3
The Great Lawn was west of Building B and west of the gardens, a big patch of manicured grass that Dan mistakenly assumed was a golf course. It rolled down south to some jagged cliffs that loomed over the beach like sentries, and the Adobe Amphitheatre cut into it up north, away from the crashing of the waves, a giant crater with concrete stadium seating carved with Aztec symbols and a stage at the bottom center. Dan and Mara took seats near the aisle—Dan preferred the aisle, wasn’t so claustrophobic—and they watched as more panicked faces poured into the hole.
It would have been a pretty night if it wasn’t four in the afternoon. Dan could see stars in the sky now, just not the one that mattered. There were no clouds, which he was thankful for. Imagine if the sun exploded but you missed it because a cumulus was parked in front. Mara held his hand in her lap and idly tapped the top of it, which she only did when she was nervous, and she was singing “Linger” by the Cranberries under her breath, which she only did when she was really nervous.
It was getting full. Some folks resigned themselves to standing on the Great Lawn because they couldn’t find nice seats for a party of two. Staff members, dressed like Julio in white linen shirts and pants, ushered them as best as they could, requesting guests scoot toward the center, please, thank you, and Dan was pissed he had to give up his aisle seat to someone late to the apocalypse explanation show. The staff eventually signaled they were at capacity, and the crowd adopted a collective hum of anticipation.
“Got that Bahamas beard coming in, huh, man?”
Oh, no. There was a stranger talking to Dan, a guy one row down had turned to make friends, and that was the last thing Dan wanted to do right now and most of the time, really. The guy had a heavy but immaculately shaped beard, and the girl with him didn’t bother turning around, which made Dan think he must do this a lot.
Dan heard him fine, but still leaned forward and said, “What’s that?”
The guy laughed. “Oh, no, I’m just saying you’ve got the stubble of a man who’s been in the Bahamas a few days.” He pointed to Dan’s face, and Dan rubbed it. Yeah. He hadn’t shaved in a couple days. He needed a haircut too, come to think of it, the dark brown thicket on his head was starting to do that wavy thing on the sides.
“We got here yesterday,” Dan said. Everyone got here yesterday, of course, because that was the resort’s grand opening. Dan averted his eyes in a way that indicated, Okay, man, nice talking to you, but I’ve got some other stuff going on right now, if you don’t mi—
“Man, that’s exactly how mine started.”
Dan closed his eyes and hung his head. The rhythm of Mara’s tapping on his hand changed. It was Morse code for Be nice .
“Oh, yeah?” Dan muttered.
The dude lit up like a Christmas tree, like no other human had ever followed a statement of his with an oh, yeah?
“Yeah, man. We were in Cali for a couple weeks two summers ago visiting my cousin, and I thought, like, Okay, I’m just gonna let this thing go because I’m in Cali, right?” He slapped Dan’s leg and Dan hated him. “And so, I’m like, looking in the mirror, thinking, Okay, this thing’s looking pretty good, fuller than I thought. And so I just went with it, man. And what you see before you today is after two years. The ladies love it. Don’t you love it, babe? You should go for it, dude.”
Dan’s wandering eyes settled on the guy’s tank top. There was a silhouette of a beard in the middle and it said, WITH GREAT BEARD COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY, and Dan wondered if it was possible for eyes to roll 60 degrees, just back and around and back up again like cherries in a slot machine.
Dan asked, “Would I have to wear stupid fucking shirts if I did?” and Mara’s nails pierced his skin, and the guy mumbled something and spun back around, like, what an asshole, but at least it ended the interaction.
Dan hated guys whose whole personality was having a stupid beard.
Mara whispered, “Real nice, Danny,” and she sounded actually annoyed, not playfully annoyed, but now there was music playing from the stage—was that Stone Temple Pilots?—and the crowd took a communal gasp of air like they were being dunked in the ocean.
A tall skinny man resembling a cornstalk appeared onstage, just ambled out there like one of the brooms in Fantasia , and the music stopped abruptly. He was in his midtwenties, probably, or maybe a bit younger, and he swayed like three children stacked on top of each other, like something masquerading as a man but definitely not really a man at all. And he had a man bun, Jesus, like that settled it. My bun is a man, see, so that means I am too.
But he wasn’t.
There was some feedback on the mic, which made him wince, but eventually he spoke. “Good evening,” he said, but it wasn’t either of those things. His voice cracked. “I-I-I’m Brody Sheridan, owner, general manager, and CPO at Tizoc Grand Islands Resort and Spa. CPO stands for chief party officer .”
Dan deflated. This is the guy in charge?
“And, well, I guess first of all, I want to thank everyone for joining us for the grand opening here at Tizoc. Isn’t this place beautiful?” He raised his hand for applause but only heard from confused cicadas. Brody cleared his throat. “Hard to believe, but when I bought this island four years ago, there wasn’t anything on it. Well, besides the old airstrip and the observatory.”
Dan glanced at Mara. Observatory? Mara pulled the resort map from her shorts pocket. It wasn’t listed. Dan studied the map more closely, hoping that maybe he missed some emergency exits. There were four large buildings on the island, each creatively named, surrounding a massive courtyard and pool deck. Building A, designed for the hoity-toity, had the best location on the island. Beachfront, steps away from the sand. Building B had views of the gardens, which were okay, and Building C, to the north, was like an hourly motel in a parking lot riddled with hypodermic needles. Okay, there weren’t really needles, but Building C was near the lot where they kept golf carts, Jeeps, and buses. Think third class on the Titanic without the fiddles. The Main Building, which housed the ballroom, gym, spa, and other shared amenities, was straddled between B and C.
Brody rubbed his arm and continued. “And I think, ah, that we can all agree that everyone was having a really tight time up until, well, this afternoon. No cap. Like, I saw you guys lookin’ pretty chill, really vibin’ with the place, and then. You know. Womp, womp.” The crowd shifted. He was losing them.
A man a few rows up stood. He was wearing long shorts and an AC/DC shirt—definitely a Building C guest. “Tell us what the fuck happened!”
There were calls of agreement. Another man near the stage shouted something and pointed aggressively, someone somewhere shrieked about flights home. Brody trembled. He looked offstage at somebody, like, help me out, here, then slowly returned the mic to his mouth and gulped.
“So. Okay. Uh. We think the sun is…actually gone.”
It was the crowd’s turn to explode. Asses shot from seats, the pointing became pointier, several guests dragged their partners toward the exit like they could stomp their way across the Atlantic. The cries became more desperate.
“You have to get us off this island!”
“We have children!”
“Why can’t we connect to the internet?”
“We’ll freeze to death!”
Mara squeezed Dan’s fingers so tight that they almost snapped like pencils. His chest tightened. He’d seen the sun explode with his own eyes—why’d it take this asshole’s confirmation to make it feel real?
Brody’s head whipped back and forth as if he was watching a violent tennis match, and his face grew paler and his mouth gaped and he had the general appearance of wetness. He took a big step backward, then another, and he almost fell off the stage, but a small man shaped like a church bell appeared and grabbed him. He politely took the microphone from Brody, patted his back a few times for reassurance, and ushered him safely off the side. As the new man—and this was a man, just a small balding one—approached the front of the stage, a hush rolled over the amphitheater. This guy was wearing a bow tie. He had to know something.
“Hello. Yes, please. Please sit. My name is Dr. Terry Shae. I live and work at the observatory on the northeast cliffs that Mr. Sheridan just mentioned. My observatory is part of the Space Telescope Science Institute network.” He paced the stage with small measured steps, the kind that Dan associated with learned men somehow. His eyes were tiny and black like the dark side of a moon, and his dimpled skin was like the surface of one. “I’ve been stationed on this island, on and off, for almost thirty years, observing the small-body population of our solar system while searching and identifying exoplanets in our greater galaxy. When Mr. Sheridan says he purchased this island four years ago, he is mostly correct. He purchased one hundred ninety acres of a two-hundred-twenty-acre island. The observatory and the airstrip still belong to me.”
He paused, looking up at the stars that remained.
“What happened today is, without question, the most significant natural event in the history of our species. In the history of our planet, truly, dating back billions of years.” He said it like he was in awe, like he’d met God himself, and there was fear in his voice but also great reverence.
“Like you, I have many questions. Also like you, unfortunately, I currently possess very few answers. Mr. Sheridan requested I take a short break from my duties at the observatory to come here to address you all, to shed light—excuse my choice of words—on the situation.” Even the cicadas were quiet now, because Shae was a man who commanded attention, a shout if Brody was a whisper.
The man in the AC/DC shirt stood again, but his hand was raised this time and he waited to be acknowledged. Shae pointed to him and nodded.
“Sir, do we know why it blew up?”
Someone near Dan whispered that it blew up because Jesus had returned. Another cursed ISIS. The thought of terrorism had briefly entered Dan’s mind, but blowing up the sun felt like a poorly thought-out jihad.
“I am afraid I do not,” Shae said, “not at this time. Others may, but as you know, whatever happened also cut off communication to and from the island. I understand that Mr. Sheridan and his team are working diligently to get systems back online, but it may take some time.” He inhaled, trapping the history in his lungs. “You inquired, sir, how it blew up , and I would like to make a note on that. An explosion implies that something has ceased to exist or is structurally unrecognizable, and current evidence does not suggest that.”
Another hand up, this time closer to the stage. “Dr. Shae, I saw it blow up. It looked like butter on a hot pan.”
Yeah , others agreed, me too, definitely . As noted, Dan thought it looked more like an egg, but okay, butter. Definitely a breakfast ingredient.
Shae nodded slowly. “Yet here we are.” He promptly walked to the back of the stage and hopped off, disappeared down and out of view. People stood, trying to get a look at him. What was he doing? Then he was back, helped onstage by a member of the security team—had there always been a security team?—and he clutched a black stone. He turned it in his hand, presented it to the audience. He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head like a magician, as if to say, This is a stone, no tricks here, just a normal stone—wouldn’t you agree? No one spoke. Shae really had them. The guests on the Great Lawn stepped down into the aisles, uncrossed their arms, leaned in.
Shae sifted through his khaki pockets, produced some twine, and tied it around the stone. He allowed the stone to fall to the stage, and when it landed with a thud, several women in the audience leapt. There was nervous laughter. Even Shae smiled. He had the grin of a boy who was getting away with something, a boy playing with toys after all the lights in the house had been switched off. He signaled to someone offstage, and another member of the security staff appeared. The man held the microphone to Shae’s mouth so both hands were free.
“Let us put aside the fact that if the sun were to explode, we would be liquefied. Instead, pretend the sun disappeared completely. Vanished into thin air without a cosmic trace.” He tested that the stone was secure at the end of the twine once more. Then he began to swing it above his head in a wide orbit, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, like David preparing to pummel Goliath. At a certain speed, it reached an equilibrium, and Dan barely saw the twine anymore, just a hunk of rock hurtling through space.
“Due to the sun’s extreme gravitational force, Earth orbits it at thirty kilometers per second, or sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. Even at this blistering speed, in order to completely orbit the sun, it takes Earth…” He paused, prompting the class for answers.
Dan knew this one. “One year,” he said with several others.
“One year. Imagine each rotation of this stone around my head being one year in the history of time. Earth has completed this journey four and a half billion times, give or take, though for the purpose of this demonstration, I may stop around a million or so.”
Polite laughter.
“So now, the sun disappears, as you say. What happens to Earth? Well, depending on our precise location in orbit…” Without warning, he released the string and the stone flew off stage left and out of sight.
A woman near Dan gasped, and Dan thought, Okay, lady, calm down.
“We would be slingshot through space at our original speed of sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. Earth would be an uncontrollable spaceship on a crash course with whatever poor celestial mass stood in our way, flying through the cosmos with little indication of where—or when—we might settle.”
Several guests around Dan gripped their cement amphitheater seats, knuckles white. Mara’s hand dug into his leg. Her eyes said, I agreed to go on a trip, Danny, but this isn’t what I had in mind.
But the stars weren’t moving. They looked the same as normal. A little ahead of schedule, maybe, but still reporting for duty. If Earth was shooting through space, wouldn’t it look like entering hyperdrive?
“No,” Shae said, as though answering Dan personally. But it was more of a general no. Shae thanked the security guy, signaled him offstage, and took back the mic. “Everything I’ve observed since the incident this afternoon suggests Earth remains firmly in its planetary neighborhood, right at home in orbit where it belongs. The same applies to other planets in our solar system.”
There was a communal exhale, because it’s nice to be home, isn’t it, but then the murmuring started back up. Shae’s explanation only begged more questions. Soon people shouted again, the cicadas screamed.
“So then, what happened ?”
“Are we going to freeze to death?”
“What next, Professor Shae? Dr. Shae. Whatever!”
“Is tonight’s pig roast still happening?”
“What can we do?”
Shae raised his hand, which lowered the volume.
“I do not know—please, listen. I do not know what it means, besides that we should take comfort that Earth is precisely where it should be. However, I will not lie to you. I have grave concerns. Photosynthesis cannot occur without the sun, as you know, so small plant life and crops will suffer. This will have worldwide effects on our food chain. My other concern, at the moment, is Earth’s average temperature. Our planet will retain heat for some time, but not in perpetuity. I predict we will reach temperatures near freezing by the end of the week. By the end of the year, models suggest Earth’s average temperature could fall to negative one hundred fifty degrees.”
He may have imagined it, but Dan felt a cool breeze sweep over the Great Lawn and funnel into the amphitheater, and he and Mara huddled even closer, goose bumps riddling their exposed arms and legs.
“At this time,” Shae said, “our primary focus should be remaining calm. We are on an isolated island in the middle of the Bahamas. We need one another. Our other focus should be getting to the mainland. Barring mass panic, riots, general chaos—the government will likely implement heating stations, scramble the military to provide aid. Nuclear fuel may be a viable option for keeping underground communities warm, and geothermal areas—like Yellowstone—will produce heat for the foreseeable future. There are options, though limited, and none existing in the long term on this island.”
Many members of the audience stood, tugged their loved ones up. Let’s go, their faces said, Come on. How we doing this?
“On that note, I will bring back Mr. Sheridan to discuss evacuation plans. I must return to the observatory. Terrifying though it may be, my job is to record my observations so that future astronomers—God willing, there will be future astronomers—better understand what we may not today. Good luck to you all.”
And with that, he was gone, hopped off the side of the stage and disappeared among the gathered staff and security. Dan felt immediately worse once he left. Brody Sheridan, the steaming pile of a human being, practically had to be poured onstage. He fumbled the microphone like it might burn him.
“O-okay, so let’s give it up for my man Dr. Shae. Love that dude. When he talks, my mind’s like, BOOM .” He mimed his head exploding, the fractured pieces shooting every which way. The imagery was perhaps too soon, a little too fresh, and people booed.
“Alright, alright, yeah, no, I get it. This situation is definitely not chill. And I want to address that, um…presently. As Dr. Shae said, we need to get off the island. The thing is, though, the problem is, the planes you flew on here from Nassau? Those planes aren’t scheduled to be back to pick people up until two weeks from yesterday, when everyone was scheduled to go home. And, like, sure, you might say, Why don’t you just call them, tell them to come early? I would love nothing more than to do that, guys, for real. But communication is down, so—”
Brody dodged a beer bottle that shattered at his feet. Then another. Security flanked him. Women screamed about their babies back home, and the amphitheater shook so violently that it might’ve dug itself farther into the earth. Mara signaled, Come on, Danny, it’s time to go, and just as Dan was about to make a run for it, Brody miraculously quelled the noise.
This was his last chance.
Please, kid. Say something smart.
“Listen! Listen. Please, listen. Remember what Dr. Shae said about being calm. Obviously, we are going to keep trying to reach the plane people, and, like, whoever else we can reach. The Coast Guard, maybe. Trust me on that. And we have food and water. Plenty for the next two weeks and…a little extra. We are going to work so hard to get y’all off this island, believe that, okay? But getting all, like, psycho about it isn’t going to help. We have a badass IT staff, and they’re trying to get communication back as we speak, okay? So uh…let’s just let them do their thing and stay calm. Like, enjoy the island, maybe.”
He was so stupid. So, so stupid, but also kind of right, which was aggravating. They’d arrived on the island after a connection in Nassau—the planes barely sat a hundred each—and afterward Dan watched as they became dots on the horizon, and he remembered the faintest feeling of being trapped, of being stuck on this postage stamp in the ocean for two weeks, no matter what. But then he was handed a fruity drink with a little umbrella and that feeling was gone, sputtered away the same as those planes.
It was back now, with a vengeance, and not even an aisle seat could’ve kept him from feeling claustrophobic.
The crowd finally lost its fight. Guests sat quietly, buried their faces into each other, shoulders trembling. Brody remained onstage, in his sandals, his lips petrified against the microphone.
Mara whispered it first this time.
“We’re going to figure this out.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Dan repeated.
A slender woman in her midfifties with flowing blond hair and a symmetrical face stood a few rows back from Dan. Her voice carried as though she’d had a miniature bullhorn injected during one of her neck’s many Botox appointments.
“When the planes do come, Mr. Sheridan, is it safe to assume that guests of Building A will receive priority boarding?”