Footage of chaotic scenes from around the globe plays above a scrolling chyron: “The end is near,” says scientist.
Roz trips through an obstacle course of greenbar paper littering her office floor. At the twentieth needling trill, she fumbles the phone receiver to her ear.
“Little busy!”
“Rough first day?” Isidro Aquino, Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, has a lengthy title but speaks with an economy of words.
Roz shoves aside takeout containers to make room on the desk for her rear end. “The worst!”
Aquino gives his characteristic snort. “Lay it on me.”
Roz shudders. The summer symposium. A luxury hotel room. Those same words, spoken through a cautious kiss.
She shakes it off, banging coordinates into her laptop’s keyboard. “Liggy’s been compiling historical data back to the early aughts, cross-referencing radio and x-ray from every available source to calculate trajectories.”
“Liggy?”
“LIGO AI. She detected the gravitational wave anomaly first thing this morning. My mentor at Caltech theorized such a distinctive wobble in spacetime could be a precursor to a GRB.”
“GRB?”
“Gamma-ray burst. By extrapolating a cosmic triangle between the past locations of the two objects and Earth, Liggy calculates a probability of .85 the burst will hit us — if there is one.”
An elevator ding comes over the line. “I’m briefing the Secretary-General in an hour. Dumb it down for us.”
“400 years ago, two celestial objects got locked in a gravity well together, spiraling toward each other a thousand times per hour. A rogue black hole stole globs of stellar matter from its dance partner, a neutron star in Corona Australis, 400 light years from Earth.”
Aquino sucks in his breath. “And at that distance …”
“Think of a radiation tsunami strong enough to scrape off the ozone layer and turn every earthling into crispy bacon.” Roz throws a reference book across the room. “Anyone not killed outright will spend the rest of their brief life playing mutation roulette, while starving to death in a sterile biosphere.”
Aquino whistles softly. “How long do we have?”
Another flash of the hotel room. More echoes of plaintive words. Roz runs her hand through her hair.
“Initial estimates suggest 48 hours.”
“Not much time. So, how do we protect ourselves?”
Roz frowns at the receiver. “Uh … we don’t.”
“Seriously?”
“This is it, Isidro. When you brief the SG, there are only a few conversations left to have. You could lament the fragility of life and the futility of legacy. You could have a group hug, embracing compassion and human connection. You could cleanse yourselves of unfulfilled aspirations, or delve into your souls for absolution.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes, or find Jesus. Or, like me, you could seek acceptance in finality, solace in collective doom.”
Aquino pauses. “Now I kinda wish I’d stayed in your room at the symposium last summer.”
“There’s still 48 hours.” Roz zooms in Isidro’s picture on her phone. “How soon can you get to Washington?”