14

Ever since they confirmed the path of the asteroid, all people talk about is the end of the world. As if it’s a big thing, as if it’s something new. But worlds end every day.

Every time a person dies, it’s the end of his world. Yeah, you keep on going, but that person’s world, at best immortalized in an obituary, is essentially a charred cinder, like our Earth will likely be next month.

It’s funny how people have reacted. I’d expect those preachers, who are always excitedly warning us that these are “the end of times” would be cheerful, thrilled and obnoxiously bragging that they told us so. That’s not happening. Most are silently petrified. Some are publicly crying. I haven’t heard of even one telling us to repent or repenting themselves. I guess God or Nature has called their bluff.

But as I’ve noted, worlds end all the time so for me these days are no different than before we got news about the asteroid. I wonder what will happen—will dinosaur-like creatures re-emerge upon the death of the human race? I won’t be around to get the answer. It’s just speculation. But I think that would be an improvement. Dinosaurs, for all their viciousness, don’t pretend to be anything else. They openly admit to being monsters.

In my view, the human race was on its way to self destruction anyway. Maybe it’s better to end this thing all together than to die off one-by-one, lonely pointless worlds winking out of existence. Yeah, going out with a bang might be the right way.

Whether it’s poisoning the planet by pumping waste into the air and water, or cooking the planet with fluorocarbons to make the Earth mimic Venus, or just launching a fusillade of nukes to protect ourselves from some real or imagined enemies, we were gonna do the job anyway. From the start, the human race was too stupid and short-sighted to survive. It took an asteroid to destroy the dinosaurs. Without that, they’d still be here. But our asteroid is merely speeding things up.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking forward to the coming mega-death. I’m opposed to it. I wish the asteroid wasn’t coming. I wish the human race was smarter, kinder and less destructive.

So, tomorrow, three weeks before expected impact, I’ll be going up there in an improvised “star cruiser,” created in a moment of desperate sanity by an otherwise crazy species. And I’ll try to blast the asteroid out of the sky.

Wish me luck.