Armageddon out of here

As you will no doubt have noticed, the world is presently in the throes of a severe drought of lugubrious insipidness. I mean, am I the only borné gadfly paying attention to the on-off situation as regards the threat from space of armageddonistic debris?

I tell you, I’ve trawled through all the best journals – Hung Drawn Quarterly, Humanist Gossip, Amnesia Review – and found virtually no reference to this likely and cataclysmic event. It’s as if the world of quality publishing is being run by the Zimbabwean government.

So prepare yourself for a shock. The future, I’m afraid, might well be orange – the standard colour scheme for lava flows – as mankind, bless it, is likely to go the way of the dinosaur and either be wiped out by an asteroid strike, melted by the sun, or, worse, evolve into birds.

Yes, that’s right, we at the Viennese Institute of Cosmological Paranoia have been working 24/7 over the last few weeks, clocking the movements, trajectories and overtime slips in the dark, mysterious and mentally challenging world of space junk monitoring. As part of a select group of the world’s leading neurotics, I have been uniquely placed to swoon every time someone adds a coordinate to the wall chart.

My exorbitantly-priced doctorate in Armageddon Studies has allowed me to bring an intellectual rigour to the world of unavoidable catastrophe, the like of which Buster Keaton could only dream. I am widely known at the Institute as ‘Du lieber Gott, er hat heute unser bureau besucht’, a nickname I treasure so dearly I have sewn it to the back of my radiation suit.

My first contribution was a groundbreaking work, The Annihilation of the Universe: an office memo, which is now languishing in the inbox of Bartleby the office temp. Employed to distribute such blue-sky missives, Bartleby is uninterested in pulling his weight and forever “prefers not to”. I can only hope mankind forgives him when the galaxy implodes and my ten-point plan for restoring upholstery is unavailable.

Since then my pricey skills have been called upon once more. I am proud to divulge that I have been commissioned – with great honour and little more pressure put on me than the standard application of a nose wrench – to prepare a short fictional episode, outlining the probable political response to an impending asteroid strike or the total collapse of the solar system.

Here is a preliminary taster of my report.

Scene: The meeting room of the World’s 131st Elected Council and Hereditary Peers. The room hovers fifty feet above the ground, for no reason other than it can (technology being so futuristic and all).

The members are sharpening laptops, changing the cartridges of their brains, and vacuuming their hair in preparation for an emergency session. The year is 200,002 (Muslim year 2002) and already the crop reports look poor.

Enter the council leader, dressed in Levi’s Afghan Silks, who proceeds to hammer the table electronically (the details on this are sketchy).

Council Leader: Ladies, ladies! Pipe down all of you. Today’s emergency session is taken from the book of Windows 2000, verses 58 and 59. Please state your business.

Anwhat Nowdear (representative of the Recently Decorated, sponsors include the Union of Colander Manufactures and The Teddy Bears Picnic Lobby): Sister Leader, what does the council propose to do about helping secure a forty-eight hour cease-fire in the Gaza strip. Any new suggestions?

(Collective sigh. Raspberries blown.)

Council Leader: Sister Nowdear, please. Try to be realistic. That, for once, is not why we are here. Ladies, I’m afraid to tell you all that the world is about to end.

(The general sound of dinner plans being cancelled)

Daisy Cutter (representative of the mid-west region of the US empire, and conservative dresser): Now listen up Curly Sues, we ain’t gonna stand for all this devil-talk. What’s the world gonna end of, I ask y’all?

Council Leader (adjusting her earpiece): She said what? Are you sure you’re a translator? Oh, right, it was a question. (An authoritative cough blows from her throat) Sister Cutter, I’ll be blunt. The universe is expanding, the sun is about to swallow us up, there is no carbon dioxide left, and the world is sitting directly in the path of an asteroid that is hurtling through space at the speed of smell. Things look pretty grim. Allah knows how we’re gonna spin this one!

Hilda Klyme (representative of the People’s movement of TV stereotypes, sponsors include the Democratic Movement for Oprah Winfrey): What’s the big deal here? If you ask me, which you didn’t, this is all a lot of fuss over nothing. I motion we discuss this season’s accessories range, then plait each other’s hair. Asteroid schmasteroid!

(Cheers and jeers abound)

Eileen Dover-Anhitmehed (lone representative of male opinion (as stated in select polls)): We must stop this evil planet fragment, however cute it is. I suggest, on behalf of my men, the use of nuclear weapons.

Lao Der-Pleese (representative of the Worker’s Republic of Summit Catering): Not again! Weren’t you the honey who suggested we drop an H-bomb on that Olympic skier, just because she went the wrong side of that slalom flag?

Eileen Dover-Anhitmehed: Er, that was completely different. Hand me a pretzel.

Nwhen Exatleezat (representative of the United States of Mugabe): Sister Eileen is right. We gotta hit this astiroad wiv evryving we got. Giv it to ’em good. These astorides, they understand the barrel of a gun, you know? Whose got a gun handy?

Council Leader (sheepishly): I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that ladies. To tell the truth, we’re at a bit of a loss in the old weaponry department. (She waves a doorstop of a report above her head, spraining her wrist) I hold in my hand a few pieces of paper that will secure the destruction of humanity. This is the latest report on stockpiles and weapon-dumps, a magnificent work of visionary scope and poetic ambition.

It says, mothers and sisters, that in the gun, missile and ammunition department we are militarily moribund. The only thing piling our stocks are rotting common garden varieties. We’ve got flowers, but no guns. Daisies, rhododendrons, chrysanthemums – you name it, we got wilting beds of ’em. Missiles, defence shields, or night-vision goggles – er, nada. We are left with no option: we’re gonna have to negotiate with this asteroid. In short, we’re for it.

Bendizir Onziswan (representative of Patriotic Diasporas and campaigner against the pornographic subjection of men): But what happened to all the nukes? They can’t all have been used to power that Council cruising holiday.

Council Leader: We sold them, remember? How do you think we’ve got such comfortable chairs?

(Chants of ‘Nuke the Roid’ and ‘Nuke the Asto’ fill the room, until it descends into a brawl over which is the choicest abbreviation)

Council Leader (her finger teetering on the water sprinkler trigger): Ladies, let’s not get hysterical. We’re just gonna have to buy them back, that’s all. (She gestures to an android standing behind her) This is M – or m for short – head of Global Security ServicesTM. M, the intelligence reports please.

M (Sponsors include Burger Hut and the ‘All You Can Eat Chinese’ lobby): Humans, I’ll be brief with this brief. The fact is that the world’s entire collection, and collector’s editions, of nuclear warheads are currently in the possession of N. Ron Buggard, leader of the Church of Cryptic Accountancy, and the world’s best-loved terrorist and corporate loophole finder.

Kay Oss (representative of the ungoverned): May the eschatological force not be with us!

Pam Demonium (representative of the ungovernable): There’ll be no escape this time!

Anne Extra (identity unknown): Er… I’ve forgotten my lines. (She flees the scene)

(Enter Si Ensnutt, Gloom Predictor Royal, known affectionately as ‘The Big Crunch’)

Anwhat Nowdear: It’s a man. A man! In the World Council! Whatever next?

Si Ensnutt: OK, so who watches my TV show? (Silence) Yeah, I guess that 5am slot is a turn-off eh?

Council Leader: Look boffin-boy, stop self-promoting and tell us something useful, we’ve got a crisis to be getting on with.

Si Ensnutt (ditching his leather jacket and flexing his lab goggles): Ah, right. Well, let’s start with the basics. Any one of us could be randomly smashing an atom, when a subatomic particle is released that would eat the planet inside out. And Lord knows, who here hasn’t been party to the odd random quantum fluctuation, are you kidding? Fortunately, we at the Centre for Swinging Particles have been watching these Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and have come up with a beautifully compromising conclusion.

All (eagerly): What’s that?

Si Ensnutt: We’ve got to find the Archimedean point, and lever the earth towards one of our ‘multiverse’ neighbours. Now true, most of these are lifeless, but who here’s ever been to Texas? It could be worse, couldn’t it?

(A long silence is interrupted by a few gulps, before the light fades and a curtain comes down on mankind)

THE END (of the world as we know it)