When The Clever Animals had to Die

In several hours, life as we understand it will end. It will happen painlessly and swiftly— so swiftly that even if I had half a mind to tell anybody, nothing would have time to change. One third of an AU away, there is a micro black hole blinking itself into existence, and by the time that it is possible to observe it without billions of dollars in equipment it’ll be too late. 

There was a moment, right after my colleague Dr. Ozzi Mohilewer broke the news that we were cooked, where we all just kind of stared and went well shit. What do we do now? He’d done a beautiful job of proving the point, amassing this indisputable sum of evidence in very short order. No, there isn’t much denial. We are scientists, observers of things so inconceivably beyond us that we learn very early on to temper our expectations of how possible it is to even lay eyes on what we study. It isn’t in our DNA to ask how we can change its trajectory. And since it’s going to strip the magnetosphere in six to ten hours, we all understand how pointless searching for solutions is. 

In fact, I’ll tell you up front what no other astrophysicist in Kronos or the eight or so other places where observing this is possible will: nobody wants to spend their last night explaining what we just saw to the higher-ups, and that us, them, and every other human being is doomed. There’s no point. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, at least not any more than what’s coming. 

For a handful of minutes, our staff broke into hurried, hushed chatter like the Thing could be hovering above us and listening. Doctors Abrams and Pomponia had panic attacks, keeled over hyperventilating and whatnot. The way Pomponia’s name tag crunched when she hit the ground is smeared in my mind. I might’ve too— but again, the math girl in me just didn’t see the point. 

“Janie,” says Mohilewer, “what do you see?”

He wants me to weigh in. And why me, you may ask? Because everybody else has tried and failed to disprove him, of course! “I don’t have anything to add. Within hours, the anomaly will enter our system.” 

I stand up, feeling I’d honored whatever obligation I had to this guy. My head swims. Mohilewer looks like he wants to stop me, but he’s probably got the same thoughts as me slamming around in his brain: 

Why spend the last night on earth doing this? 

I’m ahead of the curve for once. My colleagues still argue with fate as I slip through the observatory doors. New Mexico at night is pristine and sterile. The after dark chill stings my sinuses and the sky shimmers. It’s always reminded me of crystals in a cave. And of course, to the southeast, there’s that little patch where I know the thing that will kill me is manifesting itself into existence. 

I need to text my husband, Elias. There is not enough time to drive home, not even if our most conservative estimates of the anomaly’s progression are correct. And it has to be a text. No, I’m a lot of things, but I am not a fucking robot. If I call Elias, he’ll figure out that something’s afoot. Then all I’ll have done is ruin his night to give me something as abjectly pointless and gallingly self-serving as hearing his voice. 

Wow. It’s really over. I hoist myself over the balcony separating the observatory from New Mexico and let my legs hang over the abyss. Just like back in grad school. Everything I did, everything everyone ever did, ends tonight. There won’t be a soul left to remember, no traces for the winds of the future to uncover, not a breath left in this freezing cold universe to remind it that we ever existed.

Hey, I type into my phone. Here at Kronos. Now why the hell would I say that? He knows where I work. No. And no ‘hey’, either. The dying gasp of our civilization will not be “hey.”

Dr. Linus is a little bald guy, maybe a half inch shorter than me, desperately clinging to scraps of ginger curls like it’s his firstborn. Apparently he didn’t get the memo, because he’s hustling out of the observatory with a binder tucked under his arm and car keys thrust through his knuckles.
 
His fears are misplaced. Putting aside the question over whether it matters if you get mugged or something or if you can sell whatever’s in that binder for a cement truck full of hookers and bath salts, I personally doubt humankind’s last few hours will be spent in chaos and anarchy. First there’s the logistics question. Of our last hours, it would take a good fraction of them just to explain what is going to happen to us. Not a fun conversation to have. From there, I guess it would leak to the media, and the public would have to piece together whether or not the apocalypse was on top of it based on a smattering of news reports. Perhaps there would be a broadcast of some kind. 

Or maybe there wouldn’t be. After all, the people in charge might think the same thing I do: what the hell is the point? 

I blankly run through a bunch of names and memories that I know should mean something. I have two sisters and a brother. My Dad is still alive. Am I supposed to reach out to them? 

I don’t really want to. I just don’t, and if there’s any time to be honest with myself, it’s now. Goddammit. I pull my legs to my chest and try to stand up. While perfectly sturdy, I’m certain that one of those crisp breezes that periodically spawn here would knock me off my feet.

Behind me is Duke Shanahan, one of the old-timers. He is an authentic redneck from some godforsaken place on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky, sixty years old with a little white beard. Every day for breakfast he eats a pickle with a Bud. 

“What a day we’ve had, huh Janie?” 

I sigh. “What the hell did you hope to gain by saying that?” 

“Hmm.” He stares at those stars that are still going to be dazzling for a million billion years after our bell tolls. “Was looking more. Don’t ask me why. It’s expanding exponentially fast, and unless it slows down, we’ve got around two hours before it disrupts Earth’s system. Probably less, since, y’know, exponentially fast expansion.” 

I just want you to know, I hammer into my phone, that no matter what happens— no, too wordy. He would smell that something was up. It could disturb him. I just want you to know that you’re the love of my life and the best thing that ever happened to me. Then I think outside of myself for a second. Jesus Christ. What a terrible day to have kids and grandkids, like the hick astrophysicist standing behind me. 

“Oh, don’t bother,” he says. “We’re both grown-ups. Just don’t even bother.” I bother anyway. “It’s as I figured, right? Painless?” 

“Eh.” he’s scowling at the horizon, a desert plateau whose shape can barely be etched out in the starlight. “Not many seconds between when it pulls at the exosphere and when it pulls at the surface. ‘Course, a half minute or so before that that it’ll fuck up the magnetic field, which could mean anything and everything from the internet meltin’ down to every volcano erupting.” 

Somehow, that thing about the volcanoes is the detail that makes me sick to my stomach. “Holy shit.” 

“Yeah. Nobody’ll even know. We’ll blink and it’ll all be gone.”

“Nobody could feasibly leak,” I point out, my goddamned mouth on autopilot, “at least not in time to alert everyone and, y’know, end up feeling the uhh full consequences of what’s going to…” I let that sentence kind of hang, unwilling to call the end of the world something that’s going to ‘happen’. 

Shanahan chuckles. He pinches a smoke between his fingers and waves it tauntingly. But in the starlight, I can pick out tears in his face fur. 

“You know I’m three years clean.” 

“You’re dyin’, Janie, in an hour, just like the rest of us.” 

“Yeah,” I respond, my voice breaking. Just for a second. “Exactly.” 

Suddenly, Shanahan looks ashamed. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He pauses. “It’s really purty out tonight.” 

I love you, I type. Send. I shove it back in my pocket and glue my eyes on Andromeda. “We’re not gonna die, Duke.” 

“Oh, I know. I don’t think we’re ever gonna die.” 

“I don’t think so either.”