Alternative Apocalypse

by Debora Godfrey

  “Yes, Sire. There is no mistake. I have the coordinates here,” M’rapt’ki said, gesturing towards his comms device. “I estimate we have about twelve minutes. There should be an excellent view from the balcony.”

  The emperor dressed quickly and followed his chief scientist through the door and onto the balcony. All three moons had set, and the sky was as dark as it ever was. Which is to say it was a soft grey, given the close proximity of at least a dozen neighboring stars in the cluster, shining brightly in every quarter of the sky.

  “There,” said M’rapt’ki, pointing to an almost invisible star in the direction of the galactic centre.

  “Tell me again, M’rapt’ki, is this really necessary? Will we ever come across a race that we can communicate with, rather than simply destroy it?”

  “It is the only way we can be certain, Sire. Any species with the wit to understand our signals and to build the device is a potential threat. We must trust no one.”

  “But the entire solar system as well? Why? Will we ever know if we find a race that is worth preserving?”

  “The test is simple, Excellency, and was established scientifically by our evolutionary psychologists long ago. If a race receives our messages but, instead of building and immediately launching the device, takes the trouble to discover its mechanisms, they may indeed be worthy of interacting with ourselves.”

  High in the northern sky, 153 light years away, a faint yellow star began to glow ever more brightly.

  End of Days

  Daniel M. Kimmel

  No one thought the end of the world would be like this. After decades of divisiveness, sectarianism, nationalism, partisanship, holy wars, secular wars, and one crisis after another, people were burnt out. They just wanted to be left alone no matter what the new alleged “crisis” of the hour was. A takeover of the Earth by alien overlords from Alpha Centauri? Most people couldn't be troubled to pay much attention.

  Phil and Sam were sitting at the NCO club nursing their beers when the TV blurted out, “We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this emergency message from the President of the United States. President...um, Smith, will be addressing the nation from that round office. The Oval Office, that's it. Ladies and gentlemen, President Smith.”

  Phil was already facing the TV. Sam tried to decide if it was worth turning around but then he realized he could see a reflection of one of the TV screens in the mirror behind the bar and sat where he was. He'd hear everything just the same.

  “My fellow Americans, a short while ago we received the following message from a creature identifying itself as Grand General Braxis, Commander of the Earth Occupation.”

  The image flickered and was replaced by the image of a hideous monster, its head surrounded by long, oily, blue hair, and three waving tentacles. It spoke from a mouth situated over its two eyes. “People of Earth,” he/she/it declared, “you are now under the subjugation of the Alpha Centauri Expeditionary Force. All will kneel before the might and power of our beloved Imperial Ruler Groflax. You now live and serve at his whim. Be warned that resistance will be met with the fiercest possible measures...”

  The Grand General was cut off in midsentence and the screen returned to a live image of President Smith. “I am reporting to you that after full consideration with my top advisors, we have responded with the following statement: 'So what?'” With that he leaned back in his chair. “And thank you for listening.”

  The image faded out as an announcer's voice declared, “We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.”

  On screen—in mid-episode—was “Garbage Pickers,” the hit reality show in which contestants picked through mounds of trash in hopes of finding a single diamond worth a reported one million dollars. It had been the number one show for the last three years, even though—or perhaps because—no one had yet found the diamond.

  Phil turned to Sam reflexively, before he even had time to wonder if making eye contact with his fellow noncom was worth the effort. “Sounds serious. Think we ought to report in?”

  “Why bother? They know where to find us if they need something,” answered Sam.

  Around the base, indeed, around the nation, business went on as usual, which was to say very little business took place at all. People were mildly curious how this new crisis might play out, if only as a distraction from their day-to-day lives, but no one seemed to think it would actually change anything.

  Forty-eight hours later, without warning, the Alpha Centauri fleet showed they meant business by destroying four of the five boroughs of New York City. In what was taken to be an act of whimsy, they had spared Staten Island.

  With no new orders to interrupt their day, Phil and Sam spent their free time at the NCO club, sipping their beers and occasionally paying attention to the news.

  “Bummer about New York, Sam.”

  “Really? You have family there?”

  “No, but I have leave next month and I finally got tickets to see 'Hamilton.' Guess that won't be happening now.”

  In the days to come, similar attacks were carried out on London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Mumbai, and yet the world continued to turn. It wasn't as though they hadn't seen it all before in dozens of movies. So now it was on their TV screens instead of in their movie theaters. It still had all the trappings of run of the mill entertainment. Of course, the people in those cities might have been a tad upset, but they were all dead and consequently their opinions carried very little weight.

  Despite the carnage, life went on as if nothing had changed. Sure enough, exactly as if Earth had united in creating a mighty force to defend the home planet, the attacks ceased. That nothing had been required of humanity simply demonstrated that waiting them out had been the right strategy. For two weeks, nothing further happened, and online discussions returned to the normal chatter about cute animals and people exchanging photographs of their meals.

  It was then that what were described as alien tankers appeared at several spots around the Earth's equator. They were huge beyond imagining and, for people living on equatorial land within hundreds of miles of the ships, it was like a permanent eclipse. No one was quite sure what this was about, but then the ships began drawing millions of gallons of water from the oceans, pumping the water up to the tankers in an around the clock operation. As during past global crises, the world turned to America for leadership. A week after the pumping began, President Smith finally addressed the global community.

  After recapitulating what everyone already knew, he paused, and then smiled. “And thus I'm happy to report that the debate over climate change is over. We had been warned that if we did nothing, the melting of the polar ice caps would cause sea levels to rise, flooding our coastal cities. Now, thanks to Alpha Centauri, the excess water has been drained off, and our cities are safe. So, let's get back to what we were doing.”

  By the next morning the ships had all withdrawn. Instead, small ships now began to land in the Pacific Northwest. A decree by Grand General Braxis declared that all residents from age 5 and up in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho would now be engaged in forced service—what some were calling “slavery”—to extract natural resources from mines and forests for use by the alien forces. Instead of decrying this action as inhumane, unconstitutional, cruel, or dozens of other words that had fallen into neglect except by those who treasured their thesauruses, the story was reported—when it was reported at all—as indicating a major drop in the unemployment rate, and proof that the government's economic policies were bearing fruit.

  At the NCO club, Phil and Sam were nursing their beers and Sam was looking for the waitress to order another round. She was standing under the “No Smoking” sign enjoying a cigarette.

  “Miss? Can we get two more beers?”

  “I'm on break,” she snapped back, “You want another round, get it yourself.” Without complaint, Phil and Sam went behind the bar and refilled their glasses.

  “Put it on our tab,” said Phil.


  “Whatever,” said the waitress, who headed back into the kitchen.

  On the screen over the bar, an image appeared indicating “Breaking News.” Sam grabbed for the remote and switched channels. There were similar bulletins everywhere else, including the sports and cooking channels.

  “Must be important,” Sam muttered, putting down the remote and rejoining Phil at their table.

  On the TV, a man was manacled to a chair as Grand General Braxis faced the camera. “People of Earth,” it began, “we warned you that your puny forces could not possibly triumph over the might of Alpha Centauri. To demonstrate this, we have captured the leader of the Resistance and will force you to watch as he is tortured into confessing his crimes and naming his associates. This,” he emphasized, “is the fate of those who dare to oppose us.”

  With that, Braxis took one of his tentacles and wrapped it around the throat of the human.

  “Isn't that Harvey?” asked Phil.

  “Harvey who?”

  “I don't know his last name. The guy from 'Garbage Pickers.'”

  On screen Braxis demanded, “What is your name, puny human?”

  “Harvey,” replied the man in the chair. “And would you mind not doing that? It hurts.”

  “I told you it was Harvey,” said Phil, as he rose to top up his beer again.

  Braxis took a second tentacle and lifted Harvey's head so that they made eye contact. “It is supposed to hurt. Now, Harvey, are you ready to confess to your crimes?”

  Harvey's blank expression didn't change. “What crimes?”

  “Leading the Resistance, sabotage, disseminating propaganda against the Alpha Centauri state...”

  “Whoa, man,” said Harvey, showing the most signs of life yet, “I don't know what you're talking about. I just pick through garbage looking for the diamond. Gonna find it, too.”

  “I'm not interested in your human rituals,” roared Braxis. “Give me the names of the other leaders of the Resistance.”

  “The Resistance? What's that?”

  “The people disrupting our occupation of Earth. Don't bother to deny it.”

  Harvey returned to his blank stare. “Deny it? I don't even know what you're talking about.”

  Braxis thumped Harvey on the head with his third tentacle. “Are you claiming not to be aware that we have laid waste to your cities, stolen your resources and enslaved your people?”

  Sam turned to Phil. “How come it's picking on the little guy? He should pick on someone his own size.”

  Phil burped. “Is there anyone his?”

  “I don't know,” replied Sam. “You think maybe this is like a bonus round of the game? Maybe Harvey found the diamond.”

  “Don't think so,” said Phil. “They would have showed it.”

  Braxis released his grip on Harvey and started oozing around the room, going back and forth in front of the camera. Finally, he turned to the viewing audience. “What is the matter with you humans? The whole point of conquering a planet is subjugating the indigent population with our superior technology and ruthless exploitation. If you just sit there and take it, where's the fun in that?”

  Braxis started pacing again. Behind him, Harvey was trying to get out of the chair but the manacles wouldn't allow him to do so. “Could someone please take these off? I need to get back to the dump.”

  “Garbage. Do you believe it? He's talking about garbage.” Braxis swung in Harvey's direction. “Suppose I told you I was going to destroy Kansas City if you didn't immediately give me the names of the ringleaders of the Resistance?”

  Harvey seemed to ponder this for a moment. Then he looked at Braxis. “Always wanted to go to Kansas City.”

  “What!” screamed the Grand General.

  “Heard you could get really good steak there.”

  “I can't take it anymore. You slugs are the laziest, the stupidest, the most apathetic...”

  “Hey, man.”

  With that, Braxis started tearing through the room, smashing things. As he turned towards Harvey, a squad of several Alpha Centauri soldiers rushed in and grabbed Braxis. As they scuffled, the camera swung wildly until the image was replaced with that of a man picking through garbage. “I found it,” he shouted and brushed off his find, only to power down. “Never mind. It was a salt shaker.”

  “I think this is a rerun,” said Sam.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Well, isn't that Harvey?”

  “I think you're right.”

  The next afternoon, there was a brief announcement from an unidentified member of the Alpha Centauri high command declaring that the occupation was over and that they were unilaterally withdrawing, admitting defeat against Earth's cruel and unprecedented use of psychological warfare. By nightfall, the ships were all gone from the Earth's surface and surrounding orbits.

  Phil and Sam celebrated their victory over the Alpha Centauri Expeditionary Forces by having a beer at the NCO club.

  “Sure wish I could have seen some of that psychological warfare,” said Phil. “It must have really been something.”

  “I'll bet,” agreed Sam. “It would be nice to have something going on, wouldn't it?”

  That’s Not My Apocalypse...

  Liam Hogan

  Tick, tock.

  The hands of the Doomsday clock stand once again at two minutes to midnight. So join me as I countdown to the end of human existence and find out what lurks behind that twelfth, and very final, chime.

  Welcome, to That’s Not My Apocalypse!

  10--Nuclear Armageddon

  I grew up under the scintillating shadow of a mushroom cloud, spent my formative years with Mutual Assured Destruction the definitive, end-of-the-world scenario. The atom bomb is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, so feared that the people who invented it, created the Doomsday Clock to make sure everyone else couldn’t sleep at night. The Clock first marked two minutes to Armageddon back in 1953, with New! Improved! hydrogen bombs. For decades, it’s tracked global tensions, burgeoning nuclear arsenals, and the odd test ban treaty, yo-yoing between Twelve! Whole! Minutes! and not long enough to boil an egg.

  It wasn’t to last. The end of my youth also saw the end of the Soviet Union. The expanded nuclear club banded together to stop anyone else joining the fun, the US eased back on the hair trigger, and the Cold War was over. By 1991, the Clock stood at seventeen minutes.

  The club does keep growing, with North Korea the latest party crasher. And world leaders tweeting: “I’ve got more nukes than you”, doesn’t exactly help. No surprise then that those seventeen minutes half-lifed away. A nuke is still a nuke whether it’s an “active deterrent”, stockpiled, or dismantled, and there are plenty left to do the job an unhealthy number of times over.

  The hands of the Doomsday Clock will always glow in the dark and nukes may haunt our disaster movies and apocalyptic novels, but:

  Nuclear Armageddon?

  That’s not my apocalypse. Its rhetoric is too 1950’s. (60s, 70s, 80s...).

  9--Asteroid Impact

  I’m looking up, to see the next thing that brings us down.

  Asteroids are the ultimate extinction event. Been there, done that, will merrily do so again. But when?

  Reassuringly, not any time soon. NASA’s Near Earth Object program tracks twenty thousand NEOs, of which fewer than two thousand are PHA’s: Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. The bigger the hazard, the easier it is to keep tabs on. Perhaps too easy. From tabloid headlines of so called “close” passes, you’d think there was barely room between the earth and the moon to reverse park a small rock. The moon is sixty earth radii away: if it orbited the edges of a dart board, the earth would fit comfortably within the bullseye.

  True, the bullseye does get hit by a hundred tons of space material every day—pass a strong magnet along the sludge in your gutter and collect some space dust! But we only have to worry about the big chunks. The bolide that flattened trees around Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 was tiny, merely 45m a
cross. A hundred-meter asteroid impacts every ten thousand years, but this would only cause a local apocalypse. We can expect a mile-wide asteroid every hundred thousand years, and a potential dinosaur eliminating, six-mile monster—equivalent to a billion Hiroshimas—once every hundred million years.

  What we would do if we spotted a Torino scale 9 or 10 object is a moot point: Bruce Willis may or may not be available. But NASA isn’t tracking anything that poses even a moderate risk in my lifetime.

  Before you get too complacent, statistics should still make you nervously watch the skies. An impact event may be unlikely, but the body count would be very, very high. The dinosaurs would concur, if...well. Y’know. (Too soon?)

  Asteroid impact?

  That’s not my apocalypse. Its odds are too astronomically low.

  8--Zombies

  Seriously? You know they’re fictional, right? Moving screamingly along...

  7--Gamma Ray Burster

  A gamma ray burster is the focused, energetic death of a pair of neutron stars or black holes. As the super-massive duo tango to their doom, a virulent beam of cosmic rays are released along the axis of rotation. GRBs are the biggest bang since the big one; a million trillion times brighter than the sun.

  So powerful that if one happened within, say, a hundred light years and was pointed our way, it would strip the earth’s fragile ozone layer. A GRB is possibly implicated in a major extinction event half a billion years ago, but as yet, nobody has claimed responsibility.

  Here’s the kicker: our end may already have happened. That’s light years for you. And other than cowering beneath a very large rock, there’s absolutely nothing we can do.

  Gamma Ray Burster?

  That’s not my apocalypse. Its death is too uncaring.

  6--Alien Invasion

  Aliens aren’t real. Not ones that traverse interstellar distances at faster than light speeds to threaten our cows, our water supplies, or our Lieutenant Ripleys.