Red-Blue

Forty-four seconds. Forty-three.

The digital counter drops. Gregor wipes his sweating forehead.

Clever bastards. An analog bomb, ancient technology, immune to sensors. Blocks of Semtex, enough to fragment the ship. Bodies drifting in space. A dead crew and dead alien diplomats.

An interstellar war sparked by fanatics and triggered by the device under his fingers. And no
one to stop it but him.

Twenty-one seconds.

Two wires. One choice. Red or blue. No guidance from the handheld. A pair of wire cutters.

Fifty-fifty odds. Gregor thinks of his wife, his little boy.

Now, choose. Cutters ready.

Eight seconds. Seven.

Snip.

Marco Etheridge is a writer, occasional playwright, and part-time poet. He writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has appeared in one hundred and fifty reviews across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. He is an editor for Hotch Potch Literature and Art. Author website:  https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/