He checks the watch at his wrist. The brown leather band worn from the constant sand-filled wind that sweeps across the red rock planet. Its grimy surface somehow still reflects off the hot desert sun. He hesitates - just barely - as he goes to continue, licking his lips to try and somehow mend their ever dry state.

" 12, 11, 10..."

You hold your breath as you and the others look on, unable to speak, for fear that a single word might break apart this new reality into irremediable ripples, like a stone silently slipping into a stream. Your vision is fixed on the blue orb in the distance, floating in an inky black pool of nothing. The same void of empty space that you travelled mere months ago, although it feels like years have passed since that verison of yourself and now.

" ...9, 8, 7 ..." His counts are now in pace with the beating of your heart, the blood rushing to your head, a tidal wave poised to crash among a barren shore. The gravity of the situation overwhelms you; your breath more ragged than usual.

"..6, 5, 4..." The anticipation is agony. You find yourself leaning back as the others strain forward, all of you somehow believieng that this miniscule of a change will make a monumental difference in what happens to each of you. You reconcentrate your gaze back on your home planet. The reason why you were here. The reason you entered the lottery in the first place. The planet that was now destined for destruction.

"...3, 2..."

You feel the world go into slow motion as the man's lips part one final time, as if the entire universe was holding its breath, so as not to miss one single moment.

"1"

You expected anything but what happens. The sound so loud its deafening. It has to be. For all that surrounds your ears is the unmistakeable swell of silence. And the blue planet, completely unaware of any human predicament, stays there, utterly still.

Suspended in time.