by Martin Lochman
You see the thermonuclear bomb ten seconds before it goes off. You are on a morning train to the airport, looking out the window at the city skyline and mulling over the day’s events ahead, when a silver apparition emerges from the clouds. How you know it’s a bomb is irrelevant–what matters is the volcano of thoughts and emotions that erupts in your mind.
For the first three seconds, while the physical representation of the worst idea in the history of humanity drops halfway between the clouds and the tallest buildings in the city center, you feel nothing but disbelief. You live in the 21st century, objectively the safest and most civilized era since the dawn of time, in a place that is virtually free of violence, hunger, deadly diseases, and natural disasters. A place that hasn’t seen the horrors of war for entire generations. The idea that one of the most destructive weapons–no, the most destructive weapon–should ever be used here is inconceivable, outlandish, and downright absurd.
Over the course of the next three seconds, that initial incredulity turns into shock that reverberates through every fiber of your being. Your pupils dilate. You feel all blood drain from your face. You take a sharp breath and discover that your mouth is completely dry. If you were standing, like so many passengers on board at the moment (the morning trains are always nearly bursting at the seams), the nauseating sensation would undoubtedly bring you to your knees.
At the beginning of the seventh second, realizations set in. You realize that you are going to die. Considering your position relative to the bomb, you may not end up being vaporized in the epicenter of the explosion, but the resulting blast wave will rob you of your life just the same. The inevitability of your impending untimely demise isn’t the worst part, however–it’s knowing that your loved ones will share your fate.
Your wife with whom you had a fight prior to your departure from home today over a matter that now seems utterly frivolous, if not plain irrational. In spite of the disagreement, she still told you she loved you when you were walking out the door, but you, filled with bitter indignation, didn’t say it back. You might have mumbled a half-hearted goodbye or uttered that you’d call her later, making your last words to her a casual, dispassionate remark instead of a profound expression of affection.
Your two-month-old daughter, who’s just learned to hold her head up when lying on her belly. Who finally smiles at you when she sees you, that little toothless grimace always making your heart swell with pure happiness. Who is supposed to have her whole life ahead of her.
Your parents, who you visit only once in a while, even though they live barely twenty minutes away from your house. Your best friend whom you have been avoiding lately because he had the audacity to get a big promotion at work after a mere couple of months, while you have been stuck at your current position for years.
It dawns on you that you will never see any of them again. You won’t share a kiss with your wife, hold your daughter in your arms, or embrace your parents. You won’t tell them that you appreciate them, that you are proud of them, and just how much they matter to you. You won’t do any of the million things you wanted to do with them or without them in the days, months, and years to come.
It’s said that life will flash before your eyes when you die, but even as the bomb disappears behind the tall buildings a second ahead of the explosion, there is nothing. No highlight reel of the greatest memories condensed into that single, all-encompassing instant. No isolated flashbacks of moments that defined your life–graduating from the university, marrying your wife, witnessing the birth of your daughter. There is only your faint reflection in the eyes of the stranger sitting opposite to you; a stranger who, unlike yourself, appears to be blissfully unaware of what’s happening.
Are they better off not knowing? Or are you the lucky one for having heard the death knell, albeit for a negligible fraction of time? The pain in your chest where terror, regret, anger, and despair fight for primacy would make a strong case for the former, but that last second is hardly enough to arrive at an irrefutable conclusion.
As a small sun appears in the city center, casting its impossibly bright glare in all directions, you close your eyes. Your reaction is as instinctive as it is cerebral, the last attempt at finding at least a semblance of peace in the raging storm of emotions. Not acceptance, no–you would never accept the profound unfairness of it all, even if you had ten minutes or ten hours instead of ten seconds–but you want that final moment before your consciousness winks out to be filled with a sense of serenity.
And it almost is.
END