Silent Sun

The sun went out yesterday.

It just sputtered and died. It's just a cooling cinder now. Everyone watched through the dome, after the oxygen snow had been cleared from it, so we could see.

The team had been expecting a red giant phase, but instead it contracted into a white dwarf and then dimmed. It had been doing that for a decade until the astronomy team noticed some brief activity. We were watching it as it briefly brightened, and then went as dark as the space behind it. We stared in silence at the Milky way. Some of us cried.