Alyssa wanted to cry. Or scream. Or shout. Or do anything that doesn’t involve her and a fireproof box buried five miles under the ground. The one she was standing on at the moment, in fact. Her father and fiance stood beside her, urging her to go in. “When you wake up it will all be over. A thousand years can pass and you won’t get a single scratch,” he said, reassuring her. Alyssa held her face in her hands, not wanting to show her emotions. “No!” she shouted through her fingers, “I want to die with everyone else!” The two men looked at each other. “Alyssa, you will be happy. You like peace and quiet, don’t you?” Russell, her fiance, whispered. Although he wanted to go with her, it had already been arranged for Alyssa to go alone. Well, not completely alone. There was also an engineered superhuman she was to reproduce with in “The Wake”.

    “The Wake” was her destination. It was the window of time after the apocalypse that would devastate Earth during the night of that day. No one, not even the most intelligent human or animal in the world, could tell what it would look like. Perhaps a barren plain, or an ocean; really anything could be possible. And while all this took place on the surface of the Earth (The Surface world), one happy, healthy woman and one absolutely purely faultless Superhuman, both frozen in suspended animation for one thousand years, would be locked in an iron box (The Box) five miles under The Surfaceworld (The Underland). Alyssa, The Woman, was supposed to go, at least, but from the looks of the afternoon, that would probably not happen. Maybe telling Alyssa just the previous morning was a bad idea.

“I’m not ready,” she said defiantly. She did not resist the urge to reveal her emotions now, as she removed her hands, damp from sobbing, from her face. “You will sleep through a millenia,” her father explained. “I know!” Alyssa lashed out at him, “If you really loved me you wouldn’t make go!” Russell cried silently and tearlessly, reaching his hand out to her. “You are 100% healthy,” he said, a broken attempt to assure her of peace, only to be cut into by Alyssa. “Nothing is 100%!” she shouted. Russell tried again. “The whole world is counting on you.” She looked down at The Box. Her fiance's words raced through her head again and again. “Hold my hand,” she requested quietly. He did. Alyssa climbed into the box as her father gave her The Waiting Shot- the one that would trap her, unaging, in suspended animation for the millenia. When her body went limp, her hand fell out of his and hit the bottom of The Box. The Box was soon closed and buried. As he watched his lover being taken away from him, Russell held a picture of Alyssa to his heart. He was ready.