“Warning: chance of impending quasar eruption 99.9%”

This was certainly a strange dream, they usually did not begin with my head on my desk and a pounding headache.

“Simon, did you hear me? Wake up.”

Even my annoyingly persistent AI, Caisis, was for some reason a part of the dream. Odd, I tended not to dream about my work, it consumed my waking life enough as it was.

“Simon!”

I groaned and picked my head up off of the table, the astronomy text in front of me squished flat from a night of fitful rest. I had been working on hopefully scoring a promotion in the stellar detection division, though that meant a ridiculous number of hours learning obscure probability and technology to even have a chance. It had been almost a year since I began my study and I still didn't think I was quite ready to make my move. It didn't help that a lot of the most obscure, yet sometimes crucial information was still hidden in archaic old books that the wide majority of libraries had tossed into the corners of their basements and nearly forgotten about.

“Finally,” the AI groaned, her voice agitated. Which was confusing because I didn't recall programming an agitation mode into her code.

“What now?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and leaning back in my desk chair to stretch out my aching back. “I don't need to get up for work today, I have a day off.”

“You certainly will not have a day off today, didn't you hear me?”

I tried to remember what she had said, but my brain was still convinced that it was just a foggy part of a dream.

“The Mercole's quasar is going to erupt.”

“Yeah, and? That's kind of what they do, Caisis, I would expect for a space detection AI to at least know that.”

“No, you idiot!” Strange, I didn't remember coding in a sass personality either. “It is going to erupt massively and it's pointed directly at the planet!”

Now I was a little more awake. I jumped up, knocked my chair over backwards, and ran to my workstation, firing up the computer at lightning speed and clicking over to the detection warning system. Letting out a sigh of relief, I saw that the warning system was still green.

“Don't scare me like that, Casis, it's not funny this early in the morning,” I grumbled. I seriously needed to spend the rest of my day off looking through her coding instead of studying, I had obviously messed up some of it somewhere.

“They don't know!” she pleaded, taking over my workstation and displaying what seemed to be a simulation of her proposed event. “The slightly brighter glowing area in the accretion disk is falling towards the center.” The glowing spot on the screen slowly swirled towards the center of the quasar, speeding up to a blazing pace before annihilating with the center mass and spewing blinding light at an alarming width away from the center.

“Everyone knows the glowing spot is just some extra hot dust left over from the universe's formation. Even if it does fall in, the mass will not nearly be enough to do anything so spectacular, you might want to check your math again.” Of course it was my coding with the math, while I was very good at a lot of things it seemed like the very basic of math sometimes eluded me when I was deep in a project.

“That's just the problem, I did check my data and math again and it's not just a pocket of dust. It's a neutron star.”

“Wait, wait, a neutron star? How would we ever miss something like that? There's no way that with all the brilliant minds working at the space detection division would have missed something like that."

“It's incredibly low radiation emitting, much lower than we would typically see for even a small star. That's why it's been looked over until now and it's massive.” Casis sounded legitimately panicked, that was really starting to worry me.

I looked over the simulated disaster playing on repeat on the screen and considered just how likely it was that all of the world's greatest scientific minds could have made such a massive and devastating mistake.

“Okay, so let's just pretend for a moment that you're right,” I said. The chances of her being right and this not being a product of my shoddy coding skills was pretty slim, but it didn't hurt to run through all the options. “What's the outcome?”

“There is a 99.9% chance that all life in the path of the eruption cone will be obliterated.”

“That sucks.”

“Yes, particularly since we are directly in the path of the cone!”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose between my eyes and sighed. This had to be some sort of calculation mistake, there was no way that my AI would figure out something that all of the International Space Detection System didn't know. It would just be a matter of running the numbers myself and proving to her that she was mistaken, though that would mean at least hours of work. Not exactly what I was looking forward to on my day off.

“Okay, look, just put up all your data and calculations on the screen and I'll go over them myself.”

The screen flashed from the simulation to what seemed like a never-ending list of proofs and calculations.

“You know, it's a bit insulting that you think you know better than an AI designed solely to do this work,” she said flatly.

“Yeah, normally it would be, but the fact is that I coded you and I don't trust my coding skills.”

Two hours later, I had only gotten through the AI's proof that the glowing mass in the accretion belt of the Mercole's quasar was indeed a neutron star, but it was enough. The numbers, the data... they all added up. I don't know how it had been missed for centuries, but there had been a neutron star lurking undetected practically in our backyard. It was an amazing, even stupendous discovery that would make me an instant celebrity... if only it wasn't about to kill us.

“Okay,” I finally said, breaking the two hour silence, “you have my attention.”

“You believe me now?” Caisis asked, voice still sounding sulky about my initial doubt.

“Yes, I do.”

“Say you're sorry.”

“Do we really have time for this? Didn't you say that 99.9% sure it would wipe everyone out on this planet?”

“Say it!”

I let out a dramatic sigh and rubbed my temples. Today was not going to be very good for nursing a headache.

“I'm sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

Squinting my eyes shut in disbelief I bellowed, “For doubting you. You are the best AI program ever, I would kiss your feet if you had them. Happy?”

“That wasn't so hard.," she said curtly. As for feet, I want to discuss getting me a body if we end up with you surviving this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grunted and leaned back in my chair. It felt like I should be calling the International Space Detection System, the emergency services, the news... something, but I needed a minute to soak in the news. This was big, this was Armageddon and I had caught it before it happened.

“How long do we have until it reaches the critical point?”

There was a pause and the sound of the computer's fan kicking on as she completed the necessary calculations. “There is a 99.9% chance that it will reach initial explosive expulsion in roughly 2 hours from now and then the impact wave that has a 99.9% chance of destroying all life will reach the planet 22 hours after.”

“22 hours?! That's insane, how are we supposed to get everyone evacuated in that amount of time?”

“That's something you haven't programmed me to know.”

I waved away her sarcastic comment and dropped my head in my hands, the headache worse than ever. With that kind of a time window it briefly seemed like it might be a better idea just to live up what life I had left. Though, being utterly single, a nerd, and having practically no friends or savings meant my version of living it up would have to be a bottle of vodka and a strip-club at best.

“Why only 99.9% on those percentages, what keeps it from being 100%?” Perhaps there was something we could do to change the possibility. It was a long-shot, but it was an even longer-shot to think we could evacuate the entire planet in less than 24 hours.

“Well, to be perfectly exact, the percentages are 99.9999999999999999% and that's due to the remote possibility of quantum tunneling of either the star away from the quasar or the entire human population away from the expulsion cone.”

Great. “Got it, so not going to happen.”

“I just said that I can't give 100% probabilities because it could happen.” Her voice sounded like she thought I was an idiot.

Stolen story; please report.

“I'm not going to argue with you about probabilities and reality,” I grumbled, picking up my cell phone and staring at it as I tried to decide who to call first. “Instead, start thinking about how you are going to explain this to other AI and the top scientists at the Detection Center.”

“I just sent over my findings to the on-call AI.”

Before I had to choose who to call first, my phone rang with the number for the head office of the Center. My stomach sank, if they were taking this seriously, then maybe we really were going to have to figure out a way to stop a mass extinction by tomorrow morning.

"Simon Mons?" A voice barked as soon as I hit the button to answer.

"Speaking."

"You're needed immediately for an emergency meeting at the ISDS headquarters, room 504," the voice said flatly. The lack of panic in his voice set me at ease, maybe this was just a huge mistake and both Caisis and I were misinterpreting the data. "I've been informed that it's your day off so you will be compensated for the meeting time."

"I will be right there."

I had hardly uttered my agreement before the line clicked dead. The call screen closed and was replaced by the digitally generated face Caisis preferred to be seen as. The exact image changed depending on her mood or if there was some new fashion trend, but her choice today was one she tended to default to, a curly brunette with a bob cut, ocher skin glazed with a constant flush along her cheeks, and bright hazel eyes that always seemed to twinkle with a withheld secret.

"I don't think they took my findings seriously," she huffed, her face scrunched up into a look of frustration.

"Or the official detection AI disproved it."

"I am not wrong." She stared back defiantly from the screen.

"I'm not saying you're wr-"

"Yes you are," she interrupted, "and you need to understand that in case we have to convince them."

I let out a long sigh, but nodded in agreement. I really wanted us to be wrong, but the stakes were unfathomably high. I just hoped that whomever I was meeting with would be able to point to exactly where a mistake was made and the gnawing fear in the pit of my stomach would evaporate.

Putting my phone in my pocket, I threw my jacket on and patted the pockets for my gloves. It was a bitterly cold day with fresh snowfall on the ground and I had been looking forward to not having to go out into the snow until the heated sidewalks had been given enough time to do their job. It was still early enough in the morning that the snow would be slushy and miserable to walk through. It seemed like a silly thing to worry about considering the potential Armageddon on the horizon, but I couldn't help shake the dreaded potential of getting my socks sopping wet.

"Could you hurry it up a little?" Caisis' voice was muffled through my pocket. "You have a weird lack of self preservation."

I rolled my eyes and gave up figuring out where the gloves were.

"If I do survive, I would have liked to without having to deal with frostbite," I retorted as I closed and locked the apartment door behind me. "I kind of need my fingers, how else will I do your software updates?"

"Funny," she said flatly, "I don't think you understand that my fate hangs in the balance as well, so if you could move with a sense of true urgency, that would be great."

I had unfortunately been correct in my estimate that the sidewalks were not yet warmed sufficiently and the pathways were all slippery with slush. In decades past, the heating system would have been left on all winter regardless of weather so that snow would have never gotten a chance to stick, but they had been put on a timer over the past couple of years with the excuse of energy preservation. It irked me as a scientist to know that people were still easily convinced that energy was still such a difficult or expensive thing to come by, it had been almost twenty years since much of anything was reliant on fossil fuels. The advent of fusion reactors had made non-renewable energy a thing of the past, but old habits and excuses die hard and the fact was that while energy was cheaper than ever, it still wasn't free. The government just wanted to cut their energy bill in half, even though it was a fraction of what it used to be. It was a symptom of a bigger problem, an electorate who tended to zone out when science was brought up.

Despite being near the heart of the city, it was eerily empty and peaceful. The glow of the stop lights was still brighter than the rising sun and snow clung to the edges of windows and doors, reflecting the growing dawn. The changing colors of the traffic lights glittered through the heavy snow clinging to the overhang above each of the different lights, lighting up the snow like chunks of glittering glass. The snow had stopped falling hours ago, but the remaining light winds blew stray flakes from the surrounding buildings, making them dance and sparkle in the cheerful illumination. It was easy to get lost in the scene and even ignore the uncomfortable slush with every step. Despite the terrifying possibility clawing at the back of my mind, I found myself falling into a sort of meditation on my walk.

Before I could comprehend how long I had been walking, I turned the corner to the block and the ISDS building came into a view. It was a no-nonsense concrete and steel building that screamed governmental efficiency. Technically the program was an international venture and not wholly controlled by any one government, but headquarters locations often strictly followed local procedures and laws. If not for the giant, old-fashioned satellite dish sculpture right outside the entrance, it could have passed for low level bureaucracy. I had worked remotely for the past two years of my employment, so I had only been in the building a handful of times, most of them for the interview process, but I had always dreamed of one day having a proper office in the building.

"Room 504," Caisis chirped from my pocket as soon as my hand touched the handle to pull open the door, "that will mean the 5th floor."

"I think I could have figured that out," I retorted.

A muffled sigh escaped my pocket and would have bet my entire savings on the fact she had displayed her digital avatar just to roll her eyes.

A very drowsy security officer waved me over to her desk as soon as I walked through the door. She rubbed and blinked the sleep from her eyes, then let out a loud yawn while extending her hand for my badge. After a moment of panic where I patted all my pockets and couldn't feel it, I thrust my hands into the pockets of my jacket and was relieved to feel the postage stamp sized electronic attached to a keyring. She swiftly swooped the chip over a reader on her desk and handed it back to me before I could take my hand away, then raised her hand for me to pause and wait while it processed.

"Simon Mons, junior aeronautical engineer, remote employee," a voice said from a speaker on the desk.

"You're remote," the officer said, voice still half-asleep, "what do you need here?"

"I was called into an emergency meeting," I answered.

"With who?"

I paused and tried to replay the phone conversation over in my head. I didn't have the best working memory in the best of times and under the pressure of a possible extinction event, I could barely remember the call at all.

"He didn't say," Caisis said loudly from my pocket, "your AI should be able to verify that room 504 has been assigned."

The officer glanced to my pocket, then pulled up her own phone and swiped over to her AI's display.

"Room 504 has been assigned for an emergency meeting," the AI confirmed, "though no information has been put in for who is intended to attend."

"Of course it isn't," she said with a smirk and glanced back up to me. "Just don't wander on your way up. They never fill out the forms correctly so I know who to expect. The higher up the food chain, the less they think the rules apply to them."

I gave her an awkward nod and stepped past her desk to the elevators, there was one already waiting on the ground floor when I pressed the call button. As soon as the doors closed, my phone vibrated with two quick beats, then one long pulse. It was Caisis' signal that she wanted me to pull up the phone to make eye contact with me. Why eye contact mattered to her at all was a topic I was hesitant to delve into, she was picking up some very human habits and I couldn't easily explain how or why.

"She shouldn't have let you just walk in like that," she said, staring at me with a meaningful expression, "this should be a highly restricted facility."

I shrugged and pressed the button to the fifth floor. "I am an employee and there is a meeting where I said there would be. She seemed like any other security officer I've ever seen: underpaid and used to being out of the loop."

Caisis rolled her eyes and raised a hand to rub the bridge of her nose. "How are you this dense? Obviously security protocols have been allowed to be lax, the security AI would have overridden her decision otherwise."

The elevator whirred to life and began to ascend causing my already irritated stomach to stir. I had been suppressing nervous nausea ever since I had verified Caisis' math, but the additional motion was too much for it.

"I'm sure there's an override for the human officer to have the final say," I said with an uncomfortable groan.

"That makes no sense," Caisis argued, "humans are so easily manipulated and fooled. One pretty or handsome person and all sense and logic are lost. No, it's safest to have the AI make the ultimate decision."

"So you're saying I'm so handsome that the guard let me in anyway?" Despite the roiling in my stomach, I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

A dark flush appeared on Caisis' cheekbones and her mouth dropped open a moment before snapping back shut. "Do I really need to remind you that this is not the time at all for joking around?" She heaved a loud sigh and shook her head like a disappointed parent. "Honestly, I don't understand how you can even entertain the idea of joking right now."

"It's called dark humor, Cas, if we survive through today I'll make sure to upload some information about it so you can learn how a lot of people cope with terrible situations."

"I know about dark humor," she sniffed, looking insulted. "I just don't understand how it helps anything."

The elevator slowed to a stop and chimed that it had arrived at the fifth floor before the doors slid open, revealing a hallway of identical doorways in a bleak, gray hallway with slate flooring, the epitome of governmental basic furnishings. The numbers on the doors started at 501 from just outside the elevator and I could see that the door to 504 was cracked open a bit with a rubber doorstop.

"I'm going to stay on in your pocket," Caisis said with a nod, then dimmed the screen of the phone. "I won't stay silent if they try to argue my numbers and conclusions. I am right, I know I am and they need to take us seriously."

I gave her a wane half-smile and a nod of acknowledgement before slipping the phone back in my pocket, there was no sense in wasting time trying to argue with her, she was stubborn and wasn't going to let this go until proof of her mistake was thrust into her face. Even then, she was going to sulk about it for a good long while.

I had planned on approaching the door and pausing to gather myself and calm my stomach, but as soon as my shadow passed in front of the crack of the door, it swung open and a grumpy looking guard in the same uniform as the woman at the front swung open the door and glared down at me. He stood a good foot above me and looked like he had healed a broken nose or two.

"Simon Mons?" he asked with a piercing glare.

"Yes," I replied, doing my best to seem unintimidated, though I was certain I was failing.

"Badge," he barked and held out his scanner.

I swept my badge over the scanner and a moment after it beeped he gave a single nod of his head and stepped out of the doorway. The gray meeting room was brightly lit and sparsely decorated with little more than a white vase filled with fake flowers on a round table with several chairs around it. A well-manicured man in a smart suit was waiting for me in one of the chairs, his glittering cufflinks a sure sign that he wasn't just some low level scientist. He greeted me with a calm, but authoritative smile, flashing teeth as straight and white as the tufts of hair at his temples that stood out from his otherwise dark hair.

"Mr. Mons, please join me," he instructed while waving his hand to a chair across from him, "we have a very important matter to discuss."

Following his lead, I sat in the chair and extended my hand for a handshake across the table and tried not to show pain when his grip tried to crush my hand.

"Now, Mr. Mons, I've been told that you have an AI that is detecting very curious anomaly, is this correct?"

"It is," I replied, "I have verified the math myself and we both come to the same conclusion about Mercole's quasar."

He sat back in his chair and stared at my face, seeming to be assessing me about something.

"And may I ask where you acquired a space detection AI sophisticated enough to be able to calculate and interpret such an anomaly?"

This was the tough part, technically no one outside of the ISDS is supposed to be able to get their hands on an AI like Caisis. Building her had been a legal gray area that I had decided at the start that I would just rely on begging for forgiveness and feigning ignorance of the complicated regulations if I was ever questioned about her. However, a possible court case or ending of my career seemed trivial now when being faced with annihilation.

"I built her," I admitted.

"You built her?" he echoed with a raise of his eyebrow.

"I wanted an AI to help me calculate and learn the sort of equations and estimations that the ISDS uses for space detection and I knew there would be no way I could get the ISDS to loan me an AI just so I could get a promotion, so I bought a mid level personal AI assistant and modified her."

The man paused in thought, then took a very expensive looking phone from his pocket and silently tapped his screen for a brief moment before putting it back in his suit pocket and returning his attention to me.

"Marcus, please leave us."

The hulking security guard grunted, then left the room, kicking the rubber stop out of the way so the door would click closed behind him.

"What is said in his room does not leave it, even the AI in your pocket needs to promise me this will stay top secret."

He nodded towards my jacket pocket and I took Cas out and put her face up on the table. She brightened her screen, face full of anticipation.

"Your AI is not the first to come to this conclusion, the ISDS has known about the impending irruption for a little over a month now."

My heart sank to my stomach and if felt for a brief moment like I might be unable to stop myself from being sick all over the table. I had hoped more than anything that it had just been my shoddy coding and not actually the end of the world.

"But the warning system has been green this whole time!" Caisis protested.

"It has," he confirmed, "the board has decided it is pointless to cause panic and send everyone into mass hysteria. When there's nothing we can do to save them, ignorance is bliss."

"So this is it?" I asked. I felt dejected and hopeless, wishing that Cas had never found out so I could have been one of the many, blissfully unaware of my rapidly approaching death. "There's nothing we can do?"

"Organizing a mass exodus of an entire planet to another habitable planet in a month's time was deemed impossible. There was simply not enough time to get everything organized, enough ships built, enough supplies built, and so on and so forth. Then there is the matter of exactly where would be habitable or at least enough for simple terraforming to be sustainable for such a massive influx of population."

"I understand," I said numbly.

"There has to be something we can do!" Caisis protested, making her screen brighter to command more attention. "If everyone's going to die anyway, we may as well try everything we can!"

The man cracked a smile and glanced down at Cas. "She has quite a personality and is quite right, we are doing something, though since we cannot save everyone we've kept it under wraps. Our top minds and important figures will be leaving this afternoon on colony ships to be well out of the way of the blast in time. You were certainly not on the list before today, Mr. Mons, but I am sending over instructions on where to meet and what you're allowed to bring to your work email. Congratulations on being considered one of the top minds of humanity."

Elation and fear in equal parts raced through me. I was saved, but everyone else was doomed. I felt like a cat that had just used up eight of its nine lives, but I also felt incredibly guilty that I essentially had lucked out at the last second while everyone else was still doomed. It felt unfair somehow even though it was in my favor.

"I cannot stress enough the importance you keep all this to yourselves. There is absolutely no reason to warn anyone of what's about to happen, nothing can be done to stop it or save them, it will only ruin what time they have left. This includes any friends or family. I suggest you go home, pack and prepare, then give your loved ones a call under the guise of just wanting to catch up. You will regret not talking to them a final time."