“Dr.Varbo”

By Nicholas Beaupre

“Who did this?” He points to the board. Someone had erased parts of the lesson plan. The students stare back, their eyes shining in the purple light spilling through the window. His intricate model of the moons is half gone. Sighing, Dr.Varbo paces. No one says anything. He stops at the window. The moons that had just been erased from the board loom huge in the dark sky, and the stars are everywhere. A universe of deep, bright, and rich purple, and an atmosphere of darkness. The brown grass surrounding the school house ripples in a silent whisper of wind. He falls into his rhythm, teaching the way he has for decades.

“It’s time, go home.” They leave and Varbo is alone. The room is silent and the night is everywhere. He leaves as well, the long brown grass tugging at his feet. The sky is vast and quiet, the stars bright and infinite. His house appears small and distant over the gentle hills. Its wooden walls and shuttered windows pierce the otherwise smooth and rolling horizon. When he arrives the door shuts quietly behind him, and the empty house is still. As the kettle boils, Varbo remembers. He climbs the creaky stairs to the observatory where he knows a cosmic event of epic proportions is taking place. To the left of the door sits the ancient telescope. He wheels it to the center of the room, leaving tracks on the dusty floor. It’s massive lens pointed at the glass ceiling, Varbo sees what he already knows is there. The great ball of light streaks across the sky, making even the stars seem dim in comparison. it has arrived. The object pushes its way through the thin atmosphere, Varbo’s eyes glow as it reaches the horizon, growing brighter and brighter before disappearing. He leans back in the chintz chair.                                                               Where will it land? Who else has seen it? How far has it travelled? The kettle’s whistle shatters Dr.Varbo’s thoughts from three floors below. Dinner is hurried and Varbo is in bed not long after, but his mind is out the window and over the horizon. The last time an entity with power this great reached the planet, everything changed. The lush forests and craggy black peaks of the old world were leveled in its wake, leaving the sky purple and the atmosphere thin. What could be coming? Varbo knows that tomorrow his questions will be answered, and there was a slim chance he might be alive to see the aftermath.

The walk to the school house is ordinary, and class begins. “Students.” Silence. “I may have misled you in my instruction.” He pauses.

“For years I have predicted another impact, but it is going to happen much sooner than my data suggested.” They look around the room, a pupil in the back raises their hand.

“What do you mean, ‘sooner than your data suggested’? I thought the next Cataclysm wasn’t supposed to take place for another thousand years.” Varbo walks to the window.

“I was wrong. A being entered the atmosphere yesterday, not just an object like last time.” The students are alarmed.

“I was born 743 years ago, long after the last impact. I have no research on the possible chain of events following this Cataclysm. There is no way to know.” As the words leave his mouth the sky outside the schoolhouse erupts.

Scorching heat envelopes the building, and the grass outside reaches up toward the white light. In the distance, mountains are rising from the horizon and trees begin to sprout. All over the planet life is waking up from it’s long coma. The windswept valleys fill with crystalline water, and fish with gleaming scales dance in the streams that run through the hills. Light is thrown on the schoolhouse walls again, cutting through the chalky air for the first time in centuries. Dr.Varbo and the students are outside, watching their entire world change. He sits on the warm green grass.

The first dawn for millenia. The sudden light must have somehow triggered rapid evolution and growth of life, I just can’t seem to — Varbo stops thinking. For the first time in his long, long life he’s unable to explain something. His teaching was monotonous, his research growing repetitive and pointless. I’ve spent centuries trying to explain something that I don’t understand. His students are buzzing with excitement at the insects and plants growing around them before their eyes. As he watches them Varbo realizes he is smiling. His wrinkled face is not used to the sensation, but it’s as welcoming as the sun that he’s seeing for the first time.

“Students, it’s time, go home.” The students leave and Varbo is alone. Without research somehow he knows that the cold moons are gone. As he walks to his house once again, he feels younger. The bird songs echoing around him fall on ears that have known nothing but the rasping breath of wind. He steps over tree roots growing before his eyes, fiddleheads springing out from beneath his feet. He pauses at a glade in the young forest. Varbo sees his reflection in a shallow pool fed by an unseen spring. He actually is growing younger. His weathered face is gone, replaced by a youthful one he doesn’t recognize at first. He lifts his head to the sun streaming through the forest. The scent of cooking food is wafting through the trees, drawing him in. Dr.Varbo hasn’t smelled food like this for centuries.

Immediately he knows.

He breaks into a run, following the path home that he knows so well. The woods are a blur beside him, silent but for the pounding of his steps. He reaches the house and has to stop and stare. The walls look freshly painted, the roof shingles brand new. The smell of the food is stronger, coming from the kitchen window that he often looked out on those thousands of days alone in the house. He throws open the door and there she is.

Dr.Varbo’s daughter, lost so long ago.