Don't Dream It's Over
There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost
But you'll never see the end of the road while you're traveling with me
- Crowded House, Don't Dream It's Over
Life is beautiful and devastating.
The sight of the comet's debris so close, blazing a path across the night sky, was the most ethereally beautiful thing I had ever seen.
The fact that it would destroy Earth by morning was a devastating blow that I hadn't quite reconciled just yet.
The comet had approached directly from the Sun's direction, the glare obscuring it until it had passed out of the glare. It was too late then, ripped into pieces by the star's gravity and sent hurtling toward the planet. They would rain down on the Earth at a scale not even seen the day the dinosaurs were wiped from the planet. Nothing would survive as the cradle of Humanity was destroyed. It would be the end in an instant.
Disaster movies like to portray these scenarios with images of mass hysteria. panic, and pandemonium. But as I wandered the streets trying to figure out what to do, everything was eeriely quiet. It was a surprising twist that when all the world is going to end, people chose to use those last moments in love and connection, not panic and destruction. There was no need to panic and hoard, no one was surviving this, not even the billionaires hold up in their private bunkers in New Zealand.
I came to the street corner and stopped; at a literal and figurative crossroads. Go left and return to my current life, go right and strike out into the unknown.
I'd met her in a store a couple of months ago, bowling her over as she quietly purused the wine aisle. I was in a rush as usual, spurred by the voice in my head constantly reminding that I was taking too much time, screwing up, and that even though I had a list I was somehow hollow or deficient for following it. And also that I shouldn't deviate from it because otherwise why have a list? That voice was this strange, almost synthetic, bitonal mixture of my mother and my current girlfriend. What a weird fucking voice for an inner critic.
I was head down, rushing forward, and my face stuck in my phone; frantically checking my basket and checking off my list. I registered her feet just a fraction before I ran headlong into her body. Cute pointy toed leather boots was my first impression of her. Later, when we talked, she'd said she'd just put a bottle of wine back on the shelf. Otherwise the resulting impact would have knocked her down skidding across the floor, thrown my groceries every where, and smashed an expensive bottle of 10 year old Port for all of the trouble.
It's funny how life works isn't it?
NASA's SOHO satellite saw it first as it rounded perihelion and started to fracture and break. Later estimates would put it's size around 20 KM in diameter, an interstellar giant on a looping trajectory into the Solar System. Earth had five days before the fragments hit and vaporized everything. There was no hope, there was no salvation, no Hail Mary project we could throw against it. By the time the politicians and scientists agreed the best thing to do was tell the world the truth, Humanity had three days to make it's peace.
And with a night left before the end, I found myself on this street corner. Where would I go to watch the end? Who would I choose to spend this final night on Earth for all of us with?
That day when I met her, when I knocked her flat on her ass and skidding across the grocery store floor, I didn't think I would ever find myself here.