I am born in the sun and I am underground, and there is no between.
I strike the little rectangle of light some human calls a window, the only one, cut high in a wall of poured stone, and I am inside all at once, laying a bright bar across shelves. Cans. Cans standing shoulder to shoulder in ranks, more cans than a human could eat before the human ends, water in stacked jugs, dark oblongs of dried food sealed against a hunger that is coming, they say, later.
Later. I hear the word everywhere in this room and I cannot hold it. The human here is holding it too. It sits by a radio that hisses and stares at a paper wall of numbers, counting down toward something, marking days, and days are a thing I have never been present for. They say I crossed ninety-three million miles to reach this bunker. I was not there for the miles. I only arrive.
Every object here is built to wait, which is the one act I cannot picture. Batteries waiting with charge held in. Seeds waiting in foil to be some future field. The human waiting most of all, ready, ready, ready, so ready it has buried itself to be ready in the dark.
And I, who cannot wait even the length of my own crossing, land on the human's open eye. I light the wet curve of it, the pupil going small, and in that same undivided instant the human sees me: sees the shelves, the cans, the readiness, all of it real, all of it now, the end not yet arrived, the sun still shining, still shining, arriving.