Lucia Amador brushed a lock of light brown hair behind her ear and pushed her horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose. She squinted at the load screen on her computer. The entire library had simultaneously installed another new operating system, and it had locked up yet again.

The library computers had been impossible all week. What a nightmare. Lucia jiggled her mouse, hoping that it would wake up the stalled system. Why couldn’t they just go back to card catalogs? Those never broke down. She pushed her rolling chair away from her desk, deciding to leave her stack of books until later.

She pulled her fuzzy wool sweater over her hips as she stood, thinking of the microwave teriyaki chicken she had waiting in the refrigerator in the librarians’ lounge. It was better than dealing with Windows-version-whatever.

Lucia walked through the stacks and turned into the hall that led to the librarians’ lounge. Passing a locked door, she entered the small square room with an aging blue corduroy sofa and two retro arm chairs that dated from the last century. She opened the fridge, pulled out her lunch, and threw it in the microwave. Yum…

As her meal heated, she walked across the small room to the window. The view from the third floor of the Palo Alto Street Library stretched out over the bay and the tip of the Golden Gate Bridge. On the street below, a bus sped by and dust and exhaust rose up in its wake. A man yelled at a tree trunk, his long gray coat swirling in the wind from the passing bus.

The microwave dinged and she hurried back to the kitchenette to grab it. She peeled off the lid, the steam biting her fingers and the scent of it making her question her life choices. With a clean fork from the tiny dish drain, she sat down on the blue couch and started to eat.

It had looked better in the commercial, that was for sure. Taking reluctant bites, Lucia finished about a quarter of the box before she decided to throw it away. The door to the lounge pushed open and her colleague Harriet Chen popped into the room. Her nose curled at the smell of Lucia’s discarded lunch in the trash can.

“Are you still eating microwave lunches?” Harriet asked.

The shorter woman passed her on the way to the fridge. Her straight black hair in a neat bun on top of her head. Harriet wore loose linen pants and a tailored button down shirt, buttoned to the top. She opened the fridge and pulled out a glass jar full of salad greens and vegetables.

“What is that?” Lucia asked.

“It’s a salad jar. Mr. Chen makes them for us three times a week. We always have a fresh lunch on the go. You should try it.”

“I’ll have to do that.”

Lucia considered chopping all those vegetables three times a week. It wasn’t that she was lazy. Far from it. She’d graduated summa cum laude from Berkeley with a Masters in Library Science. She’d worked hard to get where she was today. But cooking had never been her thing. The only person she had to cook for was her cat Felix, and he wasn’t exactly a person.

Harriet took her salad jar and a fork to the table beside the window and started poking at the dressing coated spinach greens. Lucia’s stomach churned.

“I’m going down to the cafe to get something to eat,” Lucia said. “I’ll be right back.”

“You need to stop eating muffins for lunch, Lucia,” Harriet chided as she left the librarians’ lounge.

Harriet was right, but she didn’t need the older woman telling her so. Harriet had grown up in a different time. When men were men and women had husbands.

She hurried through the stacks and turned the corner to the stairs. Taking them quickly, she made it to the bottom floor and hurried to the cafe at the entrance of the library.

The public library had become a bastion for the homeless. Every year, the problem seemed to get worse and worse. Why was it so hard to find a home these days? Now, there were at least twenty homeless people wandering around the entrance of the library in front of the cafe.

Lucia moved to the end of the line and waited for her turn. A lemon turnover and a mocha latte? Harriet would disapprove, but Lucia told herself she’d make a salad jar for lunch tomorrow.

She came to the head of the line and greeted the young female barista with a center nose ring and a short pink haircut. She offered Lucia an overly happy greeting, asking what she wanted. She gave the girl her order, suspecting that it might take a little chemical help to work in these conditions.

Lucia turned around and saw two men in shabby clothes fighting outside on the sidewalk. A gutter punk couple approached with their pit bull puppy on a rope leash. The dog began barking at the two fighting men. Lucia turned to the barista for help.

“Should we call the police?” she asked.

“Nah. This happens all day.”

Lucia turned back to look. One of the men had fallen on the ground and the other one had walked away. The punk kids had their dog under control and were consoling the man on the ground.

“That will be fifteen ninety-nine,” the barista said.

Lucia pulled her card out of her wallet and ran it through the reader. She then hurried to the waiting area at the end of the bar with the other customers. She looked around, chagrined. So many faces looked dull and empty, even the college kids with the newest phones.

Things had been bad for a while, but lately it had grown much worse. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she was blowing it all out of proportion. She was, in fact, a lonely woman who spent most of her free time talking to her cat. However, Lucia had spent all her adult life learning to categorize and analyze information. From what she observed, she knew that something was off in the world. Even if she couldn’t put her finger on what.

The barista handed her her order. Lucia started to walk back up to the lounge to join Harriet. That’s when the world ended.

Boom! Deafening and white hot. It shook the entire foundation of the library. Lucia dropped her food to cover her ears and screamed. Her skin burned from the heat, and the light blasted her eyes. As quickly as it started, it was over.

Cars crashed into each other outside. One of the doors shattered and caustic smoke billowed into the lobby.

Everyone around her was screaming, shouting, swearing. Gruff voices threatened. Someone begged for help. Bodies pushed around her as people struggled to get in or out of the library. She screamed again, pushing the crush of people away.

But curiosity burned inside her. She had to see what had happened. Panting and whimpering, her body pulsed with adrenaline. Lucia approached the open door and ran out onto the street. Shielding her eyes, she looked up into the sky. A black spot had formed in the center of the sun. Her eyes burned. She had to look away. No cars moved. The neon welcome sign for the cafe was out. All the lights were dark. A man pulled his cell phone from his pocket and tried to turn it on. He flicked and clicked. Nothing happened.

There was no electricity.

Lucia glanced at the sky again. The dot on the sun had grown into a central circle. The light of the world grew dim around her, as if it were twilight. She grasped her heart, feeling it skip behind her ribs. She sucked air, unable to breathe. Had she hit her head? Was it a nuclear explosion? Had the sun died?

She stepped backwards, looking up at the dimming sun one last time before she ran into the library. She took the stairs as fast as she could, her Mary-Janes slapping on the steps. She hurried to the second floor and down the hall to the librarians’ lounge. She unlocked the door and shut it as fast as she could. Standing with her back to the door, she tried to catch her breath.

The rest of the librarians were gathered in the room. The window had survived the blast, and there were at least five people gazing out of it. Lucia ran to the window, barely noticing that the library was already dark. She joined the group in time to see the dark circle in the center of the sun begin to envelop most of it. All that was left of the star was a burning red rim, casting the world in the dim light of dusk.

She watched in shock and awe as the day turned into night. The people around her wept. Lucia wept too, wanting to sink to her knees and wail for salvation. But the churning, burning torrent in her chest wouldn’t let her mourn the chaos. Her heart twisted inside her, forcing her to tend to its call. She gripped her breast, gasping at the stabbing pain. Forced to move, she stood and walked away from the group at the window.

She made it across the room and collapsed in a chair, panting and whimpering from the pain. She bit her lip when she realized Harriet was sitting on one of the armchairs across from her.

“What the fuck is happening out there?” Harriet said. “Are you okay? You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

“I might be,” Lucia said through clenched teeth.

“I’d call you a doctor but…” Harriet said, holding up her dead cell phone.

“Twenty-seven year olds don’t have heart attacks,” Lucia stuttered.

The pain was radiating out through her body, electrifying every nerve as it passed through her. The children’s librarian placed a candle on the table while the janitor fiddled with a battery powered radio.

The sun went dark.

The radio didn’t turn on.