I've been negligent the last few weeks, but I'm back. At least this week. This one is inspired by:
Every Ending Is a Beginning
The window was an extravagance. But the Director insisted he be able to watch the comet shards end the world. It meant more work for us to install a blast shutter that could close before the world-girdling shock waves reached us. Given that the predicted locations for the five ground zeroes had significant error bars, the timing was going to be problematic.
It worked, obviously, and the show was well worth the risk. Every Chosen One watched, many of us cried. I just stood, mute, and tried to prepare my mind for the years, decades probably, to come.
Now, my time grows short. Hard work and short rations have limited our lives to a few decades, at most. By rights, mine should have run out long ago. But when Jimmie, Johnny, and I closed those blast shutters for the last time, I swore an oath to see them opened again. Tomorrow they will be.
It's appropriate, I think, that Jimmie and Johnny's grandsons will carry me to the Opening. Alas, my weary legs lack even a shadow of the strength I was so proud of back when I had a purpose. Too old, I see the looks the young cast my way. A drag on our meager resources, they think. Taking up bedspace best given to a breeding pair. And, they are right. But I swore an oath.
The Opening is a formality, of course. The cameras that still work show a world born again. A world waiting for this ragtag colony of survivors to claim it--if they remember how. Perhaps these reminiscences of an old man will help.
And now the day has come. This is the last entry I will make in this journal. It is the last page, and no more will be made or written.
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