AMINA — Cairo (Day 22)
A sandstorm covered the excavation on the third day after the announcement. Amina took it as a sign. The desert was protecting its secrets while the world collapsed.
The university closed indefinitely. Half the faculty simply didn't show up. Students went home. Why study if knowledge dies with us?
But this morning Amina returned to the excavation site. Alone.
Ahmed begged her to stay home. "The children need you," he said, and in his eyes was the panic he tried to hide. Her husband, always so confident, now woke every night in a cold sweat.
"That's exactly why I need to do this," she replied.
Now she stood before a half-uncovered tomb. Last year's work. They had been so close to opening the burial chamber when... when everything ended.
Amina picked up a shovel and began to dig.
The work was meditation. Each careful scrape, each brush sweeping away centuries of sand. The sun rose higher, the heat became unbearable, but she continued.
By noon she discovered the edge of a sarcophagus.
By sunset she removed the last layer of sand.
On the lid was an inscription. Hieroglyphs she read as easily as Arabic. A name: Neferura. A scribe's wife. Mother of four children. Lived thirty-two years, three thousand years ago.
Amina ran her fingers over the ancient symbols.
"You also knew time was limited," she whispered. "You lived in a world where death could come from disease, famine, war at any moment. And still you loved. Had children. Left a trace."
Tears mixed with sweat on her face.
Her phone rang. Video call from Yasmin, her eldest daughter.
"Mom! Where are you? We were worried!"
Amina saw all three children on screen. Yasmin, sixteen. Karim, fifteen. Little Layla, only nine.
"I'm at the excavation."
"Why?" asked Karim. "What difference does it make now?"
Amina looked at Neferura's sarcophagus, at this woman who lived and died three thousand years ago, but whose name still existed.
"Because we're not only what will die," she said slowly, formulating the thought for the first time. "We're what was. Every moment of love, every kind deed, every story. That doesn't disappear. It becomes part of the fabric of the Universe."
"That doesn't make sense," Karim muttered.
"No," Amina agreed. "But understand. Neferura didn't know that three thousand years later someone would stand over her grave and speak her name. She just lived. Loved her children. And that was enough."
Pause. Then Layla asked: "Mom, will you come home?"
"Yes, sweetheart. I'm coming home."
Amina covered the sarcophagus with a tarp. She would return. But not to excavate the past.
To create memories that might, perhaps, outlive the end.
HIROSHI — Tokyo (Day 22)
Hiroshi stood before Yuki's grave for the first time in two years.
After her death, he came every week. Then every month. Then he stopped. What was the point of talking to stone?
But this morning he woke with a clear sense: he needed to come. Needed to say what he hadn't said during her life.
He brought white chrysanthemums, her favorites. Lit incense. Knelt on the cold ground.
"Yuki," he began, voice trembling. "I'm sorry."
Wind rustled through the sakura leaves above the grave. The flowers hadn't bloomed yet. It was too early. They would bloom in March, as always.
But would he see them one last time?
"I'm sorry I worked so much. Sorry I missed the children's birthdays. Sorry that when you were sick, I still went to the office because I thought career mattered more. Sorry I never took you to Paris, though you dreamed of it for thirty years."
Tears flowed freely. Hiroshi didn't wipe them.
"I thought we had time. Always thought — next year, after the promotion, after retirement. Then you died, and I realized I'd spent my life waiting for a moment that never came."
He pulled a small box from his pocket. Inside was a ring. A simple gold ring with a tiny diamond.
"I bought this fifty years ago. Wanted to give it on our anniversary, but decided to wait until the jubilee. Then until the golden wedding. Then..."
Hiroshi opened the box and placed it at the headstone.
"Now there's no point in waiting, is there?"
He sat for a long time, listening to the cemetery's silence, broken only by birds and the distant city noise.
Then, unexpectedly to himself, he began talking about the past three weeks. About the chaos in the city. About the looting and violence of the first days. But also about the miracle.
"Yesterday in the subway I saw a young man give his seat to an old woman. Such a simple thing, but she cried and said: 'I thought all kindness had died.' And he replied: 'No. It still has a year.'"
Hiroshi smiled through tears.
"Stores are starting to open again. People are returning to work. Not all, but many. You know why? Because we still need to eat. Still need purpose. Still need something to do between waking and sleeping."
He stood, knees creaking.
"I've decided something, Yuki. I have a year. Three hundred forty-three days. I won't spend them on regrets. I'll do what we should have done together. I'll live."
On the way home Hiroshi stopped at a bookstore. It was open. The owner sat at the counter, reading, as always.
"Tanaka-san," he greeted. "Haven't seen you in a while."
"Do you have books about Paris?" asked Hiroshi.
The owner smiled. "Planning a trip?"
"Something like that."
Hiroshi bought three books: a Paris guidebook, a collection of French poetry in translation, and a book about Impressionist painting.
He wouldn't go to Paris. Too late.
But he could learn about it. Could walk its streets in imagination. Could fulfill Yuki's dream the only available way.
It was better than nothing.
It was all he had.
MARIA — São Paulo (Day 22)
The test was positive.
Maria stared at the two pink lines for ten minutes, as if they might change if she looked long enough.
Pregnant. Six weeks.
She should feel joy. Terror. Something.
Instead she felt numb.
Outside her apartment came the sounds of the city slowly waking after the first weeks' collapse. São Paulo was chaos the first ten days. Looting, fires, panic. Then the government declared martial law. Army in the streets. Curfew.
Gradually order was restored. Or at least the appearance of order.
The hospital was working again. Maria returned to shifts three days ago. Many nurses didn't come back, but she did. Where else to go?
Now she sat on the tiny bathroom floor, holding the test, thinking about the impossible choice.
Give birth to a child who would live maybe seven months?
Or...
Her phone rang. Mom.
"Maria, where are you? I've been calling for an hour!"
"Home, Mom. Everything's fine."
"Come to us. Please. I don't want you to be alone."
Maria looked at the test in her hand. "Mom... I need to tell you something."
Pause. Then, softly: "You're pregnant."
Maria froze. "How did you...?"
"I'm your mother. I know. When you last visited, I saw how you looked at your nephews. Saw your face."
The tears Maria had held back for three weeks came flooding.
"Mom, what do I do? How can I bring a child into this world? He'll die. We'll all die."
"Maria, listen to me." Her mother's voice was firm. "When I was pregnant with you, we lived in the favela. Your father was killed a month before you were born. We had no money, no future. Everyone told me to abort. But you know what I did?"
"What?"
"I had you. And every day of your life was a gift. Didn't matter that it was hard. Didn't matter that I didn't know how we'd survive. You were here. You were alive. And that mattered."
Maria pressed her hand to her stomach.
"But this baby will only have seven months..."
"This baby will have seven months of love," her mother corrected. "Seven months when he'll be wanted, cherished, adored. Some children live eighty years and never know such love."
"You think I should keep him?"
"I think only you can decide. But remember, Mom — it's not only who gives life. It's who gives love. And love isn't measured by time."
After the call Maria sat in silence for a long time.
Then she placed her hand on her stomach and whispered:
"Hello, little one. I don't know what to do yet. But if you stay... if we do this together... I promise you every second of love I can give."
Inside her something shifted. Not physically. But something important.
The decision wasn't made yet.
But she was beginning to feel what it would be.
DAVID — New York (Day 22)
David hadn't been to the office in nineteen days.
The first three days he simply couldn't get out of bed. Lay in his penthouse, stared at the ceiling, listened to sirens below. The city was burning, and he couldn't make himself care.
On the fourth day he tried to drink. Ran out of alcohol by evening, but the numbness didn't pass.
On the fifth day he went for a walk.
Manhattan was unrecognizable. Broken windows. Graffiti on walls: "365 DAYS," "THE END IS NEAR," "GOD DOESN'T EXIST." But also: "LOVE EACH OTHER," "WE'RE STILL HERE."
David walked for hours. Brooklyn Bridge. Central Park. Wherever his feet took him.
At Times Square a crowd gathered around a street preacher. Not a religious fanatic. Just an ordinary person speaking into a megaphone:
"We're not dead! We're here, right now! We have today! We have each other! That matters!"
People were crying. Hugging. Strangers holding hands.
David felt something strange in his chest. Something he hadn't felt in many years.
Envy.
These people, who had lost everything, had somehow found something. Connection. Purpose. Meaning.
And he, with his millions, with his penthouse, with his success — he had nothing.
He went home and for the first time in fifteen years called his sister.
She didn't answer. He left a message:
"Hi, Rachel. It's David. I know we haven't talked since... since that Christmas. The one when I said your husband was a loser and you were wasting your life on kids. I was an idiot. I was... I don't know who I was."
His voice trembled.
"I'm sorry. For everything. I think I was afraid. Afraid that if I stopped, if I stopped chasing money, I'd realize my life was empty. And now the world is ending, and... you were right. I wasted my life on nothing."
Pause.
"I'd like to see the kids. If you'll let me. If it's not too late."
He hung up and lay back on the bed.
The phone rang twenty minutes later.
"David?" Rachel's voice was cautious.
"Hi."
"Are you... are you serious?"
"Yes. I know I don't deserve..."
"Shut up," she interrupted, but he heard tears in her voice. "Just shut up and come. Tomorrow. For dinner. The kids want to meet the uncle I've told them so much about."
"You told them about me?"
"Of course, idiot. You're my brother."
The next day David drove to Connecticut. Small house in the suburbs. A house he once considered a prison of mediocrity.
Now, standing on the doorstep with a bouquet of flowers, he saw it for what it was:
Home.
The door opened, and a little girl looked at him curiously.
"Are you Uncle David? Mom said you finally came."
David knelt to be at her eye level.
"Yes. Sorry it took so long."
The girl thought about it. "That's okay. You're here now."
And something in the simplicity of those words — "you're here now" — broke the wall David had built around himself for thirty-five years.
He hugged his niece and cried for the first time since childhood.
ADWOA — Accra (Day 22)
The university didn't reopen.
Adwoa went to the gates every day the first week, hoping to see a notice. But the gates remained closed.
The second week she received an email. All exams cancelled. All scholarships suspended. University closed indefinitely.
Ten years of work. Ten years when her mother cleaned other people's houses to pay for school. Ten years of dreaming about becoming a doctor.
All gone.
Adwoa lay in her dorm room (which was also supposed to close, but no one knew when) and stared at the ceiling.
Why?
Why had she tried so hard?
Why does anyone try if the end is predetermined?
Her phone rang. A number she didn't recognize.
"Hello?"
"Is this Adwoa Mensa?" A male voice, elderly, with a British accent.
"Yes. Who is this?"
"Professor Asare. I taught biology at the university. You were in my class two years ago."
Adwoa sat up. She remembered him. Brilliant scientist who always stayed after lectures to answer students' questions.
"Professor. Hello."
"Adwoa, I'm calling because I'm gathering a group of students. We'll continue classes. Informally. At my house. If you're interested."
She blinked. "Classes? But... why?"
"Why breathe?" he replied simply. "Why eat? Why watch the sunset? Because we're alive, Adwoa. And while we're alive, we learn."
"But there won't be exams. There won't be degrees. No career..."
"No," he agreed. "But there will be knowledge. There will be understanding. There will be the wonder of discovery. Wasn't that the reason you wanted to become a doctor? Not for money or prestige. For the miracle of science."
Adwoa felt something in her throat. Didn't know whether to cry or laugh.
"When do classes start?"
"Tomorrow. Ten a.m. I'll send the address."
The next morning Adwoa came to the professor's house. Small, modest house on the outskirts of Accra. Inside were seven students.
Professor Asare smiled at them.
"Welcome to the Last University," he said. "Here we'll study not for the future, but for the present. Not for careers, but for the beauty of knowledge."
He opened an anatomy textbook.
"Let's start with the heart. The organ that will beat in each of us for another three hundred forty-three days. Isn't it a miracle that it beats at all?"
And Adwoa found that for the first time in three weeks, she was curious.
Curiosity, she realized, doesn't require a future.
Curiosity only needs now.
SERGEI — Irkutsk (Day 22)
Sergei was released on the eighth day.
Mass amnesty. All prisoners except rapists and serial killers. The government explained it this way: "In the last year, everyone should have a chance at redemption."
Sergei walked out of the colony gates with a plastic bag of belongings and nowhere to go.
His wife divorced him seven years ago. The children... he didn't even know where they lived.
He settled in a hostel for released prisoners. Tried to find work. No one was hiring. Why hire when the world is ending?
The money they gave him upon release ran out in a week.
Sergei went hungry for two days before forcing himself to go to the church soup kitchen.
There he met Father Nikolai.
The old priest served him soup and bread, sat across from him.
"Are you from the colony?"
Sergei nodded without raising his eyes.
"What for?"
"Murder."
"I see." No judgment in his voice. "Do you repent?"
Sergei finally looked at him. "Every day for fifteen years."
"Then you've already atoned for your sin in God's eyes," said Father Nikolai. "All that remains is to forgive yourself."
"I can't."
"You can't or you won't?"
Sergei didn't know how to answer.
Father Nikolai leaned closer. "You know what's the only sin worse than murder? Spending the rest of your life hating yourself. The man you killed is dead. You won't bring him back. But you can honor his memory by living differently in the present."
"How?"
"By serving others. By being the man you should have been."
Father Nikolai stood. "I need an assistant. The kitchen operates every day. Feeds hundreds of people. I have three hundred forty-three days of life left, and I don't want to spend them alone. Will you come tomorrow?"
Sergei couldn't sleep all night thinking about the offer.
The next morning he came.
And the next.
And the next.
By the end of the third week he knew the regulars' names. Grandmother Maria, who lost her entire family. Young Anton with mental issues. Little Sonya, whose mother was an addict.
Sergei fed them. Listened to their stories. Sometimes just sat nearby in silence.
One evening, as they cleaned up after dinner, Father Nikolai said:
"You know what's the difference between you and me, Sergei?"
"What?"
"I devoted my life to God. You devoted your life to guilt. But the result is the same — we both forgot to live for ourselves."
Sergei stopped, holding the mop.
"You have three hundred forty-three days," the priest continued. "You can spend them on self-flagellation. Or you can live. Really live. Help people, yes. But also laugh. Cry. Feel the sun on your face. Remember that you're a human, not just a sin with legs."
That night Sergei pulled an old photograph from his bag of belongings. His wedding. Twenty-five years ago. He and Natasha, young, happy, full of hope.
He hadn't seen her in fifteen years.
Perhaps it was too late for forgiveness.
But perhaps there was enough time to try.
ZARA — Mumbai (Day 22)
The hospital had changed.
The first week was hell. Panic, injuries from riots, suicides. Zara worked thirty-six hour shifts, losing count of days.
But then something shifted.
People stopped coming with injuries. Instead they came with questions.
"Doctor, how do I live these months?"
"Doctor, I'm afraid. How do I not be afraid?"
"Doctor, what happens when we die?"
Zara wasn't a therapist. Wasn't a priest. But she was a doctor, and people trusted doctors.
So she began talking to them.
First individually. Then she noticed other patients listening. Started gathering groups in the hospital hall.
By the end of the third week she was holding daily sessions. Fifty, a hundred people came to listen.
She talked about death. About fear. About accepting the inevitable.
But mostly she talked about life.
"Death isn't the opposite of life," she said once. "Death is part of life. We always knew this. Each of us was going to die. The difference is now we know when."
"But that makes everything meaningless!" someone shouted.
"Why?" asked Zara. "A sunset is beautiful though it lasts minutes. A flower is beautiful though it wilts. Why must life be eternal to have meaning?"
After one session a young woman approached her.
"Doctor, I'm pregnant. Three months. I don't know what to do."
Zara took her hand. "What's your name?"
"Priya."
"Priya, I can't tell you what to do. That's your choice. But I can ask: if the world weren't ending, would you want this baby?"
Priya nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. "More than anything."
"Then perhaps the question isn't how much time your baby will have. But whether you want to be his mother for that time."
Priya cried harder, but they were different tears.
"I do. I want to so much."
"Then be," Zara said simply.
That night, walking home, Zara thought about all the pregnant women now making this impossible choice.
She thought about how in nine months — in October — the world might see the last generation of human children born.
Children who would live weeks or months.
Children who would never know the world before the announcement.
But also children who would be loved with an intensity previous generations could only dream of.
Children who would be proof that even in the face of the end, life chooses to continue.
Zara pulled out her phone and started writing a message to the medical network:
"We need to create a support program for pregnant women. Not to dissuade them. To help them. Who's ready to help?"
By morning forty-seven doctors, nurses, and midwives had responded.
The program started a week later.
It was called simply: "The Last Children of Earth."
Epilogue of the Second Chapter
Twenty-two days had passed since the announcement.
The world didn't end in panic, as many predicted. Yes, there was chaos and violence. Yes, some systems collapsed.
But people proved surprisingly resilient.
Stores were reopening. Not all, but enough.
People were returning to work. Not for money — money was losing meaning with each day — but for purpose, for structure, for something that filled the hours between waking and sleeping.
Governments created new systems. Universal basic income. Free food and housing. Amnesty for most criminals.
What could you do when imprisonment was longer than the world had left?
Religious organizations overflowed. But also community centers, support groups, places where people could gather and talk about their fears.
The internet became different. Fewer arguments. More declarations of love. More forgiveness. More photos of sunsets, babies, simple moments of joy.
People understood this might be the last sunset, the last smile, the last "I love you."
And in that understanding was something both beautiful and terrifying.
Seven people — an archaeologist in Egypt, a retiree in Japan, a nurse in Brazil, a trader in New York, a student in Ghana, a former prisoner in Russia, and a doctor in India — went to bed at the end of the twenty-second day.
Each had changed.
Not dramatically. Not completely.
But the first seeds of transformation had been planted.
Amina decided that legacy wasn't stones and shards, but love.
Hiroshi began living instead of waiting.
Maria embraced the possibility of motherhood, despite the fear.
David reconnected with the family he'd pushed away.
Adwoa discovered that learning could be for learning's sake.
Sergei began the path to forgiving himself.
Zara understood her calling wasn't to fight death, but to help life.
Ahead lay three hundred forty-three days.
That felt both like an eternity and an instant.
The question was no longer "how much time is left?"
The question was: "What will I do with this time?"
And each of them, in their own way, was beginning to find the answer.
February approached. The world continued to turn. Life, despite everything, continued.