00:00What would you do if you knew this was the last night of the world?
00:10What would I do?
00:13You mean, seriously?
00:17Yes, seriously.
00:21I don't know.
00:24I hadn't thought.
00:26She turned the handle of the silver coffee pot toward him and placed the two cups in their saucers.
00:34He poured some coffee.
00:36In the background, the two small girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps.
00:44There was an easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air.
00:51Well, better start thinking about it, he said.
00:57You don't mean it, said his wife.
01:01He nodded.
01:03A war?
01:04He shook his head.
01:07Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?
01:10No.
01:11Or germ warfare?
01:14None of those at all, he said, stirring his coffee slowly and staring into its black depths.
01:22But just the closing of a book, let's say.
01:29I don't think I understand.
01:31No.
01:32Nor do I, really.
01:34It's just a feeling, sometimes.
01:37It frightens me, sometimes.
01:39I'm not frightened at all.
01:41But peaceful.
01:43He glanced in at the girls and their yellow hair, shining in the bright lamplight, and lowered his voice.
01:50I didn't say anything to you.
01:53It first happened about four nights ago.
01:56What?
01:58A dream.
02:01A dream I had.
02:03I dreamt that it was all going to be over, and a voice said it was.
02:08Not any kind of voice I can remember, but a voice anyway.
02:13And it said things would stop here on Earth.
02:17I didn't think too much about it when I awoke the next morning.
02:21But then I went to work in the feeling as was just with me all day.
02:26I'd caught Stan Willis looking out the window in the middle of the afternoon, and I said,
02:33Penny for your thoughts, Stan.
02:36And he said,
02:38I had a dream last night.
02:40And before he even told me the dream, I knew what it was.
02:45I could have told him, but he told me.
02:49And I listened to him.
02:52It was the same dream.
02:56Yes.
02:57I told Stan I had dreamed of it, too.
03:00He didn't seem surprised.
03:03He relaxed, in fact.
03:05Then we started walking through offices for the hell of it.
03:08It wasn't planned.
03:09We didn't say, let's walk around.
03:11We just walked on our own, and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks,
03:16or their hands, or out the windows, and not seeing what was in front of their eyes.
03:21I talked to a few of them.
03:25So did Stan.
03:27And all of them had dreamed.
03:30All of them.
03:32The same dream.
03:33With no difference.
03:36Do you believe in the dream?
03:40Yes.
03:41I've never been more certain.
03:45And when will it stop?
03:48The world, I mean.
03:51Sometime during the night for us.
03:53And then, as the night goes on around the world, those advancing portions will go, too.
04:00It'll take twenty-four hours for it all to go.
04:05They sat a while, not touching their coffee.
04:10Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other.
04:14Do we deserve this?
04:17She said.
04:19It's not a matter of deserving.
04:22It's just that things didn't work out.
04:25I notice you didn't even argue about this.
04:28Why not?
04:29I guess I have a reason, she said.
04:34The same reason everyone at the office had.
04:38She nodded.
04:39I didn't want to say anything.
04:42It happened last night.
04:44And the women on the block are talking about it, just among themselves.
04:49She picked up the evening paper and held it toward him.
04:53There's nothing in the news about it.
04:56No.
04:57Everyone knows.
04:59So what's the need?
05:02He took the paper and sat back in his chair, looking at the girls and then at her.
05:10Are you afraid?
05:13No.
05:14Not even for the children.
05:17I always thought I would be frightened to death.
05:20But I'm not.
05:22And where's that spirit of self-preservation the scientists talk about so much?
05:28I don't know.
05:30You don't get too excited when you feel things are logical.
05:35This is logical.
05:38Nothing else but this could have happened from the way we've lived.
05:43We haven't been too bad, have we?
05:48No.
05:49Nor enormously good.
05:51I suppose that's the trouble.
05:54We haven't been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things.
06:03The girls were laughing in the parlor as they waved their hands and tumbled down their house of blocks.
06:12I always imagined people would be screaming in the streets at a time like this.
06:17I guess not.
06:19You don't scream about the real thing.
06:22Do you know?
06:24I won't miss anything but you and the girls.
06:27I never liked cities or autos or factories or my work or anything except you three.
06:34I won't miss a thing except my family and perhaps the change in the weather and a glass of cool water when the weather's hot or the luxury of sleeping.
06:44Just little things really.
06:47How can we sit here and just talk this way?
06:53Because there's nothing else to do.
06:55That's it, of course.
06:58For if there were, we'd be doing it.
07:00I suppose this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has really known just what they were going to be doing during the last night.
07:09I wonder what everyone else will do now, this evening, for the next few hours.
07:16Go to a show, listen to the radio, watch the TV, play cards, put the children to bed, get to bed themselves, like always.
07:30In a way that's something to be proud of, like always.
07:36We're not all bad.
07:39They sat a moment and then he poured more coffee.
07:43Why do you suppose it's tonight?
07:47Because?
07:49Why not some night in the past ten years of in the last century or five centuries ago or ten?
07:57Maybe it's because it was never February 30th, 1951, ever before in history.
08:05And now it is.
08:07And that's it.
08:09Because this date means more than any other date ever meant.
08:12And because it's the year when things are as they are all all over the world.
08:17And that's why.
08:18It's the end.
08:20There are bombers on their course both ways across the ocean tonight that'll never see land again.
08:27That's part of the reason why.
08:31Well, he said, what shall it be?
08:36Wash the dishes?
08:39They washed the dishes carefully and stacked them away with special neatness.
08:44At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good-night and the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left a trifle open.
08:53I wonder, said the husband, coming out and looking back, standing there with his pipe for a moment.
09:00What?
09:02If the door should be shut all the way or if it should be left just a little ajar so we can hear them if they call?
09:10I wonder if the children know.
09:13If anyone mentioned anything to them.
09:16No.
09:17Of course not.
09:19They'd have asked us about it.
09:22They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace looking at the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty.
09:37They thought of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in their own special way.
09:44Well, he said at last.
09:49He kissed his wife for a long time.
09:54We've been good for each other anyway.
09:57Do you want to cry? he asked.
10:01I don't think so.
10:03They went through the house and turned out the lights and locked the doors and went into the bedroom and stood in the night-cool darkness undressing.
10:12She took the spread from the bed and folded it carefully over a chair, as always, and pushed back the covers.
10:20The sheets are so cool and clean and nice, she said.
10:29I'm tired.
10:32We're both tired.
10:35They got into bed and lay back.
10:38Wait a moment, she said.
10:42He heard her get up and go out into the back of the house, and then he heard the soft shuffling of a swinging door.
10:51A moment later, she was back.
10:55I left the water running in the kitchen, she said.
10:58I turned the faucet off.
11:00Something about this was so funny that he had to laugh.
11:06She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was so funny.
11:14They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their hands clasped, their heads together.
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