It’s official; the sun has now died. The Council has informed that the last of the hydrogen in its core was used up only minutes ago, and from now on, the long and arduous history of our exile begins.

Well, I say our exile, but here I am, still in my anti-thermal suit, perched on the soothingly cool metal bed inside my pod, hoping for a last call.

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It’s alright, sweetheart, I don’t blame you. Now that the sun is no more, protocol 741 has surely been activated in all the resident quarters —all except ours, and you’re probably running around with all the last-minute paperwork for the boarding. Emptying out almost an entire planet is never easy.

Inanna has come to visit me, I can tell by the sound of the buzzer. The past couple of weeks have been difficult for her, especially because she still hasn’t gotten used to the neighbourhood. She seems to like dropping in, though, almost as much as I like having her around.

She’s the one who’s been telling me about all that has been going on out there. I could turn on the news, of course. But these days I like to listen to a human voice, with all the emotions and biases that are latent in its delivery; a quality that, the world has agreed, is not desirable for imparting information. Empirical information is neither good nor evil, and one cannot be allowed to mar them with their own interpretations.

But I can finally choose not to agree with the world, now that the world is ending. It has suddenly become important for me to assert the few choices I am left with or, should I say, I am finally endowed with, after all my years in the Marginal Quarters.

The door opens, and Inanna steps in. Climbing all the way up here can be quite a challenge for her. But I can tell even without looking at her, that she is in a cheerful mood. She is quietly chuckling to herself as I go up to the kitchen counter.

“You’re well in time for tea.”

“Of course I am,” she says, “I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world. Not even solar death.”

I have to say, she’s doing pretty well, considering her circumstances. Most people sent to the Marginal Quarters don’t even step out of their pods in the initial days. Having spent all my life here, I don’t really understand what the fuss is about. Then again, if the stories that go around are anything close to the truth, I can imagine that they’re in for a tough deal. But all that is speculation.

“How much time are we left with?” I ask, as the kettle slowly hisses.
“You mean, until they get out? About eight minutes.”
“No, I mean the rest of us.”

“Another couple million years, we’ve got time.”

I pour out the tea in those fancy teacups you gave me once. I like their shape, and that they’re large enough to hold an entire evening’s worth of tea, which is very handy for times like these.

The sweet, tangy smell of orange blossoms wafts through my pod. The scent of orange blossoms reminds me of old poems. It also makes me think of the sun.

Everyone goes on about how ordinary this medium-sized yellow star is nothing compared to what else is out there. But I know how it becomes a smooth, orange orb in the horizon every day just before it sets, and after it rises, and the whole sky is lit up in shades of pink, purple, coral, and yellow — a blend of colours so beautiful that it’s almost impossible to describe. Even with the shroud of carbon-dioxide these days, such a thing is hard to miss.

“You’re distracted today,” says Inanna, as she sits on the counter and takes a loud sip.

“Am I?” I reply distractedly.

The phone hasn’t rung yet. Not as eight minutes are over and even if they were, I don’t see why you can’t make a call from the ship. Wherever it is you’re going, it’s going to take a while.

“I was called in by the Council this morning,” says Inanna, after waiting a while for me to say something.

“Oh!” I asked, surprised out of my thoughts, “what for?”

“Well, all the former employees from the Marginal Quarters got called in, really,” Inanna said, “now that everyone’s leaving, someone still needs to run the place.”

“Wait, what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, “you’re saying that the Marginal’s will run the Council? We’re going to be in government and everything?” Bitterness almost rang out in Inanna’s laugh.

“Oh no, they’re more professional than that. Everything’s going to run on automode from now on; they’d put in a system for this situation years ago. But the bots need some human-power. So yeah, we can have our old jobs back. Some will even get new jobs from now on. But that’s about it. We don’t get to make the decisions. Not until the last stretch, when the world really shuts down.”

That’s not long now. Very soon, the hydrogen on the sun’s surface will also fuse into helium. The core will collapse under its own weight, and our beautiful golden orb will expand into an enormous angry red giant. All of us will be sucked into the sun, and vaporised. Oh yes, I know exactly how the story ends.

“By that time though, the rest will have settled in,” said Inanna, as if hearing my thoughts.

“Where are they headed for?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“Pluto, for now. Eventually, of course, they’ll have to spread out in the Kuiper Belt, or even move further out, who knows. Not enough space.”

“Even without us?”

Her laugh wasn’t bitter this time. But I couldn’t tell if she was trying to hide something, like a lump in her throat.

“There’s never enough space,” she said. The sound of my clock tells me, that the flight will take off in another twenty seconds. Strangely enough, I have stopped waiting for your call. It doesn’t make sense, I tell myself, for you to make yourself miserable about the whole thing for the rest of your journey. As it is, you have broken enough rules in coming to see me, a Marginal, every day, risking your job and, I would imagine, quite a lot more.

The only reason why I would wish your call right now is to tell you how glad I am that you came. On the very first day, when you knocked on my door for your regular round of inspection, I could sense that something remarkable was going to happen in my life. It was just the way that knock sounded, you know. I can tell stuff by these things. And I turned out right, again, as you said your first words to me in undisguised admiration.

“Wow! You have nebula-eyes! They’re so beautiful!”

No one had ever said something like that to me before. Nobody speaks to a Marginal like that. And at that moment, I was engulfed by a searing white desire to see you that burns even now in my heart like a white dwarf. And it was you, my dearest, that told me about this day that was about to come, and how, in that new life, away from the glaring eye of the slowly dying celestial monster, we’ll build a home in the cool white caves of ice, far away at the outer edge of the solar system.

“Henrik wanted to smuggle me into the ship,” said Inanna, as if speaking to herself, “what a silly old sod.”

I didn’t tell her the obvious that it was the natural thing to do, sweet even. I haven’t had any experience of a family, but people tell me all the time that this is exactly the kind of thing families do for each other.

“Was it really painful? Losing your legs?” If Inanna was surprised, she didn’t let her voice show it. “Not so much. But I was scared, yes. Scared of leaving home and being sent here.”

“Is it as bad as you’d thought?”

“Honestly? No. In the end, you get used to everything. What was it like for you?”

“Me? Oh, I was born this way. My mom was accidentally exposed to some sort of radiation, I’m told. I came out with my blind nebula-eyes.”

“Nebula-eyes,” Inanna smiled, “I like that. It’s pretty accurate.”

Twenty seconds are nearly over. Any moment now, and we’ll be alone in this old, worn out world. It’s a fitting end for us, one would think. After all, the world had decided long, long ago that flawed, worn-out humans like us would have to be discarded. Space is finite, and so is time. Eventually, the margins would start overflowing and spill onto the centre. But before that happened, the death of a star blessed them with an exit route. Now, the whole of this worn-out world is ours; a place we can at last call our home.

“What are you thinking?”

“I would have liked to see the ice caves. I think a garden of Bavarian Gentians would look really pretty there.”

“Now you’re just being sentimental.” Maybe I am. One can surely forgive that while saying goodbye. I know it’s time, now that the phone has finally started ringing. But I won’t pick it up, and ruin it for you. Go on ahead, and when you reach there, remember the Bavarian Gentians.

Before long, the heart of the sun will turn searing white, and I’ll be a part of its fire. When you look up at your new sky, look for that luminous unseeing eye gazing into the voids of space millions and millions of miles away, a newly born planetary nebula