The cryo-pods gave off a barely perceptible hum their soft blue light not bright enough to cast any shadows – “what will it be like,” Maggie whispers a serene smile tugs at the corners of her mouth as the sedative worms its way through her system.

“Paradise honey, it will be paradise…” he replies hoping she doesn’t sense the underlying melancholy he is unable mask as he bends to give her a last kiss, “love you honey bunny…”

He had charmed her with stories of a distant future, a future in which the earth had been healed and swept clean of the pestilence mankind had become. She had believed it of course, she believed everything he told her and he hadn’t been able to come up with a good reason to tell her the truth. There wasn’t going to be any magical renewal, no waking up to huge forests and clear springs untouched by man for hundreds of years – the stories of a fantasy future were just that.

He sits on the edge of his pod, trying to squash a survival instinct he didn’t know existed till this moment, it’s little late he thinks grimly finally settling in shifting to get comfortable, as if that mattered at all, wishing he had taken the sedative. He had decided against it though, wanting to be clearheaded when it was time to activate the master switch that would slide the clear glass covers over them and initiate the cryogenic process, he still hadn’t managed to push the green button though as he studies the ceiling.

Three years earlier the Icarus Initiative had sent thousands of unmanned probes to the sun ostensibly to study the unexplained increase in solar energy and flares that were bombarding the earth accelerating the depletion of the ozone layer and beginning to overwhelm the earth’s protective magnetic fields. It had been a lie of course, another impotent demonstration of man’s inability to solve a problem that had been staring humanity in the face for a hundred years. By the time science had overwhelmed nationalistic greed it was too late and it turned out science didn’t have any answers anyway.

Cryo-pods had been around for almost twenty years, medicine’s answer to “we don’t know how to cure that yet…” They had watched the late-night infomercials together, Maggie asking if he thought maybe they should get one, he had nodded stoically not having the words to explain the pointlessness of cryogenics in the face of melting polar ice caps and the continuous EMP waves that were already starting to take the earth’s power grid offline. At least it would be peaceful he had tried to convince himself, but it had been her childish smile and the warm squeeze of her hand that toppled his indecision. He simply couldn’t bear to watch her suffer as she tried to process the indescribable horror hurtling toward them, so he had smiled and purchased two top-of-the-line pods.

The glass silently glides closed sealing the pod before he realizes he has pressed the green button; there’s a moment of panic and he can feel the acid in his stomach rising. The liquid nitrogen erases any further flicker of consciousness as he and Maggie peacefully await the end…