There was no language, figures of speech, quotes, comparisons, or poetry for the annihilation of all known life. It left one speechless but not blank-faced like Gustavo. Jack was a practiced outsider who chose when to admit or hide a lack of understanding. He could see the same about the man in front of him.
“D’you know about the comet, Gustavo?”
Gustavo inhaled a long breath through his nose before finally asking, “What is this word?”
“What, comet? It’s like a huge ball of ice and rock, floating in space.”
Gustavo frowned and squinted with disbelief, but any further explanation would assume a material understanding of celestial bodies in the solar system. It was quite a thing to assume, the more Jack thought about it.
“The important point,” Jack continued, “is that this comet might fall from the sky, like a falling star, and strike Earth.”
Gustavo finally blinked.
“Wormwood?”
It was Jack’s turn to stare. Gustavo climbed down from his bunk to rifle through the meager belongings in his closet. He walked over to Jack with a worn, leather-bound Bible fat with dog-eared edges. After leafing through the dog-ears, Gustavo handed the open Bible to Jack and pointed to a passage in the Book of Revelation:
…and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is called Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.
Jack skipped to the end.
…Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth…”
NINE
Impact Scenario 122
College Park, Maryland
April 30, 2019
Day 2 of the IAA Planetary Defense Conference
BEN TESTED HIS headset before stepping up to the lectern and addressing nearly one hundred audience members of the sixth biannual International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference in Maryland. As the chair of the conference, Ben wished a good morning to the gathering of representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the UN, and a host of academics from the international circuit. Bespectacled eyes blinked back at Ben above the glow of laptops in the dark conference room. Ben spotted his NASA colleague Chuck Maes in the front row of the audience with his clip-on tie already lying on the table next to a notepad. Chuck gave him a thumbs-up.
“I just want to remind everyone to be really careful on social media,” Ben said slowly. “Be clear that this is all an imaginary exercise. Some of your live posts have already scared some folks, and I don’t want to scare any more.”
He turned to the screen backdrop spanning half the stage and clicked a remote to advance his presentation. The bottom corner of each slide had the word EXERCISE in red capital letters.
“Welcome to day two of our hypothetical asteroid impact scenario. You all saw the date on today’s press release…”
Day 1 had kicked off their conference in the present, but day 2 advanced the scenario storyline three months into the future, to the end of July 2019.
“After several months of tracking the asteroid post-discovery, we have a better grasp of its orbital path and have updated the probability of impact to ten percent in the year 2027.”
Ben absently pulled at the noose of his tie. He always hated the damn things. As if in protest, several strands of dark chest hair poked up from his starched white collar.
“With such a narrow time frame, space-capable nations need to move quickly to develop deflection missions. Hopefully”—Ben slowed to accentuate his words—“they will do this in coordination.”
He locked eyes with an old man in the third row and recognized Siegfried “Ziggy” Divjak, a nuclear physicist of Los Alamos fame. The man had partnered with Russian scientists during the Gorbachev years to secure the nuclear arsenal of the dissolved Soviet Union. Ziggy had worked hard to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands. And here he was, sitting rod straight and alert, probably wondering if Ben was going to use the spotlight for his own political soundbite.
Hell yes, he was.
“In a time of nationalist politics, we have forgotten our allies,” Ben said. “But now, with a cosmic threat of this magnitude—the greatest threat humanity has ever faced—now is the time to remember and join our allies and friends and stand together.”
Ben forced himself to pause a moment before transitioning slides. His next visual charted the long, elliptical orbit of their fake asteroid intersecting with the tight, circular orbit of Earth.
“And I hope you’ve all downloaded JPL’s NEO Deflection app,” Ben interjected eagerly, resuming his usual warp-drive speed. “We’ve uploaded all one hundred twenty-one of our previously simulated asteroids and comets with their trajectories and deflection calculations. Seriously, guys, it’ll help when we break off into groups.”
Ben scanned the audience for enthusiasm and saw several people take long pulls of coffee. Caffeine was key to asteroid busting on an early Tuesday morning.
* * *
College Park, Maryland
May 3, 2019
Day 5 of the IAA Planetary Defense Conference
BEN AND AMY joined the other tourists walking along the National Mall, killing time before dinner reservations in downtown Washington, DC. Perfectly content with each other’s company on any occasion, they glowed with excitement over a new impact scenario and the impressive scenery of the United States capital.
“So here we are on day five of the conference,” Ben recounted. “It’s 2029, and the biggest chip of the asteroid we shattered on day four is going to hit New York City in ten days.”
He had ditched his tie by now. Ben’s shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
“Can you imagine evacuating all of Manhattan and the boroughs in that time frame?”
Amy whistled and shook her head. Her platinum hair swooped down on a side part and glanced her eyelashes until she smoothed the locks behind an ear.
“Me neither,” Ben agreed. “So I had reps from FEMA do it for me.”
“Weren’t those the guys that handled Hurricane Katrina? Because that went real well.”
“Well my FEMA reps were successful,” Ben boasted, but had to add, “theoretically.”
It was so easy to get wrapped up in the role-playing and forget that it was one of many impact scenarios meant to prepare for the real thing.
Ben pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Whenever he came to DC on business, he tried to meet up with his sister, Becca, who lived inside the Beltway with her husband and two children. Within the satchel that Ben carried were gifts for his nephew and niece: difficult Lego sets that he knew they could conquer. The kids couldn’t open their boxes at the restaurant, so Ben already made his sister promise to video the moments when they each dumped all the plastic pieces onto the floor at home, skimmed the instructions, and formed a battle plan.
Ben wasn’t up to the job of being a father, but he loved being an uncle. And his niece and nephew were turning into such great little humans. Ben couldn’t wait to show them the world; it wasn’t kind, but it sure was fascinating. And kids absorbed everything so quickly. The last time Ben called from California, his niece and nephew prattled on, interrupting one another on speakerphone in order to detail the latest adventures in their Minecraft video game and their neighbor’s new calico kitten named Periwinkle. Ben made so many plans for the future: shipping his favorite books one by one to their DC address; watching 2001: A Space Odyssey together with Amy; flying them out to California to teach them how to drive on the calmly winding Route 1 with the Pacific Ocean stretching farther than the eye could follow…
“Your sister doesn’t like me,” Amy said suddenly.
Ben immediately shook his head but had to
pause and think before answering.
“She’s just surprised by the two of us.”
Amy countered that they had been living together for five years already.
“She’s still surprised,” Ben said. “Hell, I’m still surprised!”
Amy didn’t bring up parents, luckily. It was too nice a night to ruin. And there wasn’t much to talk about, besides. Ben’s parents didn’t approve, and Amy hadn’t introduced Ben to her family. That was that. It hadn’t stopped Ben from getting down on one knee at their favorite restaurant a year after Amy moved in, and Ben couldn’t imagine life without her. Amy kept grinning as he proposed and had to press a glass of ice water against her flushed cheeks.
After they got engaged, Ben expected to see wedding magazines appear on all the tables and countertops. He expected a deluge of ridiculous questions (Seating chart or place cards? Do we risk the smell of a salmon entrée?), but Amy continued on as usual. She didn’t even wear her engagement ring, a large fire opal for her October birthday. I would lose it, Amy explained. Knowing Amy’s habits, Ben had to agree that it was a likely possibility. Amy kept the ring squirreled away in a shoebox instead, part of a collection of precious objects that she wanted to keep safe and only bring out to touch and enjoy every blue moon.
Ben wondered if Amy was concerned about her family, but he knew so little about them, it was hard to guess what might be the problem. Amy’s father was retired Army and her mother was a housewife, living modestly in Kansas, so it could be financial. Amy’s parents and brother were all devout Christians, so it could also be religious.
The ceremony will be nondenominal, Ben told Amy one night while they were reading in bed. We’ll pay for the reception ourselves, and it can be small. I’ve got some savings that will cover it. My family can supply the ring bearer and flower girl, obviously. Amy looked up from her novel and stared, blinking behind artsy, cat-eye reading glasses. My family can supply the drag queens and strippers, she finally said. And the Elvis impersonators, obviously.
She smirked but added that she hadn’t told her family about the engagement and didn’t plan to tell them about a wedding. Amy seemed more interested in getting back to her novel. When Ben asked about timeline, Amy shrugged. What would we have gained while married that we don’t have now? she asked. Ben had to think on that. When I die, he said, you’d get my entire anime collection. Amy nodded with lifted eyebrows and said she would take it under consideration. That was four years ago.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Ben told her. “With me.”
He reached out to hold Amy’s hand.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she assured him.
Amy wore an orange top and a long pink silk skirt that billowed in the breeze and wrapped around her legs. Gold bangles decorated one wrist and jingled with her steps. Amy had many different distinct styles and rocked them all, looking just as good in combat boots as spiked heels. This early evening, she wasn’t going for any particular style. I thought it looked pretty, she said absently, in front of the hotel’s bathroom mirror. The colors were more than pretty and made Amy look radiant, like the setting sun.
They continued walking under a long row of cherry trees. Amy opened her notebook and read a fact aloud: the three thousand cherry trees were a gift from the mayor of Tokyo in 1912. A large, man-made body of water stretched out like a lake on their left. It doubled the beauty of the tree branches with a clear reflection on still water. Farther out, two-seater paddle boats puttered around or drifted, carrying couples wearing bright orange life vests.
Ben inhaled the fragrant, quiet riot of spring on the East Coast and passively wondered if existence could get any better. Here he was on a Friday with the fruitful challenges of the workweek behind him and a beautiful evening unfolding. His light-speed imagination was happily slow and lazy in offering obvious suggestions for improvement: Winning lottery ticket? Peace in the Middle East? A new Star Wars movie? Hold on to this, Ben told himself. Keep this moment as a memory of what happy feels like…
“This is a beautiful walk—”
“Of course it is,” Amy said. “Would you doubt my reconnaissance?”
Never.
While Ben was at the Planetary Defense Conference all day, Amy explored. She was technically on vacation. So, after checking her work email and voicemails, Amy laced up her sneakers and hit Washington, DC’s sidewalks and national parks. When Ben was free in the late afternoon, they met up for a happy-hour drink and debriefing. Amy showed him her notebook with detailed entries logged in atrocious handwriting. All the locations that she wanted to share had five-pointed stars scribbled beside them. This had also been their routine two years ago at the conference in Tokyo and four years ago in Frascati, Italy.
Ben and Amy stepped out from under the tree canopy and gazed up at the obelisk of Washington Monument. One of the world’s tallest stone structures cast a long, fading shadow. Ben remembered a poem, something about the ruins of a giant monument with the inscription:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Ben couldn’t recall all of the poem but he remembered the next phrase:
Nothing beside remains.
Ben had spent his adult years staring down the possibility of a cosmic impact that could end modern civilization and bring the downfall of his species, but he hadn’t spent much time imagining the aftermath of such an event. Ben wasn’t a biologist, but he knew that ecosystems could be zero-sum games of survival. After all, the decline of the dinosaur reign spurred the rise of mammals like him.
Would every other creature under the sun rejoice at humanity’s demise? What would prosper and rise around their ruins?
TEN
Ben’s List
Kourou, French Guiana
August 13
T-minus 172 days to launch
THE MAJORITY OF BEN’S attention remained on Jin-soo as the man proposed a detailed plan of the HYCIV assembly, and the majority of Ben Schwartz’s attention was weighty enough. Jin-soo spoke carefully into his microphone. He was only four chairs to Ben’s left but was soft-spoken and too polite to halt interruptions from the other scientists.
Ben’s eyes continued to drift back to the list of complex components that they needed to acquire and repurpose for their intercept vehicle. He could spot lots of little check marks but just as many empty boxes as well. Without enough subassemblies or nuclear missiles, they were screwed—screwed to the nth degree.
“How’s China coming?” Ben interrupted, lifting up the list and tapping a section of empty check boxes with his index finger.
Jin-soo stuttered, blinked, and looked to Chuck.
“I told you,” Chuck sighed. “They pledged support.”
“That was Taiwan. I’m talking about mainland. Dios mío, our geography blows.”
Chuck flipped up his middle fingers as Ben leaned into his microphone to address the opposite side of the Janus meeting room, where forty UN workers were trying to be quiet as church mice.
“UN overlord of the male gender?” Ben called out.
The man perked up and pointed to two HELLO MY NAME IS stickers on the chest of his dress shirt. TROY was scrawled in oversized capital letters on the top sticker, ANDREWS on the bottom.
“Yeah, fine.” Ben began again. “Troy, how’re we coming with mainland China?”
“Promising,” Troy said, and gave a thumbs-up.
Much of the developed West had already pledged their resources and support: the European Union, Britain, Canada, Mexico, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina. However, the Effort still wanted the support of Pakistan, Turkey, and South Africa. They still needed the support of the United States, China, and Russia. Negotiations with these superpowers all seemed to go well until a lack of action proved how cheap talk really was. Disbelief was met with disbelief. How? Ben yelled at the walls. How could the Effort not have the support and resources of the United States? Leave it to the diplomats, Ch
uck told Ben. That’s what they do. We are the science. But Ben let his shock turn to anger as he screamed foul expletives and murderous oaths and invoked plagues of biblical proportion upon the houses of the US president, vice president, and majority speaker, all the way down to the staffers and interns behind the scenes.
A UN minion approached Troy Andrews and whispered nervously in his ear. Troy’s charming smile sank. He looked to his peer, the female UN overlord, and shook his head.
“What?” Ben demanded, and tapped his microphone for attention. “What’s wrong?”
Troy took a breath and leaned into his microphone.
“The Kremlin’s canceled all departing flights. They’re going to manage their own defense effort with their own resources.”
Troy looked to Marcel and Anneke, director and assistant director of the Guiana Space Centre, before adding, “Including the change-out Soyuz spacecraft.”
Marcel’s crisp blue eyes teared up as he sniffed back a runny nose and swallowed hard. The awful silence that followed ended with him standing up, covering his face, and leaving the room. Anneke stayed seated but could only look down at her hands folded in her lap.
Ben decided not to think about those astronauts on the Space Station. No, he told that line of thought, already sprinting ahead on its own. No, no, no. There were so many bigger problems to solve.
“No Russian support means no Russian engineers, satellites, orbiter, uranium, supplies, or troops,” Ben listed out. “They’re leaving us with nothing but the men and women stuck on that Space Station without a working Soyuz for escape, all shit outta luck.”
Ziggy shook his head, his wispy white hair looking like an unraveled cotton ball. The nuclear physicist croaked, “We had an agreement…”
But he didn’t finish, for the US-Russian agreement on planetary defense was never formalized. It gained serious momentum after the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion, and then quietly continued in spite of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Ziggy was the lead negotiator of these talks. Ben took off his glasses and closed his eyes, but he could still see Ziggy’s expression: failure, despite decades of effort toward noble ends. Still failure.
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