The president’s speech confirms what all sensible people have understood by this summer. The final calculations have been made. There’s no longer any room for doubt. In just over one month, it’s all really over. We even have a specific time. September 16 at 4:12 a.m. (Swedish time), the comet called Foxworth enters the Earth’s atmosphere. The air beneath it will become ten times hotter than the surface of the sun. Everything in the comet’s path will be destroyed before it finally slams into the northwest coast of Africa, near the Canary Islands. The atmosphere will burn, and the sky will fill with light, brighter than anything we’ve ever seen. The shock wave will reach us in perfect silence, because it moves faster than the speed of sound. A couple of minutes after impact, the seas will turn into steam and the mountains will boil. Four billion years of evolution, suddenly gone. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
That’s not how the president chooses to put it. He doesn’t talk about the details of how we’re going to die, doesn’t address the rumor that the Earth’s crust might ripple and hurl us all into space.
Instead, he talks about “staying at home, being with your loved ones,” and I wonder what that’s like for all the people who haven’t got “loved ones” to stay at home with.
It’s been a couple of months since we found out the comet was coming—the news broke on May 27. The world hasn’t been the same since. Everything we took for granted fell apart in just a few days. People stopped going to work. Schools shut down. The stock market collapsed. All trade ceased after just a few days. Money became useless. Travelers fought to get a seat on the last flights home. The roads were clogged with traffic.
The chaos was particularly bad during that period. New wars erupted out of nowhere, while old conflicts ended overnight. No one knew which rules applied anymore. And the worst of it happened in the places with the most social inequality. The oppressed masses had less to lose. They revolted. Occupied the palaces of the wealthy and plundered the luxury boutiques. In more democratic societies, it was easier for the citizens to stand united.
Here in Sweden, we’ve found our way back to some semblance of normalcy. Even though nothing is the same, surprisingly many things actually work.
Naturally, not everyone thinks Foxworth is going to hit us. One of the comet deniers is being interviewed on the news as I write this. He has that same impatient, ironic air they all seem to share—a preemptive I told you so attitude. And in some ways, I understand them. The fact that we haven’t spotted a comet this size years before seems incredible. It’s enormous, hundreds of miles across, but also dark and murky, and it came creeping up on us in such a far-flung orbit that the last time it closed in on us, there were no humans to notice it. It turns out that despite all our instruments and technological advancements, we haven’t kept a close eye on the space around us. There’s been a lot of debate about that this summer. Who are we supposed to blame? Why didn’t the scientists get more funding? Who is the guiltiest? As if that matters anymore. The risk that a comet would exterminate us was so extremely improbable that no one took it seriously. On the other hand, the chance that life would evolve on this planet and that we’d become its rulers was even smaller. In an infinite universe with infinite possibilities, everything that happens is improbable.
If Foxworth had been discovered years ago, we could have directed a laser at it from Earth. That could have been enough to change the comet’s trajectory. (Don’t ask me how. It’s got something to do with the gases inside it.) But by the time we found the comet, it was too late. Someone compared it to driving a car in a large open space: If another car comes at you from five hundred yards away, you can avoid a crash by turning the wheel slightly. But if you see the car only when it’s right in front of you, you don’t stand a chance.
There wasn’t enough time to flee Earth, either. Our disaster movies usually end with us sending an ark into space if all else fails—a huge spaceship filled with thousands of people chosen to perpetuate the species. The reality turned out to be less impressive. One famous multibillionaire, despite the fact that his money’s currently worthless, tried to organize an expedition to Mars. Even if he’d succeeded, ten people at most would have joined him, only to die slowly on our inhospitable neighboring planet. There weren’t a lot of volunteers.
The comet deniers will probably keep denying it until 'the bitter end, believing that the rest of us are just gullible. They know the truth. This is PR intended to let the Americans “rescue us” at the last second. Or “fake news” from Russia designed to distract the world while they prepare an invasion.
Or it’s a communist plot to crush the capitalist system. People believe whatever they want to believe. It’s not like it’s the first time. You should have seen how good we were at turning a blind eye to climate change. Earth has been ending for a while now.
At first, the comet's name was a combination of numbers and letters, but that felt entirely too impersonal for something that would end our existence. Now it’s called Foxworth, after the woman at NASA who discovered it. I wonder what it feels like to have your name associated with something that’s going to kill us all. She could have gone down in history. If there were anyone left to write history.
But I guess that’s what I’m doing right now. Theoretically, anyway. TellUs is an attempt to hand over to other life-forms stories about Earth and what it was like to live here. I wonder how many TellUs users really believe that anyone is going to read what they write. Still, it’s a way to pass the time. It gives you purpose. We need to believe that someone out there will know we were here.
What I write here is streamed to distant satellites that save our stories and send them out into space. When we’re gone, the satellites will keep transmitting. At least, until they break or are hit by space junk or whatever. Despite everything, this might reach you. If you exist. And if you have the right equipment. If you’re able to understand what I’m writing, or if you even care.
The same satellites will send out scientific facts about the planet, as well as coordinates of the places where we’ve tried to preserve our most famous works of art, books, and pieces of music, the DNA sequences of animals and humans—the seed vault that used to be at Svalbard (in a “doomsday bunker” that isn’t sturdy enough for this doomsday). Everything is being packed into protective materials and lowered into mines far from the impact site. No one knows if it will work, but it seems to be the best we can do.
One day, you might be able to re-create a human in an alien lab. Or at least plant a few geraniums. That thought is supposed to make our deaths feel less meaningless.
I saw an interview with a few people who’d decided to move into the mine in Kiruna. They’ll die buried underneath thousands of feet of molten rock. I can’t imagine a worse way to go.
Do you know when you’re going to die?
Humans have always known that we’re going to die one day, but never precisely when. Not like this, not the very second.
Maybe you’re wondering why I’m not panicking. I am scared. More scared than I might seem. But I think I’m less scared than a lot of other people. And the worst thing—the thing I can’t tell anyone other than you—is that a part of me is relieved. Well, maybe not relieved. That’s not the right word. But it’s not entirely wrong.