The Darwin Variant Read online

  Sure ’nough I seen her gettin’ off the bus up the corner right then, so I hustled Scooter round the side. It always ’mazed me how Claire’s nurse scrubs still looked all sky blue and fresh as a daisy even after her twelve-hour shift. Then I seen Poppa off in the distance, drivin’ home in his old Ford sedan. That damn car wuz older than me. But that’s the sorta man Poppa wuz. Ol’ Joseph Hartman never spent a penny on anything he didn’ ab-so-lutely need to. Wore the same damn wire-rimmed glasses twenty years. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with ’em, James boy. Don’t need to get me no new ones.” All his janitor uniforms wuz years old, too. At work they called him a “custodian,” but a janitor’s a janitor, know what I’m sayin’? My poppa, Joseph, was a janitor. But he worked hard, I give him that. And he taked good care of his clothes. Poppa said he liked the routine of washin’ and ironin’ ’em. He’d always shared the housework with Momma, then taked it all over in the nine years since she’d died o’ that mellynoma cancer shit.

  Poppa’d lived in this same house for most of his fifty-seven years; since he wuz a kid hisself. Always talkin’ ’bout how he’d watched the neighborhood tryin’ hard to hold its own ’gainst the poverty and violence. Poppa always said how there wuz too much graffiti, too many drug deals, not enough love. He worked hard to “increase the peace” round here. Said he wuz like some dude called Sissypuss: he kept pushin’ this king-size rock toward the top of the hill, prayin’ that this time it might stay up there. Poppa felt it just might, if he had hisself enough faith.

  Churchy stuff always been the big thang in Poppa’s life. “My cornerstone and my anchor,” he’d say. Me? I bailed on all that “God is good” crap after Momma died. If God’s so goddamn good, how come he taked Momma away when I just turned ten? Made me spittin’ mad. But Poppa kep’ holdin’ on. Just like most bad thangs ever happened in his life, he figured this big-ass comet comin’ wuz some kinda Bible deal. He warn’t the only one. Lotsa folks sayin’ that, since them news people kept on blabbin’ how the damage to Earth’d be cat-ass-trophic. Gonna be “global, biblical per-portions.” If ya could believe that shit. Which I didn’.

  But Poppa did. He called it Ar-mag-geddon. On the news you’d see them in-your-face videos ’bout it. The comet wuz big as that mountain Everest. They said a bullet goes less than two thousand miles an hour, but this sucker’s gonna hit the atmosphere at almost sixty-four thousand! It wuz gonna “impact ’gainst the planet with an ex-plosive force of a hun’erd million megatons of TNT.” Which wuz obviously a shitload.

  And that wuz gonna make this damn shock wave that’d flatten ever’thing inside of two hundred miles, and “wreak untold diz-aster beyond that.” Like vaporize stone that’d blast a hole right up through the atmosphere. Then them vaporized rocks’d get cool and turn back into zillions of tiny ones, which’d burn up when they come fallin’ back down as meaty-o-rites, heatin’ the air up till it glowed pink. It’d be so goddamn hot that steam’d come boiling out of green leaves, and buildings all gonna burst into flame. And the gasses in the air’d mix up together to make rain like battery acid.

  But that warn’t all. They talked about this here plume of dust and ashes that’d wrap around the world like a thick blanket, makin’ it real dark all the time and which’d ramp up global warmin’, melt them polar caps so the oceans’d rise up and sweep a thousand miles inland.

  Shee-it. But I mean, c’mon. Sound to me like some crazy-ass superhero movie. Too gi-normous to believe. ’Cept they said shit like this happened bunches of times before there wuz people. Said last time Earth got hit by somethin’ like this wuz sixty million years ago. Said that’s what created the Gulf o’Mexico, killed off the dinosaurs. The scientists said ol’ Earth’d survive. But “unfortunately civilization would not.” Our ass wuz gonna be grass.

  Poppa, Claire, an’ me’d seen lotsa stuff on the news, like when the U-nited Nations had them ’mergency sessions? We knew they wuz all gettin’ together to build some big-ass rockets to shoot down the comet with nukes before it smacked into us.

  Claire, she wuz five years older’n me and always a goody-goody. She thought they might just be able to do it. She wuz usually right ’bout science stuff. But Poppa wuz different. He said he wuz just gonna keep his faith placed way higher than the U-nited Nations. He wuz a soft-spoke’ man from old-school Jaw-juh. Sometimes when I wuz a kid, and him and me wuz drivin’ someplace late—like home from seein’ Momma at the hospital—he’d think I wuz asleep, but I’d hear him whisperin’, havin’ these heart-to-hearts with Jesus. He always had hisself a little plastic Jesus on the dashboard. He didn’t push religion on most people, though. Other than me. Particularly after I turned thirteen and started gettin’ busted for different shit. Lotsa times he called me his prodigal son. Said he had faith in me finally findin’ my path, seein’ the light. Gotta admit, even when I wuz the world’s biggest asshole, Poppa wuz patient, sweet to me. But Claire? Woo-eee. She wuz just a bantamweight, little brunette, but I mean to tell ya, she’s a tough chick. Always bustin’ my balls, peckin’ at me in her snooty, nursey way, sayin I was showin’ all the promise of becomin’ white trash. She ’bout chewed me a new asshole when I dropped outta school. But I hated it there. Ain’t never been back.

  With only a few months t’go before the comet hit, Poppa’s talk wuz mostly ’bout the book of Rev-e-lations. Seemed like his only big hope wuz if nothing else, my “wayward heart might be turned round to embrace and accept Jesus ’fore the ’Pocalypse come down on us.”

  That day I heard Claire callin’ out to him as he drived up. “Poppa, come here. Got something to show you.” She was fishin’ in that ol’ carpetbag purse o’hers. I told Scooter he best buzz off. I’d pop down to his place later to get the de-tails ’bout them TVs. He did, and I watched Poppa get outta the car.

  He wuz pushin’ sixty, but could work harder and longer than men half his age. Hair wuz gettin’ thinner, though, and grayer. Ever since we heard ’bout the comet. Claire give him a hug. She wuz always doin’ that, even if she wuz just goin’ down the street a minute.

  I watched from round side the house as Poppa leaned down toward the left front tire and sniffed, sayin’, “Think we might be needin’ some new pads. Brakes feel kinda mushy.”

  Claire shaked her head. “World may be coming to an end, and that’s what you’re worried about?”

  Poppa gave a little sigh. “That and your brother.” Then he seed somethin’ in her hand. “Whatcha got there, missy?”

  “Binoculars. Dr. Bleifer loaned ’em to me. Come here, and I’ll show you.” Claire pulled him round the magnolia tree to where they could get a view o’the sky over Atlanta. It wuz gettin’ twilighty. She looked through them binoculars a second and said, “Okay. There it is.” She passed ’em to him. “Take a look, Poppa. Right over the Hendersen’s chimney there. Then up a pinch above the buildings downtown.” He looked through ’em out at the sky.

  “What am I lookin’ for, honey?” Poppa axed.

  “Faint little smudge of light.”

  “Okay . . . oh, yeah. I see it. And that’s it?” Poppa said, curious-like.

  Claire took her a long slow breath. “Yes, Poppa . . . that is it.”

  “Why, honey, it looks like it’s pointin’ sideways, not comin’ at us!” He got real hopeful. “Praise Jesus! You gonna tell me it done changed direction or—!?”

  “No, Poppa”—I’d heard her ’splain it to him before—“the tail always points away from the sun, remember? But it’s still coming right at us.”

  Poppa kept lookin’ at it while Claire looked at him. I seen she wuz hurtin’, like she hated the thought o’them losin’ each other. Then she glanced at the house and caught me watchin’. I made like I wuz just seein’ ’em and bopped on over. “Yo, y’all.”

  Claire blew out that sour puff of hers. I knowed it real good. She told me more’n once ’bout her nurse trainin’ sayin’ how humans wuz 90 percent water, but she always said I wuz 90 percent attitude. She didn’t get that I wuz proud of that. Go
t my high-tops with the laces untied, got my baggy black jeans barely hangin’ on my hips, got me a dope collection of cool in-your-face T-shirts, got my wraparound sunglasses, my blond hair spiked up slick. Man, I wuz all style and ’tude, and I liked it. Shit, I wuz free, white, and nineteen, know what I’m sayin’? But Claire just didn’t get it. And I loved to needle her. “S’up, my peeps?”

  She shaked her head. “Got a long way to go with your white-boy impression of black gangsta rap, James Joseph.”

  “Jimmy-Joe to you.” I grinned at her, then axed, “What y’all lookin at?”

  Claire nodded toward the skyline. “The comet. They said we’d be able to really see it about now, and there it is.”

  Poppa handed them binoculars to me. I looked and then I seen it, too. Kinda made me freeze up a mite. ’Course I seen lotsa photos of it on the TV, but seeing it for real with my own eyes that first time . . . I dunno . . . kinda creeped me out. I looked over at Poppa. He wuz still gazin’ out toward where it was, kinda half whisperin’, “Sweet Jesus . . . Is this gonna be your Last Judgment?”

  I smirked. “Aw, Pop. Ain’t no damn Judgment. Lotsa folks sayin’ it probably won’t even come near us. Just more scientist crap like that climate change horseshit.”

  Claire looked her daggers at me. “What if it’s not, James Joseph?”

  I just chuckled. “They gonna send up them rockets. Blow it all to hell!”

  Claire started gittin’ in my face. “And what happens if the rockets don’t do the job, Jimmy-Joe?” She made my name sound like so much dog shit.

  So I threw it right back at her. “Then you just better put your head ’tween your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.” I chortled at her.

  But Claire’s eyes wuz drillin’ right into me. “What happens, James?”

  I jus’ stared right back at her. And heard Poppa sayin’ real quiet, “And he said that the next time the world gonna end in fire.” Poppa wuz still starin’ off at the sky, then looked kinda sideways at me. “I’m tellin’ ya true, Jimmy: you better get yourself right with God.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay.” I give him a little fist pop on the shoulder as I started t’go. “I’ll check in with him.” I didn’t look at Claire, but I felt them hazel eyes of hers borin’ into my back. So I just stretched a little, casual-like, like it didn’ make no nevermind, and headed off t’Scooter’s.

  But when I got down round the corner where they couldn’t see me, I did sneak me another look up at the sky. It wuz gettin’ darker. I couldn’t see that sucker with just my eyes.

  But I knew it wuz out there. Headin’ this way. And I couldn’t git it outta my head.

  Concetta Cordaro. . .

  As I worked every day in my cramped office at MIT, I’d glance out at the Harvard Bridge, at the people and traffic moving back and forth over the Charles River. All those people. All their personal stories. All their lives hanging in the balance.

  Every astrophysicist I knew personally, and thousands more, were continually revising the calculations when we got any new shred of data. One of the more peculiar discoveries was that Avery’s mass was larger than it had been on its previous appearance sixty-five years ago. The comet had actually grown slightly in size by nearly a kilometer while out in deep space. That suggested its orbit had been altered by an actual collision with an asteroid. Or another comet.

  Or something unknown.

  And a portion of that something had essentially melded into Avery and become part of it, made it an even larger projectile coming at us.

  By April the probability of collision had risen to 82 percent. Avery had passed the halfway point from where it was when I first saw it, and its velocity was increasing slightly more than expected.

  I found myself constantly imagining what it looked like out there. I knew that as it gained proximity to the sun, its tail had grown thousands of miles longer from the increasing intensity of the solar wind. The ice crystals close to the surface of the comet’s mountainous head would be sublimating more fiercely and chaotically, like some hellish cauldron.

  From where the comet was now, the earth would no longer appear to be just another point of light in the starry universe. Earth would already be discernible as what the great astronomer Carl Sagan had poetically called “a pale blue dot,” tiny and vulnerable among the stars.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: 04/22/20 17:42:23 ZULU

  Subject: REVISED Draft Press Statement for UN Gen Assembly Presentation

  Ron—

  See my attached notes, bolded, underlined, and incorporated into your draft.

  Be sure to make all indicated changes. I will need to review the final before you go with it.

  BL

  Chief Administrator, NASA

  300 E St. SW, Washington, DC 20546

  (202) 358-0000

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: 04/22/20 15:06:51 ZULU

  Subject: Draft Press Statement for UN Gen Assembly Presentation

  Dear Ben . . .

  Attached is the draft press release I’m suggesting to accompany your presentation at the UN day after tomorrow. Please give me any notes, additions, or changes—bolded and underlined—you want to make ASAP so we can have it ready.

  Thnx.

  NASA Office of Information—Statement from UN Home Run Session 2 (Abstract)

  For Immediate Release

  Today Dr. Benjamin Lancaster of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office again addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Dr. Lancaster updated the member nations about the scope and complexity of Operation Home Run, the international effort underway being spearheaded by NASA to destroy or deflect Comet Avery before it can impact Earth in two months and seventeen sixteen days. Dr. Lancaster prepared his remarks with the assistance of [list to be finalized and included].

  Dr. Lancaster introduced and thanked the other scientists from the US, the UK, the EU, Russia, and China who were seated nearby. He said they represented tens of thousands of their fellow scientists and technicians who had all been working tirelessly since the discovery of the impending disaster.

  He then reiterated how the launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center, Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Jiuquan Space City and Hainan Island complexes in China, and the European Space Agency’s French Guiana launch area were working 24/7 to prepare for launching missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. He announced that the original total of 21 missiles had been reduced to 20 17 due to production or subcontractor difficulties, but that smaller number would should not affect the outcome of the mission. He expressed great confidence that the mission would should indeed be a home run.

  One of the principal issues that had been hotly debated under discussion was the most advantageous sequence of missile launches. For example: Should the missiles be launched in separate waves so that if the first assault failed there could be a second and perhaps third attempt? That would seem wisely conservative wise and was clearly the favorite approach of many military advisors involved with the mission. But there were two problems: 1) Given the incoming speed of the comet, the window of opportunity for a successful strike was extremely short—literally only a few seconds; and 2) Any nuclear explosion from a first-wave missile could damage or incapacitate destroy any second-wave missile that was right behind it. (The Fratricide Problem.)

  Dr. Lancaster reminded the gathering that the comet’s head was mountainous. He said that many of his colleagues himself included felt strongly that all the missiles should reach the targets comet’s head simultaneously to have the maximum possible explosive power. Finally, it had been unanimously agreed that this was the best approach.

  Dr. Lancaster projected several images onto a viewing screen to explain how launching the missile fleet was a nea
rly impossible very complex mathematical challenge. Each missile was designated for a slightly different section of the comet which is five miles across. The rockets must all converge simultaneously, intercept the comet at exactly the same location astronomical coordinates, and detonate at precisely the same moment.

  But the rockets are not all the same type. Some will be faster than others. And they will be launched from six very different places on the planet. Not only are some launch sites halfway around the world from each other, they were also at different latitudes distances north of the equator.

  That is a factor because for maximum efficiency rockets heading into space are generally launched to the east in an easterly direction to get an extra boost from the speed of Earth’s eastward rotation. But Earth’s rotation speed varies depending upon location: it is faster fastest at the equator, spinning at 1,037 miles per hour. Farther north at the Kennedy Space Center, situated at 28.5 degrees North Latitude, the rotation speed is only 916 miles per hour. And the Baikonur Cosmodrome, at 46 degrees, could provide a boost of only 720 miles per hour.

  Dr. Lancaster concluded his remarks by saying, “The world’s top astrophysicists and most powerful computers are laboring to compute the precise instant that each rocket must be launched from each location to achieve the required success. I again express my appreciation to them and to the tens of thousands of men and women around the world for the collaborative manner in which they are all working so desperately diligently to save our world.”

  END OF ABSTRACT

  For full transcript and digital image files contact [email protected]

  Courtesy NASA

  Clarence Frederick, 49, Everett Biochemical plant manager. . .

  It was about two weeks after that second UN announcement. I had just taken another Prilosec, trying to get my gastroesophageal reflux to calm down. Seemed like my stomach was always queasy now. I was definitely more nervous every single day as we counted down. I knew so many people must be feeling the same or worse. But not my wife, Simone. Through the lacy curtains in our front window, I saw her standing in our front yard, enjoying the balmy May evening. Like me, she was middle-aged. But she carried her age much better than I and certainly seemed much younger. She was looking through her tortoiseshell bifocals up into the evening sky over our West Atlanta neighborhood. It was a nice area, with sidewalks, clean streets, and well-tended yards. It was inviting, comfortable, a fine place for kids to grow up. Such a tragic shame that it would soon be catastrophically incinerated. And us along with it.