750 Words – The Asteroid
750 Words is my attempt to begin writing fiction on a regular basis. These stories will be short, and thought up generally on the fly, so don’t expect much. ~N
When they broadcast the news about the asteroid, Alex was the first person on the planet to see opportunity rather than calamity. He certainly wasn’t the last, or the most successful, but the results met with Alex’s approval when all was said and done.
The broadcast pre-empted the thursday night block of comedies, but most people didn’t hear about it until later in the evening, while they were checking twitter, and found #endofdays trending. The next day YouTube videos of people killing themselves were all the rage. The day after that, YouTube videos making fun of people killing themselves was the new hotness. The internet went through the 5 stages of grief in a little over a week, officially returning to business as normal when a video of a cat in heat played a passable snippet of “another one bites the dust” by accident as it hobbled across a piano. It made the front page of Reddit in 3 hours.
Alex watched this with bemusement during his breaks of which he had few. The computer was a source of distraction, and with the Asteroid only weeks away, Alex was pressed for time. All of the schematics had been printed out weeks ago in anticipation of the power grid failing (whether to riot or apathetic plant workers was currently the most popular prop bet in Vegas).
The generator was for emergencies only. Not for want of gas, or for Alex’s project (the reaction could be started with a car battery), but rather to prevent the neighbors from learning that Alex owned a generator. Alex learned a long time ago that perception was everything.
Back in 2007, when Alex first moved to the quiet suburban hamlet 20 miles East of Portland, he went around and introduced himself to his neighbors. He’d set up a barbeque at his house, and invited people over to see some of his side projects, undertaken when he wasn’t working at Intel.
Alex first invited folks to have some jerky he had cooked in an arduino-based smoker that he had modified from the basic model to be more precise. Thor noted that the brand Alex has purchased was being boycotted because they would not give their employees Veteran’s Day off.
A silence fell for a bit until Ashley brightly asked what farm the Jerky had come from. Alex told them it had come from the local co op, where he had installed a monitoring system that allowed the farm to catch thieves through a facial recognition algorithm he had developed. Another silence fell, and the crowd dispersed, forming small groups who chatted awkwardly. Clint just stared at Alex coldly before turning his back and joining a clique. Clint’s wife asked if it was Hinkel Farms. Dazedly, Alex nodded, and Juniper whispered that Clint had just lost his job as nightwatchman at Hinkel Farms. Alex later found out that he had been fired for drinking while on duty, but that information didn’t make the moment go away in his mind.
The last thing he showed them was his e-ink reader. Jaydn made some wry comment about the smell of a book, and Celestine said that her copy of The Fountainhead didn’t need batteries to work. Alex remarked that paperbacks are sort of the Howard Roark of reading, and Celestine looked blankly at him for a second, then gasped out a chuckle and quickly changed the subject.
The years following were a steady decline.
Clint and Juniper fought regularly until one day the police showed up, and nobody heard from Clint again. Juniper was caught doing something (Alex never heard what), and responded by having her shades drawn at all hours. The house fell into disrepair, and everyone eventually found out Juniper had left when squatters killed and ate Jaydn’s chickens while he was on vacation. Everyone blamed Alex.
Celestine wrote an autobiography, which everyone in the neighborhood knew was mostly lies, and when she went on the local news magazine show, she was ambushed by a reporter who held a Kindle with a short story that closely resembled her chapter on living in Tulsa. Again, not really Alex’s fault, but the community whispered and grew suspicious.
Alex leaned into it. When Thor sued his employer for hurting his back after falling asleep in an ergonomic chair that was “unsafe” (ie older than 2 years), Alex started building. Not for any practical use, just something to relax; something to take his mind off his neighbors and the world.
Around the time Clint came back to repair and sell the house, Alex had broken through. He not only cracked the biggest problem on his project, managing to send an entangled particle back 0.000003 seconds, but found that potassium was a much more effective catalyst than caesium. He’d made the switch after Clint’s house kind of exploded and everyone assumed Clint found Juniper’s old meth lab.
This time it was Alex’s fault, but since no one was hurt, and Clint received more than the house’s value from the insurance company, Alex decided to let this one go.
Not that it would matter soon anyway.
The day before the asteroid struck, 63 days after the official announcement, 50 days after the first rocket exploded over Texas and shed all of its radioactive material across the US, 48 days after North Korea bombed Japan, 20 days after the first successful rocket launch disappeared with no explosion around the asteroid’s corona, 10 days after several private rockets took off from undisclosed locations, headed for Mars, or the Moon, or perhaps just an orbit antipodal to the Asteroid’s impact location (Portland), and 2 days after 53 nuclear reactors went into meltdown, Alex finally shared his plans with his neighbors.
“Friends and Neighbors,” Alex began, Megaphone in hand, “today I shall bid you adieu. I have invented a time machine, which I will use to go back and fix things. I will send back a warning that will be properly heeded and given the attention it deserves.”
The crowd, loosely assembled in Alex’s yard, looked nonplussed. Alex stepped aside, hand outstretched, and revealed his time machine. It was little bigger than a water cooler. Where the clear plastic jug would normally be, a metal cylinder was propped up, with a few valves hissing. Jaydn recognized it as his corny keg that Alex had borrowed a few months ago and never given back. The base of the unit had a small glass window. Inside the window, Ashely could see a small crumpled piece of paper, with something scratched out and something else written on it. Behind the base of the unit (Clint was pretty sure it was another modified smoker), an industrial cable thicker than Celestine’s arm snaked down the walkway, around the steps up to the porch, and just barely squeezed through the basement window. Something was glowing bright green down there.
Alex continued. “Unfortunately, I cannot take any of you with me. In fact I cannot go myself.” The crowd audibly groaned, though from despair or disbelief, he could not tell. “Indeed, the ability to travel back in time takes considerable energy, and in fact will cause a release of energy much larger by a factor of 12.”
The crowd went back to nonplussed, and their attention was wavering. Alex pressed on. “When I activate the time machine, it will consume all of the matter I have accumulated in my basement, some 3 tons of Potassium, to open the portal. When the portal is established, every microgram of matter that is transported will result in the release of approximately 10.2 gigajoules of pure energy. Even at that level, I can only afford to send a small note back 6 years. Our government has revealed that they have known about the Asteroid for 7 years.”
More blank looks. Alex went for the direct approach. “When I turn on this machine, there will be an explosion of roughly twice the force of the impact of the Asteroid.”
Everyone’s face snapped into focus. Half of them looked ready to laugh, the rest looked like they were talking themselves into getting angry. Alex knew he didn’t have much time left, so he concentrated on finishing up.
“I want you all to know that when I change the past, you have the opportunity to change yourselves as well. We’ve been told our whole lives that the past can’t be changed; I know now that this is not the case. I have a machine that will alter my past, and yours. But even if I didn’t have a machine, I can use my past to learn, make my mistakes into lessons. You will have a chance to live your life again. Learn from your lessons in this world, and use them in the next.”
This didn’t go over as well as he’d hoped. As Clint charged, Alex pushed the button.
Alex stood at the entrance to gate 42, frowning. His heart was sore from a long, hard night holding Jeanine as she sobbed. He knew she would take him back, but the Intel job was too good. Working at SETI was good, but it didn’t pay off. Funds were being diverted to some other astronomical project for the government. It sounded like it had military implications, which didn’t interest Alex. He had to think of his future.
Alex checked his ticket one last time. As he pulled out his boarding pass, an old receipt fell out of his bag. On it was printed the address of the house he’d bought sight unseen. When he looked at the receipt, the address had been scratched out. Just below the scrawl was a note in his handwriting.
It said simply “Go home. Marry Jeanine.”
6 years later, Alex and Jeanine died in each other’s arms.
