tmp_f59497a75d8ceb820dc0aeddc2b436a0_SyoNZl.fixed.tidied

by Regolith (mobi)

  “We have 15 minutes. I hope you all took my advice and emailed your last will and testament to your loved ones and said goodbye to everyone who will miss you. If you use Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace, then let your friends and family know where you are. You should prepare yourself by coming to terms with your life, the good and the bad. Forgive those who did you wrong, and pray for forgiveness for those you did wrong.”

  The professor glanced up at his son hanging on the ladder to see if he wanted to add anything.

  “Hey, don’t look at me!” Jackson protested half-jokingly. “I’m sorry I crashed your pickup, but I was only 12. Give it a rest, already, you hater.”

  The professor shook his head, disappointed that his son chose to joke in such a serious moment. Although he was still pissed about losing his favorite quarter ton truck.

  “Mom, I took the Landshark to Vegas with Rance on New Year’s Eve,” Lisa confessed, bordering on tears. “Y’all blessed the marriage, I had my ring, and I couldn’t wait til summer, so I forged a letter from you guys.”

  “You got married without me?” her mother demanded.

  “We never got there.” Now she was in tears. “A cop pulled us over and gave me a ticket for going 89. Which was cool since I was going 160 when I passed him. I thought he was going to impound the car.”

  “Why didn’t he?” his father asked, correctly assuming she drove so fast because she needed to get laid. Teenagers act like they have more hormones than neurons.

  “He said a billion people were going to die because you weren’t president, and arresting me would only kill more people by distracting you.”

  Well, now. That was the best damn compliment that anyone, anywhere, ever gave him. Jackson liked this cop.

  “But he still gave you a ticket.”

  “He said bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded. Then he followed us home.”

  Wow! Jackson really liked this cop.

  “I can’t believe you were going to get married without me,” Lorena said, still furious.

  “I can’t believe I’m gonna die a virgin!” Lisa retorted angrily. “And it’s all your fault, mother! All that guilt and shame you threw on me when you weren’t even a virgin when you got married. I can’t believe you demand of me what you yourself could not do. You were pregnant and unmarried when you turned 16. How dare you! How fucking dare you!”

  Damn! Lisa dropped the F-bomb on her own mama.

  “I’ll have you know that I’ve only been with one man my entire life!” Lorena screamed back.

  “And when I find the bastard,” Jackson joked, making a fist to punch the palm of his other hand. “For the record, I’m the best she’s ever had.”

  Well, that didn’t ease the tension, and nobody but the millions of web viewers wanted to hear about their sex life. Despite her black belt, Lisa was incapable of hitting her mother. Her father, sure, but not her mother, but Lorena had no qualms smacking her kids if they disrespected her. Even David, who infamously kicked the shit out of the state cage fighting champion, preferred to run than fight his mother.

  Jackson squeezed into the bodies below him to hold back Lisa while his father calmed Lorena down. He was tempted to tell Lisa that they were keeping her from fucking her fiancée because he cheated on her with astonishing regularity. A private investigator documented his infidelity in exhaustive detail. He even hid a tiny camera in his bedroom that sent back video over a Wi-Fi signal. Which is how he found out that Lisa was giving the guy blow jobs. Sometimes twice a day. Which made him feel older than Methuselah.

  “The Landshark can really go 160?” he instead asked.

  “Faster!” his daughter said, face flush with liquor.

  “You really a virgin?” her father asked astonished.

  Lisa turned around furious and Jackson was suddenly glad that Lorena had taken away her bottle. Jackson quickly climbed the ladder so she didn’t kick his ass since he was incapable of hitting her back. Which annoyed him for years.

  “Mi amor,” Jackson said to his wife to stop Lisa from beating him up. “Remember when I proposed marriage and you pointed out that there were better looking women out there, so I said I wasn’t marrying you because you were the most beautiful woman in the world?”

  Lorena turned shock-white. Mierda, here it comes.

  “I lied,” Jackson boasted with a grand smile, meaning he did marry her because she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Lorena, however, waited for the other shoe to drop, and Jackson realized he was being too clever for his own good. Again.

  “When you agreed to marry me, you made me promise only one thing. You said you would always stand by me as long as I remained yours, only yours, and yours forever.”

  Lorena looked like someone bleached her face. She didn’t like where this was heading. Waiting for death was bad enough.

  “Well, except for drinking games when I drank water while you got drunk off of aguardiente, I have never cheated on you. Taken advantage of you, then gotten you drunk, yes, but I have never broken my promise. Since the day we became novios, I swear on the lives of our children, I have been faithfully yours, only yours, and I will be only yours forever, so help me God. Til death do us part.”

  Statue-like, his wife reacted as if he just quoted Shakespeare in Cantonese. Not knowing how to respond, she started gulping her wine down like Lisa.

  “But you need to understand something,” he ominously continued rather than leave well enough alone. “It was easy! It’s not that I never had opportunities. I just never had temptation. You promised to take care of me, and you kept your promise. If we are going to die soon, I want you to know that I kept my promise as well.”

  Half expecting a shoe to drop, Lorena burst into tears. She looked ready to collapse. Jackson quickly dropped down next to her, picked her up, and gave her one of his bear hugs. She weighed so little that he could carry her forever.

  “Anyone else have anything to get off their chest?” the professor asked. “Before you air your laundry, however, please remember that we may just survive this mess and everything is being recorded. So speak now or forever hold your piece.”

  “Dad,” Lisa mumbled. “Chava isn’t gay.”

  “What the hell? I ain’t gay!” the flamboyantly good looking guy with colorful clothes, an obsession with his appearance, and hair fucked up just like kids like it insisted.

  “I just said that,” Lisa answered reasonably.

  “What do you mean, he isn’t gay?” her father demanded.

  “You told your father I was gay?” Chava looked horrified.

  “Well,” Lisa considered, “not exactly. I told him you weren’t interested in girls so he would hire you as his personal blogger and tech guy. If he thought you were straight, you couldn’t spend so much time alone with me.”

  “So you told him I was gay?”

  “No,” Lisa corrected him. “I told him you weren’t interested in girls, which was true. How long since Stacy left you? How long since you’ve had a girlfriend? Since you got laid? Not counting the hookers in Mexicali.”

  “I’m going to school full time and working full time. You know how I obsess over politics. I don’t have the time or money to subsidize the materialistic lifestyle of some superficial bitch.”

  “Lucy liked you, but you didn’t ask her out.”

  “She’s a fricking model!” Chava really couldn’t believe this. “She drives a Ferrari, her brother plays professional football, and her parents are loaded. They’re like a talented version of the Kardasians. She’s totally smoking hot! Way out of my league.”

  “I once overheard some guys say Lorena was smoking, so I lectured her on the dangers of cigarettes,” Jackson joked to liven up the dead silence and, apparently, show why he wasn’t a comedian.

  “Yet Lucy still wanted to go out with you.” Lisa insisted.

  “You never told me that,” Chava argued.

  “Dude, she listened to you babble about politics for frickin’ hours, and it’s not because
you’re so brilliant.”

  “So you thought I was gay?” Chava asked Jackson.

  “You think you could otherwise sleep over when I’m not home? And you do look in the mirror a lot. And wear a lot of jewelry for a guy who isn’t a rapper. And flashy clothes. And hair gel. And your Volkswagen Beetle is a little gay. And you like to say an entire sentence as if it’s a single word. Do-you-hear-what-I’m-saying? Do-you-know-what-I-mean? Wha-sup-wi-dat? But, for what it’s worth, I trust you more than I trust her.”

  Well, fuck, Chava didn’t know what to make of that. All this time his boss thought he was gay?

  “Don’t worry, dad. The faggot never tried anything.”

  Lisa sounded disappointed, which Jackson didn’t like.

  “Your boyfriend threatened to kick my ass if I tried anything!” Chava said in defense. “He threw me up against your bedroom wall while you were taking a shower.”

  “For real?” Lisa seemed pleased. “When?”

  “Right after the boob job.”

  Lisa knew instantly what that meant. “Rance caught you checking me out! Admit it.”

  “You were throwing them,” meaning her new titties, “into everyone’s faces. I’d have to be blind not to notice.”

  That, too, pleased her. You didn’t go through fucking surgery to get big tits to go unnoticed. Besides, just because a girl doesn’t want to fuck you does not mean that she doesn’t want you to fuck her. Girls may be simple, but women are fucking complicated.

  “Kids, kids,” the professor interrupted them. “As important as these things are in the big scheme of things, a few billion people are about to die, and maybe humanity itself. We may face a nuclear winter that lasts for centuries. The world may end with a bang rather than a whimper after all. So may I continue?”

  “The world is going to end on a Monday?” Lisa asked.

  “One last thing. We are all scared. Please do not cry, lose control, or fall apart. I can’t stand basket cases.” The professor looked directly at the guests. The pregnant lady was already whispering hysterically to herself. “The last thing I want to do in life is die well. Dying is literally the ultimate experience. If life is a school, then death is the final exam. As Montaigne put it, it takes greater moral courage to die well than live well. So don’t fuck it up by whining. Please don’t make me knock you the fuck out. Life is hard, not fair. These are the cards we have been dealt. All you can do is play them as best you can. Complaining won’t make you feel better and it will really piss me off. Any questions?”

  The professor glared at Lisa who wisely held her tongue. No one seemed to doubt that a thin, 70 year old great-grandfather could kick their asses. Chava wasn’t drinking his bottle, so Lisa borrowed and downed it before her mother could take it away.

  “Is everyone ready for the Great Perhaps?”

  “Maybe,” Lisa answered.

  “All right, then,” the professor said, pleased to end his last lecture. Months of work was about to be judged by Mother Nature, who does not grade on a fucking curve. “I’d like to say a group prayer to thank God for all of his blessings. Feel free to add your own, then I want to lead you in some stretching and relaxation exercises because the slower you breathe, the faster time will pass.”

  Lisa unexpectedly burped loudly.

  “I bet $20 that Lisa pees herself,” Jackson offered.

  “You’re on, man!” Lisa roared back.

  38

  The trillion-ton space mountain spinned on its long axis like a football going long, while leaving an exhaust of dirt, gas, and rock thousands of miles behind it. While most asteroids turn head over tail several times a day, this one spun several times as fast, but never head over tail. The Sun boiled the hydrogen off its head, leaving mostly hard rock. Asteroid means “starlike” while disaster means “bad star”, so it should not be surprising that an asteroid would cause so much damage.

  Beyond it followed thousands of boulders, millions of rocks, and billions of pebbles, mostly hidden inside a cloud of dust and gas. It would have been beautiful if it didn’t threaten to kill several billion people. Other asteroid “farts” trailed this one, like the white lines of a one-lane road at night. Because Earth travels 2.5 million kilometers every day, most of them would not intercept the planet this orbit. From Earth, the debris made the Sun look like it had bad acne.

  The slingshot around the Sun gave it a big burst of speed. Because space is a vacuum, nothing slowed it down. Now, with its beautiful blue-and-white target tantalizing close, the Rock increased speed, firing off the largest fart yet. Much of that exhaust would soon bitch-slap the Moon, adding a few thousand more craters to the millions it already had, while the rest would pound Earth. While the meteorite that exterminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago had a similar mass as the swarm, this one approached Earth nearly twice as fast.

  In just three seconds it punched through Earth’s atmosphere like a brick thrown into a bucket of water. A white-hot ball briefly shined several times brighter than the Sun, turning night into day, and blinding anyone dumb enough to look at it. The afterglow from atmospheric heat transfer could be seen around the world, just like Europeans could read newspapers at midnight after the 1908 Tunguska airburst several thousand miles away in Siberia. The friction from so much mass pushing aside so much air heated up the stratosphere and generated an ear-drum-popping pressure wave that pounded everything below it. Surface water boiled into steam while dry forests burst into flames.

  It squashed Kitt Peak and buried itself within the mountain in just a blink of the eye, expanding down and out at several miles per second. The mountain itself turned into a liquid, like a fat guy getting stomach punched. A big zit grew in the center of the crater, only to collapse upon itself, just like the upper walls did all around the rim. The nearly perfect circle that swallowed Kitt Peak became 25 kilometers deep and nearly 100 wide, surrounded by a mountain range to its southwest and relatively flat desert to its northeast. The rim rose several thousand feet high and a few hundred feet wide. A second after the impact the asteroid itself vaporized, either painting the inside of the still-growing crater or shooting hundreds of miles into the sky. Asteroid-dust would soon blanket the planet like cocaine traces on a Benjamin.

  The pressure wave pulverized Tucson, before broiling it at temperatures that melted steel and cement. The heat exploded the gas tanks of the thousands of vehicles fleeing up the freeways, the mother of all IED’s. The land itself rose dozens of feet like a ripple in a pond before collapsing as rock temporarily behaved like a fluid. Millions of people in Maricopa County were thrown against their ceilings, then fell hard to the floors before being buried by their roofs and walls. Then the impact buried Tucson, Phoenix, and Green Valley a thousand feet deep in regolith, totally obliterating them from the surface of the planet. It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack than Tucson under a mountain’s worth of earth.

  The explosion was many times greater than all the nuclear weapons possessed in the world. A plume of superheated gases, dirt and vaporized rock shot up and outward in a mushroom cloud, picking up and throwing trillions of tons of earth into the atmosphere. Pulverized limestone rocks turned into carbon dioxide gas that billowed upward. For the second time in seconds, something alien roughly pushed aside many cubic miles of atmosphere, triggering another pressure wave that cooked thousands of square miles of Earth’s surface to thousands of degrees. Nothing on the surface survived. Even cockroaches, which can tolerate a million RAMs of radiation, roasted like the people around them.

  Of the 100,000 cubic kilometers of earth that the main body excavated, most fell within a thousand miles. Phoenix, continuously inhabited for 1500 years, was instantly depopulated at a cost of a million lives. Biosphere 2 became uninhabitable too. Paradise Valley was a hell hole, Tombstone a graveyard. Ironically, the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona got buried by an alien rock. Finding Surprise, Arizona, northeast of Phoenix, would now be surprising. The largest stand of
Ponderosa pine in the United States burned briefly before getting toss like toothpicks by a pressure wave thousands of times greater than the one that devastated Hiroshima.

  Ejecta covered Arizona, New Mexico, northern Mexico, eastern California, western Texas, and southern Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. The Sonoran Desert covers 100,000 square miles in America and Mexico, and regolith basically buried it all. Around 10%, or 10,000 cubic kilometers, however, attained suborbital ballistic trajectories and traveled several thousand or more miles to strike Asia, Africa, and Europe. And a few thousand cubic kilometers reached orbit, sparking a global meteor shower that blanketed the planet with Arizona.

  The impact’s kinetic energy rippled as a deafening shock wave through air, land, and water, triggering earthquakes, landslides, and volcanoes. The thousands of people fleeing on the freeways were first blinded, then deafened before the impact squashed, burned, and/or vaporized them. An earthquake hundreds of times stronger than anything ever recorded would soon be felt worldwide, messing up every animal, from ants to birds to elephants, that used Earth’s electromagnetic field to navigate. Every earthquake California would have had over the next millennium took place all at once, collapsing buildings and sparking urban infernos. On the bright side, California would not have another major earthquake for centuries.