T-minus 20,160 minutes to midnight.
When Ada found out that she’d gotten the internship at NASA she was ecstatic. What junior majoring in astrophysics wouldn’t be? Plus, D.C. in the summer was growing on her. It was an incredibly agreeable place to be; warm, but not hot, a city, but no tall buildings blocking the view (Washington Monument excluded). That was Ada’s favorite part, you could always see the sky there, whether there was anything worth seeing that day or not.
A couple of weeks after her arrival at headquarters, the sky became unmissable. Solar flares were detected almost constantly, unexplained by the best minds in the business. Their effect was a widespread befuddlement, which teetered dangerously on the verge of panic as scientists could come up with no physical or mathematical reason for the sudden, yet persistent bursts. It took thousands of hours of individual labor, and the latter half of June, before Ada had an epiphany. While she’d always known that she wanted to study the stars, her youth had been riddled with the spy movies of her father. Once that particular pattern of flares was detected she had no doubt, the sun was signing SOS in morse code.
After a couple of days of convincing and telling the right people the right thing, the whole of NASA reluctantly accepted her suggestion. Previous patterns of solar flares seemed to show a plethora of messages that had gone completely unnoticed:
“Hello?”
“Can you hear me?”
“Earthlingsssssss come onnnnn you evolved Morse Code eons agooooooo.”
No one at NASA could have predicted the sun would know how to communicate with them. None of them could have expected it to claim two hundred years was an ‘eon ago’. Certainly, none of them would have thought the sun would send messages like a teenager resorting to annoyance in the face of nonresponse. All they knew was rocket science.
Luckily, rocket science seemed to be helpful in this situation.
Ada was part of the team building a mirror contraption to send to the ISS. They had decided to communicate with the sun by reflecting its own beams back onto it. Her classmates were going to hate her that fall.
Within a week the machine was in place, and the team had spent much of that time crafting their message. After much painstaking deliberation the sun received its response from humanity:
“Yes?”
Astronauts signed this over and over again, slowly at first, and then rapidly as the anxiety set in. It feels stupid to try and communicate with a star, even stupider when you don’t hear anything back. Sixteen minutes passed with increasing loneliness in the vast expanse of space, before the light of the sun’s flare brought an answer to HQ.
“Finally. I’d like to put in my two weeks’ notice.”
The frenzy that had gripped Ada since the initial realization was completely halted. The feeling seemed to be mutual as, suddenly, you could hear the dust particles bouncing off the walls. They were the only things unaffected by the stillness. Even the heart beats and breathing in the room had ceased. Despite the advanced warning the sun had given, and the fact that it still shined, a chill had settled among the room. This response took far less long to craft than the first one:
“What?”
As soon as the light reached it, the sun was signing back rapidly, with a rush that bordered on apologetic or defensive.
“I’m retiring and moving to the Andromeda. I keep hearing how all the hottest stars are over there and last month I was finally able to close on a place in a constellation of a girl with freckles.”
Hours of thinking, talking, and arguing later, the humans replied:
“What does that mean for us?”
What had originally bordered on defensive quickly became it:
“Of courseeeee you only care about yourselves. I didn’t have to tell you, you know. I even tried to find a replacement star, but no one wanted the job. Everyone that didn’t already have a solar system either wanted something more interesting with more intelligent beings or less sophisticated with more room for evolution. A star gets lonely in a solar system in between.”
All of NASA was, not for the first time, stumped. They couldn’t come up with a response before the sun continued:
“That sounded mean. It’s nothing personal, really, just… I won’t live forever and the timing feels right. I tried to give you a warning instead of just disappearing.”
Over the next two hours the sun kept trying to contact humans with anything from pleading to shaming to anger, but everyone remained too stunned to speak, let alone craft a reply.
“Talk to you tomorrow,” was the last thing it said before it set.
Everyone agreed to stay overnight and to keep quiet about what was going on until they had more information. They, and Ada with them, tirelessly came up with questions, requests, and arguments using every level of the ethos, pathos, and logos they’d learned in high school. Call it the strength of the human spirit, but Plan A was to convince the sun to stay.
With 13 days left to live, the rest of the unknowing population got up and went to work as usual.
T-minus 10,080 minutes to midnight.
After four days of back and forth, sobbing, missed calls, and exhaustion, the scientists concluded that the sun could not be dissuaded. Four out of fourteen days gone and the biggest thing they’d learned was that the star had strong opinions on AI.
They had also started a countdown to the end of the world.
Much to Ada’s chagrin, the name that caught on was one that opted for catchiness over fact. Though it would reach zero sometime around 4:30PM, the timer became known as the “Countdown to Midnight”.
With that figured out came the questions of when, how, and whether to inform the public of this doomsday. It took 72 hours of hard labor to gather the translators, public officials, and camera crews necessary for the broadcast. Despite the still unprocessed knowledge that it would all be over soon, the week felt endless to Ada. She dreaded her parents’ reaction to the news.
***
Seven days after NASA’s first contact with the sun, the world found out that it had seven days left. While most of humanity was sitting glued to their TVs, Ada was on a plane home. There was almost no way flights would be easy to get after the report, so she excused herself from the headquarters, asked that this be the end of her internship, and raced the clock trying to get to her family as quickly as possible.
No matter how Ada hoped the announcement would go, it went exactly how she’d predicted it would. Pandemonium.
Some groups, predisposed to distrusting everything the government says, claimed that this was a plot hatched to scare people into thinking less critically about things that really matter, like the economy. Businesses were inclined to agree, but for their own reasons. CEOs advised that work go on as usual until the news was confirmed. Grocery stores were raided in the name of going out with a couple more good meals under the belt. Stores were raided when people realized that there was no point in law and order if grocery stores were already being raided.
People abandoned their communities and families to pray to whatever God they believed could save them. Relationships were destroyed by people who couldn’t see themselves spending “the rest of their life” with their partner. However long that might be. And after a week of no contact with everyone in her life, Ada made it home.
She had expected the first thing her parents said to her to be something along the lines of: “Why are you back, you were supposed to be in D.C. at least 6 more weeks.” Instead, they embraced her immediately after they opened the door.
Through tears her mother asked the (theoretically) future physicist, “Is it true? Is the world really ending?”
Ada was torn between wanting to comfort her loved ones without coddling them. She wanted the rest of her time to be spent with the people she loved, but she didn’t want it to be a weeklong pity party. She opted for the middle ground: “Probably.”
“What should we do? They said the sun was going to go out, are they working on any other sources of heat or light?” Her dad was ever the problem solver, even at a time like this he was intent on finding a solution.
Ada knew that someone was probably working on it, but she also knew that she didn’t want it to be her. If she only had a week to live, she wanted to travel to all the places she hadn’t been yet, meet people, skydive, read the books on her TBR, anything but work really.
She walked past her parents without answering and decided that whatever she did next would happen after a nap. The weight of the week had rested itself on her shoulders, now the weight of her body was going to rest on her bed. Sleep seemed the only way to relieve some of the heaviness that had settled in her.
T-minus 4,320 minutes to midnight.
With three days left to live, Ada had not succeeded in doing nearly as much as she’d hoped. Sleeping, eating, comforting family, and answering the concerned texts from people too young and broke to know any other astrophysicists had occupied the better part of four days and she was adamant that it could not, under any circumstances, do the same in the next three.
She had finally convinced her parents to stop watching the news. Employers and employees were finally coming to consensus. Everyone agreed that whether the world was ending or not, people needed the next three days to live as if it would be. No one could get work done with the threat of nonexistence weaseling its way into their households. The heightened rates of violence and death that had happened the first couple of days after the announcement had steadied.
People were starting to process the information. Those who had been asking what they could do to stop the clock from running out were now starting to ask themselves what they wanted to do with the time they had left.
While dread had a tendency to keep most people immobile and indoors, it was making Ada want to crawl out of her skin. She wanted to go for a 72 hour jog, stopping at every oddly curved tree, gurgling stream, or curious rabbit that she came across. She wanted to take it all in instead of pushing it all out, but this was a feeling she couldn’t convince her family to share. She walked downtown alone tonight, deciding that the next day she would hang out with her friends and the last day she would focus on her parents. She felt like there were so many things she still needed to say.
Approaching the center of town, she was shocked to hear music. All of the restaurants had shut down with no one to work them. All of the museums, stores, coffee shops, were empty or at least unmanned. Some of the more generous buildings, like libraries, had sent home their workers and opened their doors. The end of the world was no time to be alone. Laughter and sobs were in constant harmony with each other, sometimes at once in the same person, as people gathered in the square. She saw a woman in her 40s or 50s on a corner handing out homemade food, anything to ease the comfort of the deeply concerned population.
Turning towards the river, Ada found the music. Street performers had garnered an audience on the banks. A makeshift concert to bring some semblance of peace to the agitated minds of everyone listening. They played something fast, jazzy, and brassy. To Ada’s surprise, as she watched a man got up and began to dance.
While in normal society this would only get a couple of strange glances, at worst a call to the police, today it was a call to action. The pent up nervous energy people had been harboring for the past four days, and that Ada had held close to her chest for over a week now, begged for release. The people danced together and laughed together and cried together without worrying about embarrassment. They danced because nothing like that mattered anymore. After a couple of seconds of hesitation, Ada joined them.
T-minus 2,880 minutes to midnight.
Instead of meeting at her friend Evan’s house, Ada convinced everyone to meet downtown. She wanted to spend time with the people she cared about, but she also wanted them to see the community that had moved her so much yesterday.
When they met at their favorite restaurant it was, of course, not operating as normal. The lights were on and the doors were open, but that was where similarities ended. Some of the workers and their families were still cooking food for everyone else, but there were no menus and no money was being exchanged. People were just gathering for the sake of gathering and eating food for the sake of eating good food.
After some difficulty, Ada and her friends were able to find enough chairs and they establish themselves as a group of six in a ring near the windows. The group had expanded and changed over the years, but all were still in the area. It had become an amalgamation of half high school friends, half college, as people had brought those they’d met home to be accepted with open arms. In the circle now, however, there was a distinct emptiness. They were usually a group of seven.
“Where is Elise?” asked Peter.
“I’m not sure, she wasn’t responding in the group chat, and she didn’t pick up when I called this morning,” responded Brittney.
There was a lull in conversation while everyone thought about their friend. After a tentative 30 or so seconds, conversation picked back up and they ate together, reminiscing over all the good times they’d had with each other before the end of the world.
Once food had been eaten and everyone had caught up with each other, there came the question of what to do next. Though no one said it out loud, there was a distinct feeling of delay among the group. No one was quite ready to go home and face the reality that they may never see each other again. Prevailing options were to check on Elise or to go to the river and listen to music with the rest of the town. After Peter suggested they check on Elise and bring her with them to the river, it was a no brainer. They got some of her favorite food to go, and headed back out of the restaurant.
They reached Elise’s house to find the curtains drawn. There seemed to be no light coming from inside the house. The look it gave the unannounced guests was filled with abandon. Either its occupants had left it behind, or they had left the world behind. It was in stark contrast to the house they remembered being here, one that had held many a movie night, dinner party, and craft day in the not-so-distant past. They knocked on the door and, for the first time, they hesitated in front of it.
A couple of missed calls and silence later Ada started to search for a spare key. When Brittney questioned the morality of the decision, Ada snapped for the first time in a week and a half. What good would morality do if someone they all loved was closing themselves off? Now was no time to be alone. She found the key buried in the soil of a porch plant and opened the door in one fluid motion.
The familiarity of the surroundings clashed with the foreignness of the darkness. With mounting worry, they all made their way towards Elise’s room. Knocking they were met with the fresh silence of someone actively trying not to make sound. They pushed onwards to find Elise’s back towards them where she lay in bed. It looked and smelled as if she hadn’t left it in days.
Ada moved to try and see her face, to look her in the eyes and try to reason with her, but Peter held her back. He walked to Elise, sat on the bed behind her, and gave her the dignity of looking away while he placed a hand delicately on her back.
She responded by pushing him away with her words while physically melting into the affection, “You guys shouldn’t be here”.
“We brought some of the mac and cheese from Relli’s,” Peter ignored her statement. “You’ve gotta eat something.”
Peter, Elise, and Ada were the last remaining of a friend group that had formed in middle school. They had survived thanks to some distance, a lot of effort, and a mixture of empathy and firmness. While Elise was usually the more comforting member of the group, Peter was happy to fill the role every so often when she needed a break. Ada, ever the logician and philosopher, had always thought that the two of them were made for each other whether they realized it consciously or not. She watched him begin to rub Elise’s shoulder while she let out a muffled and embarrassed sob.
He turned to the group, gestured them to leave the room for a bit, and mouthed that he would meet them in the kitchen later. After half an hour, he and Elise made their way down the stairs, he set her on the couch, and reheated her food. They spent the night watching some of their favorite movies, playing board games, and comparing who they’d been when they met to who they were now. It was with immense reluctance and a couple of unapologetic tears that everyone returned to their families in the morning.
T-minus 1,440 minutes to midnight.
With a day left to live truth didn’t matter anymore. If the world didn’t end, great! Everyone was making arrangements in case it did anyway. People had started to say the things they’d always wanted to say and do the things they’d always been too scared to do, and somehow this created an oxymoronic amalgamation of fear and love. Love seemed to be everywhere.
No one in town was hungry. To be by the river was to be fed and most of the town’s population had found themselves near the river. In fact, lots of people with houses of their own were opting to sleep in the library or stay with friends to be less alone. There were barbecues on every corner, people playing in parks, swimming in the river, and all other types of community activity. Anything to take their minds off of things.
Ada had convinced her parents to join the group of anxious stallers, everyone passing time until they passed.
If the sun had meant exactly two weeks when it gave notice, then this was the last night. The world would end at around 4:30 the next day. While most of the campouts thus far had been inside, the urgency had pushed everyone to a hillside beside the water in an attempt to sleep under the stars.
Ada looked up at the sky and managed to feel big and small at the same time. She wondered how it would change with the sun gone. She knew there was no way to see where the star was going from a whole galaxy away, but she couldn’t help but wonder what the universe looked like from over there. It seemed like the sun had felt guilty, but in a million years would it even remember humanity? Would it think of us fondly after everything it had seen us do? Or even everything it had seen us fail to do?
Ada wanted to sleep so that she wouldn’t be tired for the next day, but she couldn’t make it happen. The futility seemed to be something she held in common with everyone else because every couple of minutes she’d hear a cough in the stillness and wonder how many of the others were looking up and having the same thoughts.
T-minus 8 minutes to midnight.
The next day was largely the same as the past few had been, but around 2:00 everything seemed to crescendo. People were getting into petty arguments that brought them to tears, then ending the arguments and making up in tears moments later. The games that had been so comforting earlier were now rushed. People playing soccer seemed desperate to score one last goal, musicians each wanted the last piece they performed to be their choice. Music spilled from them in an endless stream, everyone just hoping to get to play the next song.
Even eating was rushed. Each grape might be the last grape, but each strawberry was also the last strawberry. People with loyalty were stuffing themselves with their favorites, while those without it went from plate to plate taking one more bite of everything. There was little time to savor when you felt like you had 30 fruits to get through in the span of a couple hours. Leave it to humanity to set goals until the very end.
Ada watched her father play piano for some of the kids he’d taught English on a couple of months ago. Her mother joined a crochet circle with the parents of her friends and coworkers. In the rush to do just one more thing, Ada decided to slow down and take a some time for herself.
She walked to the side of the river and stood, unswimming, with her feet in the water. She closed her eyes, spread her arms, and attempted to absorb everything. She spent a minute thinking about the way the sunlight seemed to pervade her, no need to worry about skin cancer at a time like this. She spent fifteen minutes thinking about the pull of the water on her feet. Thinking about all of the fish that must be passing by her, a mere obstacle like a fallen branch in the road. She wondered if they knew what was happening, or what they would do if they did.
She stood for an hour until she heard someone start screaming from the plaza a couple hundred feet away.
The clock reached 3:30. The crescendo had come to its climax. Everyone seemed to be frozen, unable to do anything but watch the countdown from the TV that had been turned on for the first time in days. They gathered in front of it. Families and friends held each other. Those who had no family or friends found someone to hold too. Everyone watched the countdown as all noise other than the TV was brought to a whisper.
While watching the anchor speak, I love yous spilled from Ada’s mouth. Even if she’d tried to she couldn’t have held them back. She meant every one of them, in that moment she had love for everyone and everything.
It carried on like this for the better part of their remaining time. Whispered confessions, praises, adorations spewed from the mouths of the terrified townsfolk. Ada saw Peter and Elise take each other’s hands from where their families stood beside each other. She waved and they broke apart only to form hearts in her direction.
A loud ring from the television silenced the buzzing crowd. Papers were handed to the anchor and everyone braced for whatever announcement they knew was on its way to them. It was 4:27.
As he read the brief the anchorman’s face sank and, with a great deal of dignity, he read from the prompter for the last time, “NASA scientists have confirmed that the sun is no longer shining on us folks. Hug your people, tell them you care about them, and we’ll do the same over here. This is lights out for us and eight minutes to midnight.”
The TV went black.
–
Kayla Carpenter is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan. Though her favorite ways to spend her time include traveling, reading, listening to music, and a number of other verbs, most of her time is spent in the Boston healthcare system. This year she’s been contemplating many of the usual questions twenty-somethings ask themselves, primarily how she would like to spend her time. This piece is a reflection of that question.
© 2025, Kayla Carpenter
Halfway Down the Stairs 