Writers Jam

When the scientists discovered the news, they plastered it over every remaining surface and screen on planet Earth. It was probably the second-to-last time humanity ever got together to experience the dread of something inescapable. The first bastions to fall were the empiricists with all the data at hand. It was irrefutable, of course. And they lost their minds without something to keep them tethered to life anymore.  

The next to go were the religious nuts, who were still skeptical of whatever the experts claimed, for it didn’t sit right with their beliefs. But once the asteroid started shining more and more in the morning sky, they couldn’t bury their heads in the sand any longer. They turned to their religious books and astrophysics to calculate how accurately their holy scripture had predicted The Impact, much better than any of the other doctrines. 

You called me asking me if I was free. What an absurd question. But I’m still grateful that you called when you did. Weeks later, when the comm lines were cut, I wished that I had trained the pigeons on my rooftop to send messages to my mom. 

I didn’t buy your proposal until you showed up at my building with two yellow bicycles in tow.
“The apocalypse is ours to see if you’d just ride along with me”  

I thanked the aunties who “lent you the cycles for the time being”. Bless their hearts, they still hoped for the day we’d come back and tell them about our travels. 

From the moment you pulled me out of my mental limbo, time started chasing us. We were hounded by ticking minutes in every turn that we took. People rushed around us in a nervous frenzy, unsure of how to proceed any further. Officegoers still clocked in to their desk jobs, crunching Q3 values, filing away receipts for a tax return that would never come. Bureaucrats still left at 5 pm, leaving mountains of unsigned forms in their wake.  Teachers still taught history to increasingly restless students. Societies moved for the sake of moving, because who would they be without a greater purpose to propel them? 

Somehow, there were still some untouched communities in the sticks. They looked at us with pity in their eyes when we passed through their areas, talking to townies when we stopped to rest. To them, we must have looked like the doomsday preppers we used to make fun of when the nukes threatened to go off, just a couple of years earlier. Now, even when the end was nigh, the skirmishes hadn’t stopped. They became worse with the general public scrambling to secure their resources and fates for the remainder of time. But somehow, no country dared to wage wars with threats of bombing till destruction anymore. Nobody wanted to waste time, money, and goodwill when the universe and fate were already playing a joke in the making. So, to them, the world still had fights, Apophis was still growing in size, but at least fewer people were dying out on the battlefields. 

I looked over to my right, and you were still basking in the sunlight on top of a rock. You had been lying there like that for the past hour, and I kept checking to see if you were breathing. For some reason, I couldn’t stop myself from worrying that you might not make it to see the inevitable heat death of our universes. I had to make sure that we were both alive and together. I don’t think I would have made it out of my apartment if you hadn’t shown up looking for me. 

All our days merged into slow-moving molasses of unending conversations. In the afternoons, we would leave our shack to trek to the waterfall nearby, and we’d stay there until Apophis became the only dazzling light in the sky. We’d recollect all the things we had seen together, talk about the people we had met before. Cataloguing our individual memories was a bit harder. Childhoods and anything we had left behind were still sore topics to be maneuvered around. 

I should have told you that my childhood bedroom had cherry blossom decals. I would’ve loved to know about how your sister made the best pancakes on Sunday mornings. We tried to save each other the pain of reminiscing, and yet nothing mattered in the end.  

There were still people who didn’t give in to the all-consuming nihilism that gripped both of us. When the hordes of doomsday cults “ascended”, the world still kept turning for the others. In their eyes, we were no different. But they treated us better since our deadline was still due, and we refused to take matters into our own hands. They still farmed and danced in festivals. They invited us over sometimes, picking our brains over hot bowls of food. They knew it was all going to go up in smoke and ashes, and they still painted portraits of each other. I respected the hell out of them for keeping it together, believing in and serving the community that they had built for themselves. But I don’t think I ever understood their fortitude and their spirit until the very end. 

I’m reminded of Pompeii and the nuclear bombs that did go off. All throughout childhood, I was misled into believing that their deaths were instant and painless. No one told me that apart from the people at the point of contact, everyone else suffered. They suffered as no one would again for hundreds of years. Mothers shielded their children from oncoming lava floods. Youngsters tried to carry the infirm to safety while they were suffocated by toxic fumes. Entire cities were brought down brick by brick as people dropped to their knees in various states of distress. The victims banded together, creating visceral images of human desperation that I recall tonight. 

Earlier, I saw that stray puppy chase after butterflies, hopping around in the bright glow of a thousand splendid suns. I made pancakes with the berries the farmers gave us yesterday. You drew on all of our remaining clothes and hung them out to dry. We made love until it was exhausting to even think of another round. I still wanted to reach out to kiss you until our throats parched and gave way.

As I’m lying here holding you, I commit your features to my memory. I know that I would never wake up again to see you mumble groggily. In the remaining time before impact, I wish our remains could be discovered millennia later like this. Just the two of us, holding onto each other in death, much to the delight of whatever existing life forms that might remain to unearth us in the wasteland. 

In my last hours, I feel like I’ve gained a sense of moral strength that I craved all through my youth. I don’t think there’s anything more to fear now that I’m here with nothing more to lose. So many poets before me mused on what it would be like to brave the apocalypse together. There's just too much brightness out there in the world while you grapple with unspoken truths. It’s just too many goodbyes and a whole lot of waiting around.  I wish I could tell them that it’s not as scary as one would hope it would be, if you could just find someone to hold your hands while you close your eyes.