Apocalypse Then
Six hundred and sixty-six. No, those aren’t the lucky numbers of some lottery winners, that’s the depth in feet underground where luckies life winners slowly drones on in prayer. What else is there for them to do? Dinner is high and entertainments is far away. After all, they used those prayers to the higher rise, only to the harder fall.. straight into a fallout shelter, of course. What would they even do up there with a meteorite screaming toward them? As like some loser influencers? They finally airing out the skeletons in their closets, instead of the unboxings and the ‘What’s in my bag’ tags. No. thanks! In the corridors of the bunker, lukies joke that they’re like the chickens who survived the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. But nobody dares to joke about being the Antichrist’s disciples; for a crack like that, he’d kick them out. Meanwhile, on the surface, false prophets were birthing a new religion, others were throwing orgies, and a third group was busy combining the two. Everyone has come to terms with the fact that the apocalypse now. Not a single missile hit its mark, almost as if the asteroid has a mind of its own. Then again, how much ‘mind’ can it really have if it’s still just barreling ahead in a straight line, only veering slightly off course.
Julia, the Press Secretary, was frozen. She had no idea how to tell the President that the asteroid had made a move against their missiles. Not that it mattered; the elite have a eyes. A massive screen in the main hall was broadcasting the failure in high qualities. The doors to the hall swung open.
“What the hell was that?!” one high-ranking official screamed.
“I told you! It’s an alien ship!” a man shouted, his voice cracking with a strange sort of joy. “Leon, my friend! How are you”?
“Mr.Anderson please don’t glad. It’s an asteroid, don’t jump to conclusions!” Leon answered in a fit of desperation.
“Leon, goddammit, you own a private space company!” a third yelled, pointing a finger at a tech leader. “You were paid a huge amount of money to knock that thing out of the sky! We put our resources together from the whole world for you!”
“Mr. Leon, don’t forget you bet your entire net worth that this was a rock!” a wealthy old man in the front row barked.
“Mr. Charles, what kind a bet? I don’t remember that!” Leon snapped back. “Maybe I posted something in the heat of the moment, but I didn’t sign a single piece of paper! Talk to my lawyers.”
“You left them on the surface! You said yourself in private that we wouldn’t need them in the ‘new world’!”
“When did I ever say that?!”
“You posted it in a public forum!”
“Mr. President!” Julia interrupted the arguing. “The asteroid has moved away from its course. A few more minutes and it officially becomes a meteorite.”
“Wonderful news!” Mr. Bump pulled out his phone and started tapping away furiously.
“What are you writing?” Julia watched him, terrified, and then it clicked. “No! It’s still heading for our Planet! Don’t write anything...”
“Fantastic news! Mr. Bump has saved the country once again!” the President read aloud, putting a heavy emphasis on the word wonderful and squinting with satisfaction. “Just listen to that. It’s music! He decisively launched the missiles at the asteroid, and BOOM! Now it’s just a meteor. Do you see the difference between a meteor and an asteroid? It’s like a person—that’s the asteroid, and then they’re dead—that’s the meteor. End of story. Nobody messes with Mr. Bump. If you come flying at my Planet with bad intentions—you become a ‘meteor.’ It’s very simple. Believe me.”
“That’s terrible news! If it’s a meteor, it means it’s entered Earth’s orbit!” Julia cried. But seeing Mr. Bump start typing again, she quickly added, “It means it’s close!”
“Look, this is terrible. This is a disaster,” the President said, though his face showed a boiling, selfish anger. “Where is my PR guy? I need my best PR guy. We have to change the story right now, and it has to look beautiful.”
“Are you out of your mind?!”Charles shrieked. “PR? Contact the Minister of War! Have him shoot it down! What good is your reputation if we’ll all smushed across the surface of the planet?”
“Julia, remind me to strike this old complainer from the list,” the President hissed, his face turning a deep, bruised purple. “Next time, he can greet the ‘new world’ in different company.”
“You’re barely five years older than me! Who are you calling ‘old’?!” Charles snarled.
At that moment, the broadcast screen flickered. The PR team and a film crew had arrived, cameras in tow. The second the red “recording” light blinked on, the President’s behavior shifted. His voice became soft, careful, and fatherly—the voice of a leader calming a frightened flock.
“Everyone, quiet. Stay calm. I am calm, so you must be calm too,” he said, turning sharply toward the screen as if giving a cue on a movie set. “Mr. Minister, do your job. Just do it well.”
“Should we launch the latest development, sir? The trillion-dollar one?” asked Minister of War.
The President blocked the camera lens with a hand and hissed: “Are we live? No? Good.” The PR guy shook his head and Bump continued. “Listen to me, Dave. What other rocket would you launch? Of course you launch the most expensive one!”
“But Mr. President, what if they really are aliens? Shouldn’t we try to make contact?” the Minister stammered.
“Stop talking! You’re ruining the shot! This looks terrible on camera... Let’s take it again, from the top. Make it perfect.”
The President reset his pose, smoothing his suit and adopting an expression of grand calmness. He turned back to the screen: “Minister, do your duty!”
“Yes, sir! May God keep you!”
“God bless our country!”
On those final words, the cameraman rushed in for a dramatic low-angle close-up. The lens zoomed in slowly, capturing the “heroic” profile of the leader of the nation against the flickering light of the end of the world.
On board the Main CP-01, the wild party atmosphere had dissolved into panicked chaos. Something was hurtling toward them, exploding on impact. Anna took the controls herself, kicking the hysterical Gabriel out of the seat. With the ease of a doctor applying stitches, she navigated ship through strange natural phenomena, things that looked like wild spores, flying off from the planet and bursting into massive clouds in space.
“I suspect these are bio-chemical processes from this planet,” Wilder replied, his eyes glued to the monitors. “Based on my knowledge of biology, it looks remarkably like ‘Fire-bloom.’”
“This high up in space?” Anna asked, tilting the ship into a steep, gut-wrenching turn.
“Possibly. We don’t know the exact makeup of the atmosphere yet. It’s merely a theory. But imagine the scientific successes waiting for us down there!” Wilder was clearly caught in great excitement. “My level of mental excitement from the waiting for discovery is growing very quickly. If these ‘spores’ had harmful melting power, our ship’s strength would have been damaged. As it stands, we’ve only recorded minor external dirt.”
“Keep talking, Wilder, but don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m not taking any chances,” Anna said, very carefully weaving through the fiery bursts. “I’ve seen the history contents; our army lost an entire war a thousand years ago because of some kind of pollen.”
“Wonder what the grub’s like in this here neck of the woods...” Sam muttered, his mouth already leakin’ like a busted coolant pipe. “It’s always the way of it: the sweetest meal’s tucked under the toughest hide. You don’t get the good stuff for nothin’, nope.”
“Samuel, for the sake of safety, I suggest we do tests before trying anything,” Wilder countered. “Risk one: biological bad match. Risk two: looking like food but actually being deadly poison. That’s why Phoebe and I brought the ‘Adaptatrion’; she’s sholud was a researcher. ‘Adaptatrion’ can adapt any data, whether it’s plants, animals, or the languages of the aborigines.”
“Aborigineth?” Gabriel blinked. “Who are they?”
“The locals. There is a risk, however small, that the planet has people living on it.”
“People? You mean that green critter from the movies? S’long as they ain’t total savages, I reckon. I’ve heard more’n enough tall tales ’bout how they like to take a torch to outsiders... do a real number on ’em.”
“Your judgments are nothing more than leftover ideas about ‘civilized saviors’! Because the perceptions of humanity are a reimagining of the history of our colonization.” Wilder snapped, trying to steady the crew. “A look back at history shows that our ancestors were always the ones who started destructive conflicts. There is no reason to assume a local civilization lacks the way to fight back if we first.”
“Listen, kid, I’ve got a pistol tucked in my holster!” Anna cut in. “It’s enough for two hundred of those ‘locals’!”
“Anna, where from?! Why didn’t they take it during the thearthh?” Gabriel asked, stunned.
“Because I swiped it from the guards myself!” Anna bragged, and at that exact moment, the ship took a massive hit.
The crew was shaken violently.
“Dammit! I hit a spore,” Anna said, her eyes scanning the instruments. “Readings are stable, but I need to check the hull just in case. The landing gear might have snapped.”
“I recommend landing in this sector,” Wilder said, pointing to the screen. “The landscape of this dry area is a 70% match with the features of our ancestral home. We should begin our study at a familiar point. Think of it as our starting level.”
“Alright, baby-boss ! We’ll save the ‘tasty’ stuff for later!” Anna leveled the ship and began the final descent.
Deep inside the earth, 666 feet down, pure panic had taken root. The President, losing the last of his calmness, was screaming at the monitors:
“What do you mean ‘it didn’t work’?! Are you trying to trick me? That was a beautiful rocket, the strongest rocket in history. We use those things to break bunkers 660 feet down—very deep, believe me. And you couldn’t break through some rock in space? It’s a shame. A total shame.”
“Mr. President, listen, it’s not an asteroid!” The Minister of War tried to quiet the leader down. “We’ve used up the entire supply, but the object is still moving. They’re heading for the Area.”
“What ‘Area’? What are you even talking about?” The President looked at them like they were speaking nonsense. “Do they need a Wi-Fi area? A parking area? They want to take a rest in a Seating Area?”
“Mr. President, we discussed this: if it’s not an asteroid, it’s aliens! And according to our data, they’re moving toward Area 67!”
“Six! Seven!” someone shouted from the back.
“Shut up, Derek!” his neighbors hissed.
“I thought the answer was 42!” someone else said from the other side.
“What’s in this area?” the President complained.
The PR manager rushed over and whispered into his ear, but the highly sensitive microphone caught every word and played it to the entire room:
“Sir, you’ve been selling this story for over a week. You said it was an alien ship with peaceful intentions, and that you were ready to personally give them a tour of Area 67—where that UFO supposedly crashed—and buy them a drink of real whiskey.”
“Wait, didn’t I say they were missiles from the East? Everyone knows they’re from the East. I said that immediately. It was obvious,” the President said, looking really surprised.
“You did! And you also called the aliens ‘invaders’ and promised to personally fight them in a tank. And you said it was the Antichrist coming, and also...”
“Sir,” the Minister of War interrupted, “most likely, this is an alien rescue operation. I suggest we make contact.”
“I’m ready!” Mr. Leon volunteered, straightening his expensive jacket. “I’ll drive out to meet them in my personal ‘Edison.’”
They exited the ship carefully. Every step was heavy and they were sweating a lot. Like small, smelly rain clouds, they were practically watering the ground, leaving puddles behind them. With every difficult step, they turned down the heat on their high-tech suits. It turned out the human planet wasn’t nearly as likely to have freezing nights as they had thought. Once they lowered the temperature, they started studying the area without any troubles.The night sky of the Blue Planet was a pitch-black void, and the air was so fresh that after the stale, metal-tasting air of the ship, it felt almost dizzying. The crew stood on solid ground, greedily drinking in the cool night. Anna, armed with a powerful flashlight, inspected the ship’s bottom part, scraping away the soot and ash from their entry. Sam tried to slide dramatically across the desert soil but kept tripping over the dry bushes. Meanwhile, Wilder, holding his breath, moved his ‘Adaptatrion’ over the earth, carefully studying every inch of this world.
“Not muthh to look at...” Gabriel said, disappointed, as he scanned the horizon. “I expethted more from a ‘Garden of Eden.’”
“Give it a rest!” Anna shot back, never stopping her cleaning. “On the way down, I saw jungles so thick they’d make your head spin. We just happened to land in this patch of dirt. Look, even here, something’s growing.”
“Y’all, lookit what I done found!” Sam dragged over a strange green object, covered in spikes like some giant spiky ball. “Hey, Wildy, poke this here thing with that adapter o’ yours. Reckon it’ll send us belly-up if we go an’ take a bite?”
Wilder brought the Adaptatrion close. The screen flashed blue:
“Nutritional vegetables. Bio-compatible. No dangerous elements detected.”
Gabriel, without a second thought, decided to be the first to try. Anna, though she liked being first in everything else, preferred to wait when it came to tasting unknown plants. A crunch echoed through the silence, followed a second later by a loud, terrifying scream. Gabriel collapsed to his knees, dark blood leaking from his mouth. He moved wildly, gasping for air, kicking at the dry earth in a total rage. Sam tried to make him vomit by shoving his fingers down Gabriel’s throat, but it only made the pain worse. Anna, maintaining a deadly calmness, grabbed Gabriel by the back of the head.
“Tongue! Show me your tongue, now!”
Gabriel obeyed. It was a horrible sight: amidst the usual dirt and the curses he was spitting out with the blood, his tongue was full of dozens of hair-thin, transparent hairs—like glass needles.
“Quite the environment...” Anna began carefully pulling out the needles. “It knows how to defend itself. Even if you eat it, it eats you right back.”
In that moment, the silence was shattered by the roar of engines and a blinding, man-made light. From all sides, glowing “orbs”—the powerful headlights of SUVs—closed in on them. Buzzing shadows hovered overhead, filling the landing site in the glare of searchlights. To the crew, it looked like they were being surrounded not by machines and drones, but by a tribe of locals carrying impossibly bright torches.
“Uhh-wow!” one of the “locals” said, stepping forward and making a strange, rude gesture.
“Maybe he’s inviting us to mate,” Anna chuckled, though her hand was already hovering over the handle of her stolen pistol. “Gabriel, that’s your department!”
“I ain’t likin’ the looks o’ this...” Samuel switched his shell-like arms into combat mode, which responded with a scary mechanical click.
“Maintain current positions,” Wilder commanded. “I am starting the main data collection process. Visually, the objects show a lack of direct aggression.”
“Afsipakhsh khkh-kh-rasidkhf!” someone in the crowd of aberigens shouted.
Wilder stepped forward. A group of strange creatures in identical suits approached him. In their hands, they held square black objects with an image of a bitten pear, Wilder thought they were small weapons. One “warrior” carried a massive rocket-launcher-like tool emitting light, while a woman with trembling hands held up a “melee weapon” marked with the letters TV.
“Good evening, dear... people. My name is Wilder. Could you say something into this device?” He held out the Adaptatrion to the man in the lead.
Wilder began using very large gestures, explaining what was required: lean toward the adapter and speak. The man hesitated as he bent over the device, looking as if he were encountering a god-like object. Wilder began speaking very clearly and slowly, opening and closing his mouth wide while pointing at the device to show that the sound needed to go there. The man, like a monkey seeing a mirror for the first time, began making strange hooting sounds before looking confused at the alien. The man looked up at him from under his brow with sad puppy-dog eyes. Wilder just pointed for him to keep talking. This strange performance lasted nearly a minute until the device processed the sounds and built a language system.
“Um, I assume this is some kind of alien technology... and I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to say. I’ve already told you every word I know... uh...” Mr. Leon began to breathe out sharply, feeling like a fool in front of the floating device.
Wilder, waiting for the Adaptatrion’s signal, finally replied in a steady, slightly robotic voice:
“Greetings, representatives of the local civilization.”
“So, what do we say? To free beer?” Will’s father raised a glass, the beer foaming over the rim.
“To the end of the worl’, Pops!” Will was already mostly drunk, his voice echoing with the wild joy of a man who’d escaped death.
“To every end ending just like this one!” his grandfather said, leaning heavily against the sticky bar counter.
“Grandpa? Why you run away from us anyway?” Will asked suddenly, after finishing his first glass.
“He wanted to die under the cherry blossoms, right where he first met Grandma,” Will’s father answered for him. “You’d be sitting there right now, literally freezing to death. Hah!”
“If it weren’t for you lot, I’d be watching a thousand missiles tearing out of the ground In real!” the old man shot back.
The broadcast of the First Contact didn’t go live until early evening. Before that, the two Jacksons and their father-in-law—the ones who hadn’t been chosen for Father Walter’s bunker—had accepted the fact that the end was coming and decided to drink everything in the bar alongside the rest of the “losers.” They watched the screen with great fear. With the world supposedly minutes from burning, celebrities and politicians had filled the airwaves with their deepest, darkest sins. They’d confessed to everything: the secret parties, the private islands, the actual slavery. It was a crazy show of horrible things.But as the “Apocalypse” was canceled because of a missed asteroid, the laughter in the bar turned very loud. Every one of those stars from shelter was now trying to take back what they said at light speed, desperately trying to claim their admissions of bad behavior were just “social experiments” or a “joke.”
“Will... tell me something,” his father muttered, looking hard at the television. He leaned in so close to the screen his nose nearly touched the glass. “Am I that drunk? Or do the aliens... why do they look Eastern?”
“Pops, I swear, it’s a prank,” the son said slowly, his head hanging. He was totally plastered. “He look just like one of the guys from BST. We both just seein’ things. We gone.”
Suddenly, the video glitched and died. In its place appeared the President’s face, preparing for another speech to the nation from his reinforced hole in the ground.
“Change the channel! Get that trash off the screen!” a voice shouted from the shadows of the bar, followed by a crumpled chip bag flying toward the TV.
“Come on, he’s the ‘Father of the Country,’ let’s see what he—” The bartender’s voice died out under the collective, angry gaze of the room. He cleared his throat and reached for the remote. “Yeah, forget it. Nobody wants to see that clown.”
He clicked through the stations, but there was no escaping it. Others channel, from the 24-hour news to the baking competitions, had been taken over by the same live feed: the strange meetings in the dust of Area 67.
