60 DAYS TO IMPACT

The Egg is about the size of a photo booth and pure white.

When it was first noticed in a remote part of the Utah desert, the initial assumption was that it was alien in origin. Then reality set in that it was far more mundane like an art installment. After some plucky Redditor publicized its location, the site was inundated with a slew of social influencers, spring breakers and TV crews.

It was photographed, filmed and clambered over. Graffiti artists sprayed like crazy, as if marking their territory like foxes, but no ink or paint would ever stick. Hammers were banged creating no dents. Keys scored its surface without a scratch. Guns were unloaded with zero damage. At that point the government’s interest became absolute.

With a military-enforced perimeter, scientists moved in to investigate. The people were furious, like alts when their underground artist goes mainstream. Unable to get past the square-mile cordon, forum chat turned hostile to what became dubbed ‘Area 52’, never mind there was already an Area 52 in existence.

Nonetheless the scientific tests which trickled out captivated attention. X-Rays, neutron imaging, ultrasound, all tests suggested the Egg was solid. There were no electromagnetic or radiation signatures from the object. All attempts at moving the Egg failed, even rolling it, which seemed logical considering its oval shape. The thing’s mass and density were incalculable. Despite the simple name given by the public, the scientists designated it as IO-03 - Immovable Object 03. Which led to a more worrying question of what became of IO-01 and IO-02.

In short, evidence suggested that not only was the Egg not of our world, it was possibly not even of our universe.

Then it opened.

It just opened, and lo and behold, the Egg was hollow.

As the scientific community floundered under pressure from the government and society at large for answers, details were released, like drips of water fed to a hamster in a cage. There were no features, controls or markings inside. No force exerted from inside could move the object. All previously conducted tests on the exterior bore the same results from within. One human only could fit inside. Whenever someone entered the Egg, its interior lining would billow out and form around the person in support like a chair. This would not happen with monkeys, rats, mice or (more bizarrely) fruit flies. What this lining was made of was still under review.

Whatever videos were released went viral instantaneously. Viewers pored over every milisecond, trying to glean some explanation.

Then the comet was discovered.

Just days after the Egg opened up, an amateur astronomer noticed a body that wasn’t there before. Emanating from the constellation of Canis Major, and not far from the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, amateur astronomers all over the world aimed their telescopes.

It appeared all too fantastical…some Finnish schmuck working at a paper company near Helsinki noticing a new comet. But with modern technology, constantly updating software, and obsessive stargazers with no social life, it actually made sense that an amateur would be first. Of course, it didn’t make much news, what with the interest around the Egg.

Until someone shared calculations which plotted its course colliding with earth. Official scientists vocally dismissed this.

But by then, the international community of astronomers had combined as one non-political force that they could no longer ignore. So it was reluctantly announced that yes, there was a comet named Kali heading for us (the Finnish discoverer given the prize of naming it was a death-metal-loving yoga aficionado, and insisted on that name instead of his own). But they would not confirm absolutely that it would hit us.

Pretty soon people remarked on how odd that the Egg opened just as the comet was discovered. But we were told that was just coincidence. The comet had probably been around for thousands of years, and being so small its perturbation and orbit may never have been picked up before the modern era. Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, which orbited Jupiter before crashing into the giant planet, was often touted as a prime example of a celestial body that confounded previously upheld beliefs that all comets orbit the sun.

As days passed, and wild theories about the end of the world gathered momentum on the worldwide web, answers were demanded. Not just in the USA but around the world. For the first time in history, the common citizens of the Earth united as one to be told the truth. And the truth came, and it hurt. As the news sank in that the comet’s velocity and angle of approach would create an ELE - Extinction Level Event - it was like a dark blanket settled over the globe. A numb shock.

I recall days waking up each morning, joyful for a split second, before remembering we were all going to die. I’d lie in bed, just looking up at the ceiling, wondering whether there was any point getting out of bed. Whether there was any point in going to college. Whether there was any point going into my new security job at Silcate Tech Ltd to make money for a college course I was never going to be able to take.

But it got me out of the house. Away from the heartache seeing my mom shudder with those stealth sobs she tried to hide but couldn’t mask her reddened eyes. Away from my dad who questioned my abandoning mom each day for work. After he’d questioned me taking the pointless job in security. After he’d questioned my taking a year out to make money before college. After he’d questioned me opting to study theology instead of a career in law enforcement in his footsteps. At nineteen years of age I decided I had no more answers to his questions.

“If they stopped the planet, Kali would hit the other side instead of us.”

As Sly said it all of us choked on our beer.

“You know what, Sly?” Jermaine says. “I can never tell if you’re the most stupid person on the planet or the greatest comedian.”

It’s after noon, and a few of us are up here on the roof of Silcate Tech Ltd enjoying a remarkably hot sun and a cold Bud. Sly is staring up at a random point on the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. We’ve already told him Kali is approaching from the other side of the globe, but I think any general perception of physics is lost on him.

“Hey homes,” Rico calls out to him. “You do realize if the planet stopped you’d go - fyooo - flying off.”

To get his point across he bolts down the dregs of his Bud and lobs the empty bottle far into space. Of course, unlike Sly, a glass bottle has no option but to follow the law of dynamics and hurtles to the ground, out of sight behind a neighboring office block. An unseen cry follows the tinkling of glass and I’m tempted to call him out for a) littering and, more importantly, b) possibly killing someone. But Jermaine jumps in first.

“Sly’s got so much shit in his system he’s already flying.”

Rico and he laugh, but Sly turns on Jermaine. He’s got that pinpoint stare again.

“Yo nigga what you mean I’m full of shit?”

I can see this turning nasty.

“He meant drugs, man, not shit,” Rico says, moving swiftly into Sly’s Kali-like threatening path.

Jermaine tenses up in the executive office chair, one of many we’ve hoisted up onto the gravelly roof. Unlike caucasian Sly and Latino Rico, African-American Jermaine’s no hoodlum. Sly acts more hood than Jermaine could ever be. One thing I’ve learned in my short time on earth is how the color in race only colors our perceptions of race.

“Come on guys,” I say, ever the peacemaker. “If you’re gonna fight can you just leave it a couple of months?”

Jermaine’s laugh is nervous but Rico, being the dick he is, echoes my appeal to Sly, completely missing the irony. Sly’s nostrils flare, his eyes still mad on Jermaine, but he saunters away like he’s cruising into a joint’s bullpen.

The atmosphere is still tense when gunfire erupts. We rush to the building edge, three stories up, and look over the rooftops.

“Yo, dog, some crew’s having a smash!” Rico whoops.

Machine gun fire is peppered with shotgun blasts. I make out a lone Uzi mixed with other small arms.

“Sounds like it’s coming from Sycamore,” Sly says, agitated and sniffling, sawing a finger to and fro under his nostrils. “Damn, I got a bitch over there dealing for me.”

When he says dealing he means chemicals. Silcate Tech construct their own PCBs here (for security reasons, apparently) and like most printed circuit boards, they use toxic chemicals. There’s a supply in the basement none of us have need of, except Sly of course. From what the rest of us have pieced together about Sly’s activities, he’s been experimenting like an amateur Dr Jekyll to create his own narcotics, then making deals at the gate when he thinks nobody’s looking. He exchanges for less lethal drugs. Sly isn’t stupid enough to use his own concoctions, so God only knows how many desperate fools have died in excruciating pain using one of his cocktails.

After a minute or so the gunfire stops. Either they’ve run out of ammo or run out of blood.

Sycamore Estates is the nearest cluster of houses, about a click away. Silcate Tech is nestled among a bunch of other nondescript factories and wholesalers, straddling the Scripps Poway Parkway in a little valley basin, thirty kilometers northeast of San Diego proper. Another reason we stay put here is that San Diego, like most cities in America, have become lawless hellholes. But that chaos looks to be spreading uncomfortably closer to home.

Rico, Jermaine and Sly drift away but I stay put. The highway that cuts through Scripps is usually dead, but now a truck rattles along, its flatbed crammed with folk. Refugees, getting away from the west coast and heading inland for the mountains, probably.

Opinions clash on ways to survive the coming Apocalypse Day. A surefire way isn’t to head toward ground zero in the Arizona desert, on which path this lonely caravan seems intended. More likely it’s a mix of Mexicans and Americans, trying to avoid the city on a roundabout trip to Otay Mesa or Tecate. The Tijuana crossing is way too packed.

My dad thought it a macabre irony. As a youth he had to sneak across the border into the States for a better life. Now Americans are trying to sneak into Mexico for a better death.

So many people fleeing the Egg, where Kali is set to make landfall in sixty days. But I can’t fault this natural human reaction to seek any manner of potential survival. It’s flight or fight.

But there would be no escaping the massive land-wave, a tsunami of rock traveling almost as fast as the speed of sound. No concrete bunker of any depth could survive that. But those lucky enough - or rather, rich enough - had already gone underground.

Those luckier and richer, the billionaires, were set to take a trip into space. Even though scientists explained the resulting atmospheric wave and planet debris would most probably destroy the craft like a yacht in a tornado. And secondly, even if they did survive and could negotiate re-entry past the thick, acrid smoke and a magnetosphere in disarray, whatever they returned to would be a nightmare landscape. Tectonic plates broken asunder with oceans of magma and geysers of lava a thousand feet high.

With that in mind, it was clear why most of humanity had resigned to their fate…this was the end of the world.

The door to the roof suddenly burst open, smacking the hot tin roof. Mike was there, sweating and puffing with the effort of the stairs.

“Guys, you gotta come see this!” he gasped. “They’re storming the Egg.”