By William Kerr
The room was uncomfortably hot. Oppressive. The air itself seemed thicker and stank of an unspoken fear. Sweat beaded on her skin and dripped down her back. The Watchkeeper had been at her operations console for almost 48 hours straight. Others like her had their eyes glued to their own screens, lost in their own thoughts. Others unlike her seemed to wander around aimlessly — their discussions hushed but sharp. The displays flashed with ongoing status updates and live feed from the front. Things were not going well. The tension in the room was intense. Sickening. No one had slept properly in days… yet there was an overbearing feeling in the room that one way or another, it would all be over soon.
What would the end bring? Would all their work be for nothing?
Unexpectedly the room fell silent. The Watchkeeper was jolted back into reality by the sudden silence. All eyes slowly turned to the main overhead screen. Then, right on cue, the dreaded incoming alarm sounded, shattering the silence. The atmosphere changed immediately. The unbearable tension seemed to evaporate — replaced mostly by resignation. Some started sobbing, others cried out in painful anguish. A few ran out the door attempting to escape an inevitable fate. Most were still, their eyes fixed to the tiny red blip that had appeared on the overhead projection. The red blip continued to close in on its target. The incoming alarm continued to whine until someone yelled to turn it off. They wanted silence at the end. The whining of the alarm suddenly cut off and some sense of stillness returned. Stillness in a world about to be consumed by chaos. The Watchkeeper leaned back in her chair and stared vacantly at her screens. They had gone blank, almost as if they knew their job was over. She glanced back up at the overhead projection — not long now. An immense weight seemed to lift from her. She breathed in, she breathed out. Calmness came to her for the first time in a long time. She looked down at her hands. They were still. It would be over in just a moment. She briefly wondered if she would feel anything as the heat of a thousand suns was unleashed upon the Earth. She very much doubted it. She hoped her parents had taken her children to their cabin in the mountains like they had promised — they would be safe there — at least for a while. She realised, in this moment, that she was grateful their father had fallen in the first months. He would have struggled with the feeling of helplessness when it came to protecting them. It would have been nice to see them all again; to have made the journey up to the cabin, nestled amongst the trees and ferns. It was a pleasant thought; she even managed a small smile. If they had made it up there, they would at least survive the initial volley.
The Watchkeeper’s mind turned back to the present, and to the moments which would be her last. Had she done all she could? Could she have done more? Would her children, the world’s children, forgive her? These were her last thoughts as the scene vaporised around her.
About the Author
William Kerr
William Kerr is a self-professed science fiction enthusiast. He was born and raised in Tasmania but now calls Canberra home.
His personal preference is hard science fiction and dystopian-style stories which definitely influenced his first published piece ‘The Burning’.
He is looking forward to publishing more flash fiction and is hoping to become a regular contributor.
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Geraldine Borella writes adult short stories and stories for children and has been published in anthologies for both. In 2018, one of her children’s short stories placed second in The Buzz Words Short Story Prize and she won an ASA Emerging Writer’s Mentorship. She currently works part-time as a hospital pharmacist and as an online creative writing tutor.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
Tim Borella is an Australian author, mainly of short speculative fiction published in anthologies, online and in podcasts.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Jolie Lindholm grew up in small towns on Long Island, NY, later moving to Florida for college.
You can follow her creative writing journey on Twitter: <
Chris Karageorge is a lover, brother, son, neighbour and a keen observer of all things in sight. 
Bethany Tatman is an aspiring writer who currently resides in one of the more hipster suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
PS Cottier is a poet who lives in Canberra, with a particular interest in speculative poetry.
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.