“ATTENTION! EVERYONE AT SPACE STATION TWO, THERE IS A CODE BLACK EMERGENCY! EVERYONE CONSOLIDATE AT THE SPACE STATION TWO OBSERVATORY IMMEDIATELY. WE REPEAT. CONSOLIDATE AT THE SPACE STATION TWO OBSERVATORY IMMEDIATELY!”

Daviron Junior was awoken to this sudden announcement. He hadn’t heard any announcements from the Garlomados Space Observatory since he arrived. But according to his Space Cruiser training, there were four codes of emergency. Code Yellow was for minor emergencies like when there is a delay in resource deliveries or if a small stray meteorite was discovered in the vicinity. Then Code Orange was for when a large meteorite was discovered or if the MLR (Mass Light Refraction) Leyline was malfunctioning, thus nobody would be able to leave the colony planet until it was fixed. Code Red was for serious emergencies like a meteorite large enough to destroy the Observatory - or even the planet itself was discovered, or if something like toxic radiation was emitted from a nearby planet. Code Black was reserved for only an absolute worst case scenario. Apparently, in all the years that the Space Cruising profession existed, Code Black was never used in any space colony, so nobody, much less Daviron Jr. had no idea what Code Black even meant.

Due to the apparent severity of the message, Daviron rushed to the Observatory, quickly changing out his clothes,and putting on his space suit. Then he stepped on the MLR device to get transported instantly to the front doors of the Observatory. There he was teleported right in the middle of a huge crowd of Space Cruisers. The doors soon opened, and the crowd walked in. As they were walking in, there was a huge uproar of comments.

“Do you know what Code Black is?” one person asked. “What does that even mean?”

“I have no idea. Apparently it was never used before, until now. Some crazy shit must be going down.”

“I hope we will be okay,” another person responded.

Soon the crowd, including Daviron, entered the main room of the Space Observatory, a large room with several chairs, computers, screens, and others. As Daviron was sitting down he saw a group of people walking up at the stage of the observatory. To his shock, he recognized one of the people. It was a young woman named Remira Type Two. He recalled they studied together in the same college, Area 3-3 Institute of Technology. In the same class. If she was standing at the stage, she had to have been one of the leaders of this colony. It shocked Daviron that he was serving under one of his former classmates.

“Okay,” Remira spoke first.”We’ll wait until everyone has been seated before we explain everything.”

That took a long time, since there were one hundred and eighty people in the Garlock Ddos Space Station 02. But once everyone was completely seated, she began to speak.

“S-so,” Remira began shaklee. “As a disclaimer, this news may be an enormous shock and may distress you immensely. Please take care of your mental health as we navigate this terrible crisis.”

What terrible crisis, Daviron thought.

“So, in simple terms, the Earth’s moon, at approximately 4:50 PM Earth time yesterday exceeded the surface temperature of 12,000 degrees fahrenheit.”

At that moment, a huge shocked silence spread throughout the room, interrupted by a few shocked gasps. Daviron’s heart stopped. He knew instantly what that meant. The moon had become hotter than the sun, and the moon was far closer to Earth than the Sun, at 238,900 miles. A few thousand years ago, Earth had faced the Climate Change crisis - which was caused by the ozone layer, which was protecting Earth from the Sun’s harmful rays, disintegrating. So, for the moon to become the Sun’s temperature, and be so close to Earth meant …

“A-as I’m sure you all are guessing,” Ramira stammered, her eyes looking red. “Earth, specifically humanity, did not take this well. Approximately 80% of humanity was vaporized instantly when this happened. 19% died a few hours later. Only 0.5% of humanity on earth was able to successfully escape Earth by utilizing MLR technology to escape. As of now, Earth is an uninhabitable planet, and most of humanity has died. Us space cruisers, which make up the other 0.5% of humanity as well as the humans who escaped, are the only living humans left. For now, I’ll give you all a moment to process this.”

Daviron’s body froze. His brain took a few seconds to process everything Ramira said, and then in a single moment, he fully grasped what had happened. Unable to control himself, Daviron let out a loud ear-splitting scream …

Ever since the speed of light was discovered by the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer in 1676, humanity always wanted to travel at the speed of light. Traveling at the speed of light came with so many possibilities. Traveling beyond the furthest edges of our galaxy - finding new planets, new elements, new lifeforms, new resources. Above all, humanity wanted to discover the very nexus of why the entire grand galaxy existed - what happened before the Big Bang. So much possibility for discovery existed in light speed space travel. And yet, for several millennia after Ole’s discovery, humanity never managed to accomplish this.

That is until the year 6002, when a man named Daviron Type Five from Area Five-Zero, managed to invent the Mass Light Refraction (MLR) device, that managed to allow a human to travel the speed of light. After several decades, the MLR device was perfected, and thus allowed humanity to travel, and opened a new profession, Space Cruisers - a job where humanity travels throughout the farthest reaches of space to gather data and potentially colonize other planets.

For as long as Daviron Junior T5 (Type Five) was alive, he had wanted to become a Space Cruiser. He wanted to use the MLR device that his grandfather had invented in order to explore space. So he was a diligent student. He worked extremely hard in primary school, becoming top of his class. He then went on to major in physics and astronomy. After graduating, he joined WASCA (Worldwide Aerodynamics and Space Cruising Administration), and became an official space cruiser.

But to his absolute dismay, Daviron’s space cruise to Planet Garlomados had saved him from absolute vaporization by the moon. His whole family was likely dead. His sister, Penelope Type Five, who had recently gotten married, and his mother and father. Everyone he ever knew back on Earth … was likely part of the 99% of humanity that died.

There was an outcry of screaming that followed Daviron’s, along with an outpouring of yelling.

“THIS IS A JOKE RIGHT? IS THIS SOME KIND OF DRILL PRACTICE?”

“SHUT UP! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!”

One person stood up and raised their hand politely. “Sergeant Ramira, can you explain why this happened?”

“Yes, Francis Type Eight,” Ramira said. “Or at least we have our speculations. What we dubbed the Red Hot Moon has a radius of 1,081.6. This is such a minor difference from our original moon that initially we disregarded it as a simple mistake in our calculations. But, upon further discovery, we realized that there were some astral dust particles around the site of Earth.”

Daviron’s eyes widened. He stood up and shouted. “Astral dust are particles left behind after a successful MLR travel. So what does this mean?”

“We suspect,” Ramira said.”That this red hot moon is not our Earth moon at all, but a different moon from a galaxy far hotter than the Milky way galaxy. We suspect that someone managed to refract the mass light to teleport Earth’s moon away, and in a millisecond also mass light refract the red hot moon in the original moon’s place.”

“In that case,” the other person standing next to Ramira said. “We believe that there was someone or an organization that wanted to eliminate humanity by summoning the Red Hot Moon near Earth. In that aim, they managed to kill more than 6 billion humans, so they were mostly successful. Now, we are left without a home to return to, and we are left knowing that there are people out there that intend on destroying humanity for good.”