As I stand at the edge of the cornfield, the smell filling my nostrils, I am transported. Cornfields have a dense scent. It’s made of the rich earth smell of the soil and the deep green of the leaves that rustle just slightly, like a crackle in the evening breeze. There’s a tinge of ozone to the smell, like a storm has just passed, or perhaps is coming somewhere beyond the blazing sunset. More than those edges of smell, though, is the corn itself. It sweats, you know. Like a person, giving off its own dense corn humidity into the air, heavy and a little sweet. I smell the black oil smell of new asphalt, from a freshly pressed road running alongside another cornfield stretching to the horizon. The memory takes me. I close my eyes and I hear the susurration of slender bicycle tires, the buzzing vibration of movement under my fingertips on the handlebars. I can feel the gentle whooshing hush of the densely perfumed air splitting around me as I cycle past the corn on the new asphalt road. For a moment I can feel how purple the twilight air is.

I opened my eyes, the bicycle was gone, but the muscle memory of the motion was still with me. There was no new asphalt road here, there wasn’t new asphalt anywhere these days. In my outstretched hand is one of the leaves of the corn plant in front of me. Its sharp edges would cut my skin if I gripped it too hard. I looked upward, trying to conjure again that sunset of my early youth. The smell of the corn couldn’t magically stretch into the upper reaches of the dome that encased our habitat and form clouds. Nor would an orange sun tinge the edges of the clouds with pink fire as it sunk below the horizon. But the dome architects had gotten the quality of the light right for the most part. No matter how hard I peered into the distance I couldn’t see the individual fixtures that made a sort of dusk-like glow, a little yellower and at a slightly different angle than midday.

It’s strange how sunset and dawn echo each other. They are beginnings, pregnant with possibility. But where dawn gives birth to bland brightness here, unrelenting day, dusk welcomes the ever-present night into our fragile dome. There is no longer an atmosphere out there, it burned away. An opaque heat shield keeps the damaging rays of the sun out during the day, artificial lighting systems provide the light necessary for plant and human growth. The artificial dusk is a brief respite before the shield drops and the vast openness of space swallows up what’s left of Earth.

The stars shine as though nothing has changed, but the delicate humming chirp of crickets never rises from the dense green grass behind me, or the lush cornfield. I am surprised to miss the insects, but their tiny chorus was part of the soul of the land. Now there are silent nanomachines that do the work of bees much more efficiently. No honey though. Still standing by the corn, swaying a little on my feet, I remember the taste of honey, thick, sweet, and floral on my tongue. It’s the taste of summer sunshine, wild blossoms, and something I can’t grasp, some essence of bee-ness. 

I glance over my shoulder at what now passes for a house behind me. They will be coming for me soon. They dislike it when I wander off, not that I’ve gone far. Everything here is compact, the tiny house and postage stamp yard set shoulder to shoulder with the corn field. The wooden rocking chair I left on the small porch beckons me. My old legs won’t hold me up much longer. Still, I’m reluctant to leave the corn stalk I’ve been communing with. The smell wraps me in memories which are more bearable to my tired brain than what remains of the world. My mouth turns down in a lined smirk thinking of my friends who suffered dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, gone before their time, before the arrogance of man was revealed in the destruction of the world we knew. How ironic that I should now wish to be in their shoes.

I should be grateful, my children’s children take care of me, saved me from certain death outside the dome. But this life is a half-life, and I yearn for the end. I pull in one more deep breath of the corn-scented air to fortify my soul against the walk back to the rocking chair. I half close my eyes imagining I can feel the waning heat of the sun on my eyelids and see the orange of the blazing sunset there. I open my eyes. I gasp with awe because I have not imagined it. 

There on the horizon, beyond the dome there is a bright orange fire. It is outside the dome and blooming like a flower into the black sky, overwhelming the stars. Full of wonder, I feel the warmth of it reach me. And then I smile as the last sunset begins to overtake the Earth. Our life-giving star has finally gone supernova. For a second, I grieve the loss of our kind, but then I am lost in the blazing sun and smell of growing corn. I close my eyes and go back to the asphalt road by the cornfield, the gentle vibration in the bicycle handlebars beneath my hands in the purple air, and I am safe and free.