The End

And so it began. The treachery abroad that was always and so inexorably destined to commence edged imperceptibly onward. Noticed by not a single one of the tracking stations on the blue green planetary sphere circulating an outer spiral of the Milky Way galaxy.

The silent domed sentinels with their radio and optical receivers to the obsidian night listened in a stillness of a meditative savasana to the incalculable vitality of the universe but registered no alarm.

In the evening poll against their neighboring facility at Honeysuckle Creek the Tidbinbilla radio telescope staff in rural southern Australia against the neighboring facility at Honeysuckle Creek held the numbers and so the choice of entertainment was theirs. this night to track the STAR Asia satellite feed to see Shah Rukh Khan dance shirtless through his dream in the Bollywood classic Om Shanti Om. Not that the lads at ‘the Creek’ had motives of science in mind, only that their subscription to the Adults-Only channel was out of credits and their vote to scan the skies to see what ‘classics’ they could download had been their choice for the last five nights, enough, as they say, already!

The Arecibo facility in Puerto Rico was still not working properly since the migrating Peruvian Booby had again tracked north instead of their El Niño influenced southerly path and deposited the guano in the receiver. Not exactly what was expected as a response to the Arecibo message aimed at galaxy M13 and sent all those years ago?

In France at the Nançay Radio Telescope, Brussels inspired bureaucratic madness and the common currency meant that the Bulgarian janitors were now earning more than the local PhD. scientists. Gallic pride ensured they spent most of their time littering the installation with Gaulloise butts so their once poor Eastern state cousins would be sure to earn their salary.

Hawaii was still off limits since the once dormant volcano location of the Mauna Lau facility was now no longer dormant and in fact not even a facility, more a molten mass of lava with telescope condiments.  

The fate defining event, now so unremarkably but ominously unfolding was occurring at a place so immense in distance from Earth that even if these skilled observers were not so similarly and unremarkably preoccupied, the distance in the void of space would probably still have masked the first signs from their trained eyes of what must surely be the end of this phase of creation.

The distance was immeasurable and incomprehensible to all but the elite of the academic world. And had these elite minds, those that could comprehend the meaning of such infinitesimally small aberrations in gravitational waves to be sufficiently alarmed, been looking away from their indecipherable formula laden whiteboards to notice, it would have taken a fortnights cardigan clad conference in Hawaii to ponder a press release.

It then remains questionable and a point of lasting conjecture, if the hurriedly, albeit hurried in the context of a cosmologists conference, hand-scrawled fax of incredible foresight on the Honolulu Marriott letterhead sent to News Corporation’s editor in New York instead of CNN would have been even likely to have displaced Bill O’Reilly from the nightly Fox Networks screen. Maybe the duty editor receiving such an item saw novelty or conspiracy and dispatched on the wire to all the subsidiaries, not because of any special awareness of pending doom but achievement of his personal KPI’s of the revenue growth gleaned by its publication elsewhere in the network.

Received by the regional publisher in the rural heartland off the wire and while the bored reporter awaits the local sport coaches to e-mail the squads through from the team meetings at the local pub on the Friday afternoon he wrongly senses the worthiness of this imminent disaster downloading off the news terminal.

Mistaking it for movement in the Southern Oscillation Index and reasoning it will boost circulation with the pastoralists, the sub-editor makes the decision that seals the fate of civilisation.

The local landed gentry who of course converse on such meteorological topics knowledgeably, and sometimes with their Land Rover dealer, while simultaneously tugging at their forelock, self flagellating through their tweed sports coat while simultaneously bemoaning yet another poor season as they exchange the subsidy cheque for the new Discovery model so that young Angus, his progeny, can drive to and from boarding school. 

Our man at the rural press gets it typeset on the early run, plastered somewhat noticeably to the general populace on the back page of the first edition and sensing something significant, with the extraordinary insight to recognise an opportunity of country folk, he runs it in bold type in place of the weekend’s football fixtures.

Such non-conforming actions have consequences and nothing upsets country folk more than not knowing if the inheritor of the estate is named at fullback, except perhaps the imminent onset of La Niña or perhaps the trend by Land Rover to now use that Asian mahogany veneer instead of the true European cherry wood paneling in the old model and all of which could generate enough incredulity in squiredom to drive one to draft a letter to the editor in the Monday’s publication.

It is generally accepted that those so inclined to write such things are readily identified by this self righteous personality defect and it means that they are generally dismissed as lunatic fringe and shunned in polite company anyway.

And of course the only readers of these letters to the editor are those that write them in the first place and by those servants of the public purse, politicians assistants, desperately keen to rebut any accusation leveled that day against their master and written in language designed to feign enough offence on behalf of their current employer to at least give the author of the claim a second thought and cause to consider that he didn’t really see that judge push aside those whisky bottles to climb out of his jackknifed Government car now adorning the power pole adjacent the primary school as if Christo himself had artfully wrapped it.

While these disgruntled and offended individuals surely prepared, maybe posted, e-mailed, or as they can be prone to, deliver by hand, to the esteemed gazette’s office these letters of indignation. The letters would never be printed.

Monday would never come.

Next week was cancelled.

All those other tasks thought to be so necessary to the frailties of human life would never now happen.

The wedding anniversary presents so awkwardly chosen and received by partners now long out of love would not need to be bought.

That holiday the salary man reminded himself of each morning with the screen saver of azure waters and sun-bleached sands enveloping a bikini clad model that was similarly both unattainable and not unreasonably suspiciously airbrushed, would not be taken.

The frequent flyer tally, religiously monitored by the same salary man in blatant disregard for the Information Technology department’s guidelines on personal use of internet on company time against his airline account, that forlornly, but ever so helpfully informed those bothering to log on and check, that they will attain sufficient points for a one way trip to where they didn’t care to go only if they paid the additional taxes on departure, would never be claimed.

And to the airlines great delight, the very same accumulated frequent flyer points would remain only a liability on the ledger in that remarkable ink made famous by the auditors of dotcom entrepreneurs. But not in the airlines boardrooms where these very same points would translate on a index of their own; into bottles of Bollinger and second helpings of Cubans rolled on the very thighs of those screen saver models, as the same directors belched and quaffed while aircraft manufacturers sales teams performed presentations showing increasingly ingenious ways of herding more and more obese travelers onboard the newest model  planes that somehow, when delivered, bore no resemblance to the mockups our well lubricated board released to the six pm news showing resort-like accommodation in all classes.

But the Cubans cigars would never be lit at the next board meeting. It was in the future.

Events of any description were not going to occur. The future was cancelled.

Time was soon to cease. Existence was soon to be measured not by familiar laws, but by collapse. Time and all it stood for had a limited lifespan. Chronologised not with the decadence of where it had been but with the briefness of a gasp of where it was going.

Even the use of a term like the past, now or tomorrow that nominated a direction for time would give a hope that was unfair.

The third dimension would be no more than a subjective and philosophical debate if those beings scattered remotely and in a variety of forms that now faced oblivion to their existence and frequent flyer accounts had the awareness of their destiny to be able contemplate it. 

The desolation that the cosmic onslaught would soon visit on existence could never have been realised in the nightmares of those who so sagely saw it coming in those millennia so long ago and the cardigan wearing conferencing boffins who realized and futilely alerted the only news network that couldn’t see it.