Charlie saw the alarm, he heard the alarm, but he did not ‘believe’ the alarm. He stood there just past the door to his flat. “Charlie!” He heard the voice from the kitchen area.

“Josef? What are you doing here?” Charlie asked, briefly rustling the bag to bring his hand up and scratch his head.

“You gave me a key, remember?” Josef said from the other room, “You told me to come by, the shop is closed right now thanks to that accident… poor kid…”

Charlie could hear the sympathy, the pity in his friend’s voice.

“Accident?” Charlie asked, “What accident?” He walked away from the door and then into the kitchen where he found the big bear of a man hunched over a cutting board.

“Drunk driver, it hit someone, killed a little girl, some of the debris did some damage to the shop. I’m closed for the next two days while they do repairs… I want to do something nice for her but… times are tight.” Josef said and shrugged it off.

“Wait… when did I give you a key…?” Charlie asked, searching his memory.

“God, forever ago, man. I hope you don’t mind that I used it, but you mentioned wanting to lose… well don’t make me say it…” Josef turned around and pointed the slender vegetable knife to the gut hanging off of Charlie’s body.

“Ah… Josef…” Charlie pursed his lips when Josef turned his back again and the sound of chopping began again.

“Yeah, Charlie?” Josef asked.

‘I didn’t give you a key? Did you replace my alarm without telling me? When did I tell you these things? Did I have dinner with you and Mileva? What day is it?’ A lot of questions ran through Charlie’s mind.

Charlie didn’t say anything. Josef stopped.

“Listen, what you told me… I know I didn’t handle it the best… How does anyone deal with the knowledge that the world is going to end? That their best friend is the one to cause it? But the best I can do is live all the way to the fullest… to the last hour, whatever it is. I don’t have to set affairs straight because there won’t be anyone to inherit. I don’t have to save for retirement because I probably won’t have one.” Josef held a small tupperware container in hand and swept the vegetables he was chopping, off the edge to tumble into the little opaque rectangle.

That brought Charlie up short. “Josef… you handled that better than anybody could have asked for, really… I… I’m not okay with what I’ve done. I’m not okay with killing the people that I love, I’m not okay with the people that I love, dying before they should… no decent person could be okay with that. But… do you remember what I said about most people being like dogs?”

“Not really… but you told me this awhile ago, if it was then, no.” Josef shook his big head and then opened the fridge to pull out a glass cylinder of black olives. He popped the cap with a quick twist and nodded, “But go on.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Well, I did.” Charlie replied and said, “I was wrong. Smart or dumb, we can all do dumb things, dangerous things, reckless things, and the wrong people can pay the price. The smarter you are, the more you can screw things up when you’re wrong. In a way, we’re all like dogs… I made a mistake, can’t fix it… I want to do things differently. I have accepted that much… so… you want to do something nice for that girl?” Charlie asked and set the wine on the counter.

As Josef nodded and began pouring olive juice and a few olives into what Charlie now recognized as a mixed green salad, the smaller scientist reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and a black card. “There is no spending limit on this.”

“Charlie, you can’t be serious.” Josef stared down at the black piece of plastic with a disbelieving gaze.

“I am, though. I very much am. Josef I made more money in personalizing quantum computing through electron-binary coding than Bill Gates did on Windows. My bills are paid for me. I’ve had… problems… I know, but unless the financial sector collapsed while I’ve been… lost I guess, then that’s all still going on. Just take the card, get the girl what you want. Besides, if you’d stayed with me instead of taking over the store, half this would be yours anyway.”

“Charlie, I did leave.” Josef said, but his hand moved out anyway to accept the card.

“So what?” Charlie asked, “You didn’t leave me. You left school. If you’d stuck through that we’d have been in the same field and I might have developed my innovations in half the time that I actually did. You did slow me down a bit, big oaf,” Charlie smirked up at the square jawed and olive skinned shopkeeper, “but it’s a fair trade. Besides, I never paid a cent for the textbook editing help. Just take the card and use it.”

“And… excuse the smell… I have been trying to get this place presentable again, the mess, the garbage…” Charlie turned a little red when the credit card slipped out of his hand and into the big sausage fingers of his companion.

“Nah man, nah, don’t think anything of it, but why don’t you just hire someone?” Josef asked while Charlie walked away into the living area.

“This is my place, my life, I… I let things come to this. I should be the one to fix it. A little elbow grease never hurt anybody.” Charlie said a little louder as he came close to the white alarm clock, he yanked the cord loose and it killed the noise.

A thousand questions ran through the mind of the greatest mind of his age, and they floated away like autumn leaves on a steady and placidly flowing river. ‘None of that matters… none of it. Whatever it is… I have to just… I have to accept things as they are, not as I wish they were, even if they don’t make sense.’

His heart swelled a little, ‘Is that…?’ What he was going to ask was interrupted when Josef came out and set a salad on the table.

“Eat up, listen, again… sorry about catching you off guard but with Mileva gone and the shop closed, there’s really nothing else I can do. You said I was the only one to stick around but… that goes both ways, doesn’t it?” Josef gave a little smirk down at Charlie, who sat staring down at the bowl of green lettuce, orange carrots, black olives, and bits of tan garlic croutons.

Charlie shot his eyes up in alarm when he accepted the fork, “Did something happen to her?! Wait… what…” Charlie’s heart raced for an instant, pounding like he’d run for miles.

“She got a job, obviously, I mean that does count as something happening.” Josef said, “She went off to work with SETI, trying to apply your innovations to long range communications and possibly reaching alien life forms through coded electron spin modification. That’s if the black hole gravitational slingshot works. All we need is to get a split in other parts of the Universe and… well we can travel without going anywhere.” Josef fairly preened when he said it.

“She knows… doesn’t she? About the- end.” Charlie shut his eyes, trying not to picture the death of the vibrant woman in the flower of youth dying before her time.

Josef pursed his lips. “You know the answer to that, Charlie.”

‘No I don’t!’ Charlie wanted to scream it, but he couldn’t, instead he started to eat his salad.

The vegetables crunched under his teeth and the pitted olives squished as soft as spongy mushrooms, the zing flavor wasn’t ashes in his mouth as so many meals had been before. If anything, despite the almost somber question and his own uncertainty about the world around him… that added to it all, the salad under his fork, the feel of the silver stem, cool in his hand, and the company he kept, all made more precious by the certainty of their end.

It was, in that moment, the finest salad Charlie had ever had, and with his mouth full, just as he crunched down on a cold carrot, he gave an enthusiastic nod. “Tish is good!” He said. Josef’s brief tension began to ease up, and where his lips had been even and pursed for a moment before, a little smile began to form.