decision making

decision making

by a. a. khaliq

The world ended in the year 2030.

I was thirty-one, married to a towering scientist with kind eyes. We wanted a baby so badly that it seemed the real apocalypse was not outside the walls of our house, but within it. Within my body. How strange, that you could want something so badly that the yearning ache kept you up night after night. How strange that you could want something so badly, and receive it, and regret it.

I carried to term in the last good year. My daughter was born on New Year’s Day. Even as a formless newborn, she had my long, straight nose and her father’s kind eyes. It was stupid, but I prayed that she would have his dimples. It was stupid to pray, to wish, to even hope in those months, but we all did.

We prayed when the government approved a contract with AstroCorp to begin moon colonization. We wished the scientist lottery would favor our partners, that we would live in Colony 0, escape our melting planet. We hoped when AstroCorp announced only scientists could leave on the First Exodus, our family permits for Colony 1 would activate soon. All those sleepless nights with my daughter’s crib to my right and a dustcovered pillowcase to my left--I could almost weep at my stupidity.

Colony 0 was full of billionaires and the scientists who kept them from dying of hypoxia. Colony 1 permits were sold at disgustingly high prices once the economy crawled and scientists’ salaries, not to mention my own surgeon’s income, could barely cover groceries.

What else could I have done? The scientists had nowhere to go, they could hardly demand anything. The hospitals were closed. I ran a clinic in the would-be nursery, but life didn’t seem worth saving anymore. The room remained empty, antiseptic.

Colony 2 was halfway done when the weekly calls from my husband trickled, and I dreamt of raising my daughter without even his specter around.

Tonight he calls for the last time, his bunkmate sitting nearby with a signal scrambler as he chokes out the latest confidential lunar decrees.

His urgency has me leaning forward, face inches from the screen.

“They’re going to shut down Colony 2 construction. A Colony 1 family brought a fucking dog, and they’re panicking about zoonotic viruses.”

Mary Mccoy - Pathway of Emotional Landscape 1, 2019

Hampton Williams - Untitled, 2019

"it seemed the real apocalypse was not outside the walls of our house, but within it"

Allie Carroll - Abalone Cove, 2019

My lungs feel like they are collapsing. As the implications run through my mind, every lingering wisp of dreamlike hope evaporates.

All those miles away, my husband weeps, a sound made tinny by space. My fears affirmed, I sigh.

Like always, I press a kiss to the center of my palm, raise my hand to the camera. He mirrors me.

“I’ll see you,” I say, smothering the “soon” that begsto fall from my lips.

As he echoes me, I memorize those eyes, that single dimple that was never inherited. I close my eyes before the screen goes dark. I can never bear to see his face disappearing.

I watch the clock herald midnight, and when the screen announces New Year’s Day, 2035, I allow myself a good, long cry. Then, I lay out the rations I had stockpiled and make a cake for my daughter’s fifth birthday.

I fulfill my sweet girl’s every wish. I hug her frequently, thankful for an excuse to be misty, soft. When she carefully reads the first page aloud from our favorite bedtime story, “The Princess Bride,” I swallow my tears. Once she is fast asleep, I kiss the top of her chubby hand, fluff her pillow and slide out of the left side of the bed.

In the dark antiseptic room, I do the math: 1,826 days after the end of the world. There is just enough for two. I am thankful she is so tiny; if she were any bigger, I would have to take crueler measures.

I prepare my materials, remembering my resident days. I pretend I am in the cold, white hospital, that this is not my child in my bed in my home. I find the vein on the first try, and am so gentle her eyelids flutter only slightly.

I wait until there is no soft, hummingbird-like pulse under her wrist. I lie down, find my own vein. There is no reason to muffle my sobs anymore, so I cry in the darkness until the world spins slower and slower.

Until--

Ethan Eben - Fog Over San José, 2017