The Future and Why We Should Avoid It

by Scott Feschuk

  Learned to communicate through the miracle of speech

  Invented the Swiffer

  And that might just have to be enough, what with the final scenario described by the people behind the lawsuit. They make the case that even if the black hole doesn’t materialize, even if the strangelet is avoided, there remains a chance the accelerator could set off a chain reaction that would cause all protons in existence to decay.

  Now, personally, I’d make the case that protons had it coming—after all, they do help to form the physical matter on which Celine Dion’s music is recorded, and that’s not something you’re just going to get away with.

  That said, I am reliably informed that certain things can’t exist without protons, such as the universe or, more important, me. The question then is whether the eradication of the Celine Dion discography across all space and time is worth the permanent annihilation of all existence. I’m going to need some time to work this one through.

  Asteroids: A few years back, a “skyscraper-sized asteroid” passed within 80,000 kilometres of Earth, which is pants-wettingly close in astronomical terms. A bigger rock is on target to come even closer around 2029. In fact, Canadian and American astronauts have long warned that our planet is a sitting duck for a massive asteroid—one of which may ultimately smash into Earth, dooming billions to death and prompting thousands to turn to their god and plaintively inquire: “Why? WHY?? Why couldn’t this have happened in 1983 when I still had four LPs left on my Columbia House commitment??”

  The most alarming warning comes from an organization once headed by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. It’s called the Association of Space Explorers, which surely ranks among the most badass and awesome-sounding of private clubs out there—although members do have to put up with Buzz Aldrin ending every argument with younger astronauts by hollering: “How did your moon walk go? Oh, right, you never walked on the moon like I walked on the moon! [Pause.] MOON!”

  When it was released, the association’s report about the asteroid menace got some coverage in the media. Permit me to direct you to a critical sentence from one of the news articles: “The United Nations is currently studying the report, which outlines plans to detect and deflect any objects that might threaten the planet.”

  Did you catch that? The United Nations. The UN’s got our backs, people. They’re totally on top of this. Even as you read these words, the Executive Secretary to the Director-General of the Under-Under-Secretariat is totally think-tanking the Proposed Action Item of facilitating the appointment of a Special Envoy for The Asteroid That Will Kill Us All. This will be followed by a decade of fruitless negotiations with the hurtling death rock.

  Special Envoy: If you turn your agenda to page 4, you’ll see it’s time to discuss the unique heritage of your basaltic crust, after which I will talk reason with your nickel-iron core.

  [Asteroid methodically maintains speed and course to apocalyptic impact.]

  Special Envoy: Good idea. Muffin break.

  I’m telling you: one toothless embargo and a series of empty, sternly worded resolutions later, the General Assembly will finally be ready to take decisive action against the imminent asteroid threat by passing a resolution condemning Israel for something.

  (Not that the wholesale annihilation of our species would be all bad. For one thing, it would save me from confronting the backyard. I’m looking at it right now as I type this chapter and it’s … it’s … it’s tragic out there. We had a bunch of people over last night and my “landscaping” consisted of taking a large flowerpot and placing it strategically over the gaping hole in our rotting deck. Sure, the lawn was still patchy and brown, part of the fence was falling down and there was a tire fire burning over in one corner—but that splintery limb trap was now somewhat less likely to claim a child’s life. Look for me on the cover of next month’s issue of Lawsuit-Avoidance Gardening.)

  Anyway, where was I? Right, the threat of death by mega-rock. Hadfield and his colleagues say we urgently need to build on the efforts of Spaceguard, which sounds like an astronaut’s deodorant but is actually an ongoing survey of the skies that scans for potential threats.

  But why bother? If a big-time asteroid is coming our way, we’re done for. In the movies, it’s Bruce Willis and his gang of character actors to the rescue, saving humanity with the power of macho posturing and Aerosmith power ballads. But real life brings with it the grim fact of real governments. And how would they respond?

  I think it’s a safe bet that Russia would fire several nuclear warheads at the approaching asteroid. These missiles would destroy the Moon. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh would encourage Americans to run simultaneously in the same direction, thinking perhaps that this would speed up the Earth’s rotation and let China take the worst of the impact. In Canada, Stephen Harper would dispatch an emergency mission to the asteroid, but only to put an Economic Action Plan sign on it.

  Doubt my prediction? Consider this: the New York Times reported that more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, and after billions of dollars spent, US officials still hadn’t figured out how to allow firefighters and police officers from different jurisdictions to talk to each other over their radios at emergency sites. More than a decade! And these government guys are going to successfully deflect a 200-million-ton planetoid travelling at 30 kilometres per second? Riiiight.

  It doesn’t matter how much Spaceguard you apply—we might as well move straight to the widespread looting.

  If all this talk of your inevitable demise (and mine—but mostly yours) has got you down, here’s a pick-me-up: there is a small but real possibility that you will never die. Unfortunately, that’s because there’s a chance that you don’t actually exist.

  A recent book by Brian Greene, a respected theoretical physicist, explores the theory that supercomputers will eventually become powerful enough to run simulations featuring “people” who believe they are real. Sounds fun, right? Who wouldn’t want to re-create the past to be able to witness life in the fifteenth century or jump in and punch Bryan Adams in the balls at the exact moment he decides to learn to play guitar?

  But wait. Hang on a minute. If such simulations will one day be possible, there’s no guarantee that we aren’t already living inside a simulation—“perhaps one created by future historians with a fascination for what life was like back on 21st-century Earth,” Greene writes.

  The downside: everything we have ever known, touched or loved never actually existed. The upside: same goes for Ashton Kutcher.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Cheryl Cohen, who edited this book with skill and diligence and whose browser history, as a result, is now that of a very troubled person, filled with queries like:

  Is Kesha’s name still spelled with a dollar sign?

  In which year did Richard Gere reign as People’s Sexiest Man Alive?

  What is the world record for number of fat jokes about Kirstie Alley because I think we’re breaking it?

  (Cheryl ultimately convinced me to change some of the Kirstie Alley fat jokes to fat jokes about other people, or to jokes that aren’t about being fat at all, a genre that I was previously unaware of.)

  I also owe a debt to Sarmishta Subramanian, who edits my column each week in Maclean’s magazine. (Young people: a magazine is just like the internet, but with staples.) Sarmishta routinely makes my work either funnier or less unfunny, depending on your perspective.

  And thanks to Silas White, Anna Comfort O’Keeffe and everyone at Douglas & McIntyre for publishing this book, which was super-nice of them.

 

 

 
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