by Jenel Alan
“The Roller Coaster at the End of the World” placed fourth in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2024 Fall Fiction Contest.
I have PhDs in three fields, including biochemistry, so I know the correct dosage to put in his apple juice. To get him away from his parents, I’d promised him a trip to Starland, the Lunar Colony’s premiere amusement park. That at least was true. And I knew it would work, because Starland’s Astrocoaster was the biggest poster in his room. The blue and silver track would sometimes gleam in the flicker of his nightlight.
He fits in the large rolling suitcase. Just barely. At the spaceport, I engage the device I invented to make him look like books and scientific equipment to the scanners. They don’t search my bags. This is my sixth trip to the government’s secret doomsday bunker. Also, I am a pudgy, middle-aged woman, with graying hair. I look like a grandmother, not a traitor.
Besides, the Secret Service probably figures that if I was going to scream that the sky was falling, I’d have done it already. They are right. For seven months and three days, since my telescope first predicted the trajectory of 8 km of space rock, I have kept my mouth shut.
Just as the shuttle takes off, before it kicks through the atmosphere, I look down and see a white farmhouse with smoke coming out of the chimney. It is surrounded by a big red barn and trees on fire with fall. It is breathtaking in its fragility.
I keep my hand on the large bag, every minute of our trip, even as Earth becomes a blue and white ball and the buildings of the U.S. Lunar Colony rise and enclose the shuttle. The space port is as busy as I’ve ever seen it. Things were suggested, covertly. Starland is offering a once in a decade sale on entrance tickets. A few conventions were suddenly offered attractive incentives to relocate to the moon. The AMA convention had been a particular coup. And hey, doctors, we’ll lower hotel prices so you can bring the family.
But my daughter? My brilliant workaholic daughter who walked in my footsteps? She couldn’t be persuaded to leave her work – even when I offered to buy the Starland tickets myself. I wipe tears from my face as we land. No one comments. Those of us on these special flights have all had our moments – tears, shouting, even one heart attack. The astrophysicist of the apocalypse is allowed hers.
As I leave the shuttle, I assure the agents that I’ll be at the bunker in time. I just want a few moments to myself first. I roll my bags out of their view and to a waiting van. I’ve paid this driver 1/3 of my life savings to look the other way as an addled child emerges from a suitcase into the back seat. My grandson’s mind is foggy, but I give him some water, his favorite chocolate bar, and a small fanny pack with as much money as would fit. A spark of genuine life comes into his eyes when I tell him we’re almost at Starland.
I take his hand as we leave the van. He’s awake enough to stare wide-eyed at everything as we wait in line. He points through the glass dome over our heads. “Look at the ships Grandma.” I do my best to smile and try to smooth his sweet brown hair that’s been matted from his time in the suitcase. I paid for the VIP tickets so we’re through the gates in minutes, despite the crush.
In so little time, we round the corner and the Astrocoaster towers over us, near to scraping the dome of the colony. I wince as a set of cars comes rattling by, metal on metal with Doppler effect screams. He’s already tugging at my hand.
“Wait, Jamie,” I say pulling him up short. “Can I have a hug?”
He sighs, but complies as I crouch down. His cheek is slightly sticky against mine. “I love you,” I whisper. My voice is trembling but drowned out by another deafening screech of coaster wheels on tracks and howling teens.
I hold tight long enough for him to say, “Grandma!”
“Sorry sweetheart.” I let go, stand quickly, step back. The park is so crowded that two different people jostle me and I have to grit my teeth to keep from snapping at them. I tilt my head toward the shorter, though still sizeable, VIP line for the Astrocoaster. “Off you go then.”
“You’re not coming?” He frowns for the first time since we entered the park.
“Don’t you want a picture of you on the coaster? For your wall?” I pray that this will work. He’s tall for his age. They will let him ride unaccompanied. I checked and rechecked.
His grin returns. “Oh yeah!” Without another word he races toward the line. I lose my breath at the suddenness of it, struggle to regain myself. I watch as he enters the line, several times he looks back and waves, his small hand almost lost in the sea of people. As he disappears into the complicated machinery of the amusement park ride, I am grateful once again for his name – James Smith. There are thousands of them. Another 1/3 of my life savings paid a hacker to wipe his fingerprints, dental records, and identity from every system they could find. The colony authorities may eventually figure out his identity, but it will take time.
As I stumble back to the van, my skin feels puffy and numb. I return to the space port, use my own faked ID to board a commercial shuttle. Once seated, I look at the countdown on my phone – 9 hours, 37 minutes. We’ll be on the ground by the time… I brush the countdown away and replace it with a picture of Jamie, awkwardly smiling as he stands by his first real bike. The bike is the same blue as the Astrocoaster. We were told it was treason, the death penalty, if we tried to save anyone through extraordinary measures. I am carrying out my own sentence.
The flight is delayed, and the shuttle is circling the space port as the clock winds down. On one pass I see the farmhouse again, there’s no smoke now, but I can see tiny dots of laundry flapping on a clothesline. White sheets, maybe?
Emergency warnings start to go off on phones – some new scientist who has realized the truth and gotten through to the media? Or did someone else give in?
There is a sudden crush of loud sound, a metallic roar, screams.
I have just enough time to smile as I realize the end of the world sounds a lot like –
Category: Competition, Featured, Short Story, SNHU Student