Asteroid

The asteroid was supposed to kill us on Thursday.

This was inconvenient because I had a dental appointment.

The appointment had been scheduled eleven weeks earlier, and the woman at the clinic had explained that cancellations made with less than twenty-four hours’ notice would incur a fee of sixty dollars. I considered calling to ask whether planetary extinction qualified as an exception, but the telephone network had stopped working approximately four minutes after the announcement.

I was therefore spared the conversation.

The asteroid was called 2034 QX7.

This was its name because no one had expected it to become important.

Important asteroids receive names from mythology. They are Apophis, Phaethon, Icarus. They carry the names of gods and doomed men as though the universe were a classical education conducted at high speed.

QX7 sounded like a toner cartridge.

It was eleven kilometers across.

According to the announcement, it had been concealed for most of its approach by the sun. An automated survey in Chile detected it at 4:12 in the morning. Three observatories confirmed the trajectory. At 6:30, the International Planetary Defense Council informed national governments. At 7:05, someone in one of those governments sent a message to his brother. His brother posted it. By 7:11, the end of human civilization had begun trending.

The official announcement followed at 7:40.

Impact was expected Thursday at 3:17 p.m. Coordinated Universal Time.

The location could not yet be determined.

The probability was given as ninety-seven percent.

Humanity spent the first hour arguing about the remaining three.

I watched the announcement in my kitchen.

My dog watched me.

His name was Miro. He was twelve years old, brown, broad in the chest and white around the eyes. He had lived with me since my wife died, although this phrasing gives the impression that he had applied for the position afterward. In fact, he had been hers. I merely became the surviving party to an agreement he had not negotiated.

The president appeared behind a lectern.

Scientists appeared behind the president.

The scientists looked frightened.

The president looked like a man trying to remember whether frightened presidents were permitted to look frightened.

Citizens were advised to remain calm, conserve fuel, avoid unnecessary travel and await further instructions.

“We will face this together,” he said.

This was obviously false.

We would face it in kitchens, bedrooms, cars, prisons, hospitals, airports, supermarkets, churches, bars, forests and whatever locations we happened to occupy at 3:17 on Thursday. Togetherness is a political description of simultaneous solitude.

Miro put his head on my knee.

“You don’t know,” I told him.

He moved his head farther onto my knee.

Dogs participate in catastrophe through the bodies of the people they love.

At nine, the electricity failed.

It returned at nine twelve.

The refrigerator began humming again. I took comfort in this, although there was no rational reason to preserve the yogurt.

I made coffee.

Then I called my daughter.

The call did not go through.

I tried again.

The screen displayed NETWORK CONGESTION.

This was technically accurate and spiritually inadequate.

My daughter’s name was Anna. She was thirty-seven. We had not spoken in eleven months.

This was not because of one event.

People prefer one event. One event can be apologized for, forgiven, explained in a letter or identified by a therapist using a phrase both parties agree to resent.

Anna and I had accumulated.

Her mother died.

I became quiet.

Anna became helpful.

I allowed her to become helpful because grief makes selfishness appear medical. She arranged the funeral, answered messages, cleaned the refrigerator, chose which of her mother’s clothes to donate and which I was not ready to see disappear. She came every Sunday for six months. Then every other Sunday. Then once a month.

I told myself she was rebuilding her life.

She told herself I was rebuilding mine.

Neither of us was building.

We were waiting for the other to place the next piece.

The argument, when it came, concerned a lamp.

The lamp was ceramic, blue, and ugly.

My wife had bought it during a trip to Lisbon. Anna wanted it. I said no.

“You hate that lamp,” she said.

“It belongs here.”

“Mom wanted me to have it.”

“She never said that.”

“She told me.”

“Then she should have told me.”

This was an exceptionally efficient sentence. It punished my dead wife, my living daughter and me at the same time.

Anna stared at me.

“Keep it,” she said.

She left.

The lamp remained on the table beside the sofa, where I continued hating it.

At ten fifteen, the telephone network briefly recovered.

I called Anna.

She answered immediately.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“The asteroid has not arrived.”

“I know.”

We were silent.

In ordinary circumstances, one of us would have ended the call.

The circumstances were not ordinary.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At home.”

“Alone?”

“Sam is here.”

Sam was her husband. I liked him, although I had never told him. He had the unnerving habit of asking direct questions and waiting through the discomfort that followed.

“Good,” I said.

“Are you alone?”

“Miro is here.”

“Dad.”

“Yes.”

“Are you alone?”

I looked at the dog.

“Yes.”

“Come here.”

“The roads—”

“Come here.”

“They’ve advised against unnecessary travel.”

“It is the end of the world.”

“That is why the roads will be dangerous.”

She laughed.

The sound entered my body before I understood it.

My shoulders lowered.

My throat tightened.

Love is often described as an idea because ideas are easier to discuss without embarrassment. In practice, love is muscular. It occurs in the chest, jaw, stomach, hands and the small tissues around the eyes. The explanations arrive later and take credit.

“I have the lamp,” I said.

“What?”

“Your mother’s lamp.”

“I know.”

“You can have it.”

“The world is ending and you’re giving me a lamp?”

“It seemed unresolved.”

“It was never about the lamp.”

“I know.”

I had not known.

The asteroid had improved me with suspicious speed.

“I should have called,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You could have called.”

“I did. For years.”

“After the argument.”

“Once.”

“That is not years.”

“No.”

We were quiet again.

The old argument stood between us, but the asteroid had made it smaller. This did not make it disappear. Perspective is not repair. It merely adjusts the apparent size of the damage.

“I love you,” I said.

There are sentences whose difficulty is unrelated to length.

Anna began crying.

I had not expected this.

I had expected relief, perhaps gratitude, perhaps a reciprocal declaration delivered with the dignified restraint of people reconciling at the end of civilization.

Instead, my daughter made a sound like an animal caught beneath something heavy.

“Anna?”

“You don’t get to do this now.”

“Do what?”

“Wait until there are two days left and become my father.”

The telephone network failed.

Her voice vanished.

I remained at the kitchen table holding a dark rectangle to my ear.

Miro waited.

“That went poorly,” I said.

He leaned against my leg.

The tree in the yard had been planted by the previous owner.

It was an ash, though I had called it an elm for eighteen years. My wife corrected me each time. After she died, I continued calling it an elm in conversation because accuracy felt like betrayal.

I went outside and sat beneath it.

Miro circled twice and lay against the trunk.

The neighborhood had become active.

A family across the street loaded their car. The man next door stood on his roof adjusting a telescope that would not help. Two teenagers rode bicycles down the center of the road, shouting that school had been canceled forever.

Mrs. Hart from number twelve carried a folding chair into her front yard and opened a bottle of champagne.

“Saving it?” I asked.

“For my seventieth.”

“When is that?”

“September.”

She drank from the bottle.

“Happy birthday.”

“You too.”

This made sense at the time.

I placed my hand against the tree.

The bark was warm from the sun.

The tree did not know about QX7. It had no opinion concerning extinction. It converted light, moved water, held soil, sheltered insects and dropped small branches into my gutter.

I envied it.

Not because it was safe.

Because it did not require safety to mean anything.

I had spent forty years teaching philosophy at a state university. I had explained purpose, freedom, moral responsibility, necessity, consciousness and death to rooms of people who mostly wanted to know whether the material would be on the examination.

I had taught Spinoza.

From the perspective of eternity, human catastrophe was neither catastrophe nor human. It was a rearrangement of matter observed from no position anyone could occupy.

I had taught Kant.

Morality existed because rational beings could choose obligation over appetite.

I had taught the Stoics.

Concern yourself with what is within your control.

None of this told me whether to call my daughter again.

Miro pushed his body against mine.

The dog had no metaphysics.

He was useful.

For the rest of Wednesday, humanity prepared.

Some people prayed.

Some people stole televisions.

This seemed an optimistic crime.

Governments opened shelters, although scientists explained that no shelter within the earth’s crust would matter near the impact. Airlines waived change fees. Streaming services removed advertisements. A luxury hotel chain announced complimentary late checkout.

At sunset, the location estimate narrowed to the Atlantic Ocean.

The probable effects were described.

Ocean displacement.

Atmospheric heating.

Seismic events.

Global firestorms.

Agricultural collapse.

The language remained technical until the final sentence.

Survival of complex human civilization is unlikely.

I slept badly.

At three in the morning, someone knocked.

Anna stood outside.

Sam was behind her carrying a bag. They had driven six hours through blocked roads and abandoned cars.

I opened the door.

My daughter looked at me.

I looked at her.

Then Miro pushed past my legs and greeted her with the emotional clarity neither of us possessed.

She knelt and held him.

“You got old,” she said into his fur.

“He has been working on it.”

She stood.

“I’m still angry.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t come because you said you loved me.”

“I know.”

“I came because I didn’t want you to die alone.”

“That is better.”

“It isn’t forgiveness.”

“I know.”

She entered the house.

Sam hugged me.

I did not resist.

We spent Thursday morning making breakfast.

The eggs were nearly expired. The bread had mold on one end. Sam cut the mold off. Anna said this was insufficient. They argued about fungal penetration while I made coffee.

At ten, the power failed permanently.

At eleven, we carried chairs beneath the ash tree.

Mrs. Hart joined us with the remaining champagne. The teenagers returned. The family across the street had abandoned its attempt to leave and brought a cooler.

Other neighbors arrived.

No one had organized the gathering. Organization had become unnecessary.

People spoke.

Then, gradually, they did not.

At 2:30, the sky remained blue.

At 2:45, birds continued behaving with offensive normality.

At 3:00, Anna took my hand.

This was the first time she had done so since she was a child.

Her palm was damp.

Mine was worse.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“Me too.”

“Do you think anything happens?”

I knew what she meant.

For decades, students had asked the same question using different language.

Does consciousness continue?

Is there a soul?

Does the self survive the body?

Is death an ending or a transition?

They wanted an answer from someone who had read more books.

Books are records of people not knowing.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Anna nodded.

The answer no longer disappointed her.

At 3:10, Miro stood and turned in a circle.

At 3:12, he lay down.

At 3:14, wind moved through the leaves.

At 3:15, everyone looked upward.

At 3:16, I felt Anna’s pulse in her hand.

At 3:17, nothing happened.

We waited.

At 3:18, nothing continued happening.

At 3:23, the teenagers began laughing.

At 3:31, a battery radio received a signal.

The trajectory had been corrected.

QX7 would pass Earth at a distance of four hundred and eighty thousand kilometers.

The original calculations had incorporated a timing error from one observatory and an incorrect estimate of the asteroid’s rotation. The ninety-seven percent probability had become zero.

There would be an inquiry.

There are mistakes large enough to become salvation.

No one in the yard knew what to do.

We had prepared to die.

We had not prepared to continue.

Mrs. Hart poured the last champagne.

“To September,” she said.

We drank.

The electricity returned that evening.

The refrigerator resumed humming.

Messages arrived.

Markets reopened.

Schools announced revised schedules.

The dental clinic sent a notice confirming that appointments would resume Monday and reminding patients of the cancellation policy.

Anna remained for three days.

On the second day, she took the blue lamp from the table.

“I still hate it,” I said.

“So do I.”

“Then why do you want it?”

“Because she did.”

This was not rational.

It was sufficient.

Before leaving, Anna stood beside her car.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“You take the lamp.”

“I mean us.”

The asteroid had departed.

The old scale returned.

Eleven months of silence became large again. The funeral, the Sundays, the lamp, the accusations, the years in which love had been present but resisted because expressing it would have required us to surrender the small protections built from injury.

The world had not ended.

This was good news.

It was also more work.

“Dinner next Sunday,” I said.

“You’ll call?”

“Yes.”

“Before Sunday.”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“No.”

She looked at me.

“I will call,” I said. “I will not make a ceremony of it.”

She smiled.

My body answered before I did.

After she left, I sat beneath the ash tree with Miro.

QX7 continued through space.

It had no knowledge of the terror it caused, the families it reunited, the crimes committed in its name, the champagne opened early, the confessions made under false conditions or the people now required to live with what they had said.

It was an object with mass and trajectory.

We supplied the meaning.

This is what humans do.

We arrive for reasons unknown to us. We move through systems we did not design. We alter what we touch. We describe the alteration in language and call the description purpose.

Perhaps we are nature’s mistake.

Perhaps consciousness is what matter does when it becomes capable of regretting its own trajectory.

I do not know.

I know the tree held my back.

I know the dog placed his head on my leg.

I know my daughter answered when I called her on Sunday.

For the moment, this was enough.