their glowers turned on me as we passed, causing the crowd to swell against the bars of the gate. “Coward! Taking your friends and running!” someone shouted as if I could be blamed for a stray asteroid. A rock pelted me in the shoulder. I stumbled and would’ve fallen too if Kara hadn’t caught my old body and yanked me into the dormitory’s security post.
“Animals!” she gasped. “Don’t they understand?”
I rubbed my arm and gave it a good stretch. “Would you?” I groaned.
Kara blinked, and then signaled to two guards inside the room. They parted, revealing Frank Drayton. He was crouched, arms wrapped around a tiny girl who couldn’t be older than four. She buried her face in his chest.
“One of the candidates,” Kara said.
“I know,” I replied.
She tossed a medium-sized duffle bag at my feet. The zipper was ripped open. “He snuck out of the compound last night somehow,” she said. “When he attempted to re-enter, security found the girl stuffed inside of this. Someone out there tore it from his hands, and she fell out. Half the mob are candidates you didn’t accept, so they know the rules. They nearly stoned him to death because of that, so I had him brought in for you to deal with.”
I stared at Mr. Drayton. I fondly remembered the look on his face when I’d informed him he was coming to Titan the day after his interview. Presently, his body quaked. Only, it wasn’t just out of fear. His face was bruised, and his torn clothes revealed fresh cuts. That explained the blood on Kara.
“Mr. Drayton,” I said. “What’s going on here?”
He looked up at me; pupils dilated from shock. “You remember?” he asked. His voice was so raspy it sounded as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of sand.
“Of course I do.” I lay my hand upon his shoulder. “Mr. Drayton, who is she?” I knew the answer, but I had to hear it to believe it. Every passenger was invited to bring one bag full of possessions to Titan. I never expected anyone to smuggle a person.
“She’s…” Mr. Drayton swallowed so hard I could see the lump in his throat bob up and down. “She’s my daughter.”
The breath fled my lungs. I glanced between him and the child at least a dozen times. “How?” I said. “I looked extensively into every candidate’s background. There were no children.”
Mr. Drayton smirked until stretching the fresh cut on his lip made him wince. “I didn’t mention I was as good with computers as I am with plants?”
“This is no time for jokes,” Kara reprimanded.
Right after the words left her lips, an earsplitting explosion rang out. I grabbed Kara and dropped to the ground. Mr. Drayton’s daughter cried while he squeezed her and repeatedly promised her everything was going to be fine. Outside, the volume of the mob amplified, becoming so loud that Kara and I immediately scrambled to our feet so we could see what was happening.
A drone had been shot down by something and had crashed right outside of the gate. Its explosion busted the hinges enough for people to crawl through one at a time. Before the officers inside could reinforce it, one member of the mob squeezed through and sprinted toward the Titan Project.
“No children!” the incensed man shrieked. “That’s my spot!” He didn’t make it far. A gunshot cracked from somewhere on the wall. This one wasn’t a warning. A bullet tore into the back of the man’s skull, and he toppled forward in a heap of tangled limbs.
Everybody went silent.
The guard on the wall who’d shot stood completely still, smoke rising from the end of his rifle’s blistering muzzle. If Mr. Drayton getting caught sneaking in a child had roused the mob, I knew this would ignite them.
I was no military commander, but I did the first thing that came to mind. I grabbed Sgt. Hale who was positioned just inside the dormitory monitoring t
he candidate transition and said, “Get everyone to the ship now!”
“Director, it takes time to load them into the pods,” he answered.
“Sort them on the ship! We need them alive!”
He nodded and transmitted orders over his radio. Moments later, every chosen candidate rushed across the compound toward the ship. They were terrified. Guards poured out of the watchtowers to reinforce their comrades by the damaged gate. There were no more gunshots, but rifle butts cracked bones as the mob stuck their wailing arms through the bars.
I turned to Kara, Mr. Drayton, and his daughter, and shouted, “Let’s go!”
Kara didn’t move at first. Her petrified gaze was fixed on the mob. I’d never seen her so rattled. I shook her by the shoulders to snap her out of it, and we took off. Mr. Drayton picked up his daughter and followed.
We didn’t make it far before a bottle shattered next to my feet. I hopped out of the way of the shards, but Kara tripped over the legs of the rioter who’d been shot. As she slid across the dirt, her hands dragged through the man’s blood. Again, she froze.
“C’mon, Kara!” I yelled as I hoisted her back to her feet.
We crossed the expanse of dirt between the dormitory and the ship without suffering any more setbacks. I helped Kara onto the entry ramp, and once we were at the top, I fell against the wall. My lungs were filled with dirt, and I couldn’t stop coughing.
Once I was finally able to catch my breath, I scanned my compound. A few hundred yards away, the guards at the gate struggled. The mob had started to climb over the gate, and I knew it wouldn’t last much longer with all their weight pressed against the compromised area.
“Recall the men,” I shouted to Sgt. Hale at the bottom of the ramp. He nodded.
I could no longer recognize any of the people I’d rejected in the mob. Everyone was covered in dirt and blood, and they were all so riled that they might as well have been foaming at the mouths. The officers received the order and immediately broke ranks to sprint to the ship. Most had fought in wars, but gunning down innocent people wasn’t in the job description. When the gate failed, they’d have no other choice. The last thing I wanted was my followers to be reduced to savages like the rest of the people on Earth.
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