by Gwynn White
If the Comet falls on land, it ends in fire. Its hammer fall upon the Earth’s soft anvil will spark an eruption in flames, spreading from a crater of molten soil like a locust swarm. The inferno will burn everything in its wake, civilization’s towers crumbling under the weight of burning concrete on burning steel, a conflagration consuming everything in its path.
Near either pole, the Comet would obliterate the ice, sending a plume of snow and destruction raining far, like a hailstorm of judgment.
And whether on water, or land, or fire, the Comet’s destruction will not end with its fall. Unless the effects were softened by water, the Comet would exhaust from its impact an avalanche of gases to poison our atmosphere, first sulfur dioxide, and then carbon dioxide.
Swirling up into the stratosphere, to where the Earth’s ozone layer enfolds us in a swath of protection, these gases will bring about a great cooling, a new ice age, and then a full and irrevocable transformation of the planet’s climate. Nearly all the plant and animal life that survived the first wave of death with the Comet’s impact will not survive. There would be an extinction like no other.
At sea, on land, in the polar ice: Where will you be when the Apocalypse comes?
All around me I hear the sounds of animals, the call of birds, the roar of lions. All this will be gone, silenced.
Earthquakes, tidal waves, wildfire, a poisoned atmosphere, and a winter that might as well last forever… Unless the Comet misses the Earth, it all ends the same.
But the Comet will not miss.
Its passage has, in the distant past, held back from cataclysm. Perhaps as little as a few tens of millions of miles separated it from a collision with the Earth—whisper-close in the grand clockwork of the Universe.
Instead, the Comet swung out again on its grand elliptical path, out and away from us, away again into the darkness.
Not this time.
So this is how it ends.
Part I
Dragonfly
For Immediate Broadcast M2 80 52
Asteroid and Comet Identification Project Continues Run of Discoveries
The Deep Ecliptic Multi-Object Survey (DEMOS) at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, has released a new calendar year of data from the project, with the survey discovering 147 previously unknown celestial objects in the last year. Of those, 36 were near-Earth objects, 84 were main belt asteroids and nine were comets.
The project has now characterized a total of 858 near-Earth objects since the project was initiated over the course of its inception. Of these, 217 are new discoveries. The DEMOS team has released a video simulation depicting the new characterizations and discoveries for the current year of operations.
“DEMOS is not only identifying asteroids and comets that were previously uncharted, but it is providing excellent new characterization data for many of those objects that are already in the catalog,” said Dr. Colin Gabriel, project director and principal investigator. “DEMOS is proving to be an invaluable tool in in perfecting current techniques for near-Earth object discovery and characterization by terrestrial and space-based facilities.”
NEOs, or Near-Earth objects, are asteroids and comets whose orbits allow them to enter Earth’s vicinity, due to the gravitational forces of the planets in our solar system. Of the objects discovered in the past year by DEMOS, thirteen of them have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids or comets, based on their orbits and sizes.
More than 5.8 million multi-spectral images of the sky were collected in the current year of operations by DEMOS. Combined with data from earlier years, the team has created an archive that contains approximately 14.7 million sets of images and a database of more than 116.4 billion source detections extracted from those images.
The DEMOS images also contain glimpses of objects, like comet C/21B9 M2 DEMOS, which may be of particular interest to researchers because its orbit allows for the possibility it entering the Earth’s vicinity.
"Comets with such orbits are not commonly found," said Dianne Patrick, a Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and one of the lead authors of a paper on the DEMOS survey. "So when one is found, it’s a real opportunity for astronomers to be able to view and collect its orbital data.”
A paper detailing the orbital analysis for Comet C/21B9 M2 DEMOS and the other objects classified for monitoring as potentially hazardous was published in the February volume of the Astrophysical Journal.
One of the primary missions of DEMOS, in addition to its general survey, is to assist efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. DEMOS is also identifying and characterizing asteroids and comets that are more distant, in order to obtain information about their sizes and compositions.
1
White Crane Spreads Wings
My mind can’t trace how it begins—the end of the world, the end of my world—to the day we first learned about the Comet.
Five years ago, it was just another fleck of light in the sky, subtle and faint, invisible except to the perturbations in the calculations of our astronomers in their observatories, or the multi-spectral cameras on deep space satellites, which beamed its existence back to us in false-color images.
Life went on as it always did, in its routine of peace and war, of marriage and separation, of birth and death.
On the day scientists discovered what they first described as an anomalous comet just beyond our system, the world went on as it always did, nations rising and falling, their borders ebbing and flowing between them depending on religious vagaries, the whim of a dictator, the collapse of a currency.
Beyond Earth, a great Colonial War raged among the outer planets and their satellites, that continued to drag in Earth and the inner colonies, an unending war that had been continuing for over fourteen years. When we concerned ourselves with matters beyond our Earth, it was always about the Colonial War: about the outflow of men and women to distant posts whose names we couldn’t pronounce, the constant need for funding and resources, the sensational dispatches on the news, the statistics, the politics, the lies. Otherwise, we were unmoved.
In the cities, parents dropped their children off at kindergarten, sat at computer screens, attended meetings, broke for coffee, unpacked lunches, or ran off to pick up a sandwich from the nearest Whole Foods or Gateway Automat, read the paper through the afternoon commute as their spinner made its way to pick their children up again from extended care.
Joggers made their way across the boardwalks, while their headphones repeated pre-recorded admonition—to go further, to push harder, to be better—interspersed with readings of their heart rates, blood pressure, glucose levels, oxygen intake, steps made, kilometers covered, and whatever minutae of bodily function they cared to monitor.
On beaches and in parks, groups of enthusiasts progressed in unison through the deliberate stances of T‘ai-Chi—Grasping the Bird’s Tail, the Single Whip, the White Crane Spreads Wings—or the Five Rites of Rejuvenation of Tibetan Yoga.
Across the cities of the world, the sun rose, lights flickered off. The Earth rotated around its axis. the sun set, lights switched on. People laughed, they cried, they loved, they dreamed. They lived, they died.
As did my father, on the day they discovered the Comet, five years ago today.
2
The Year of the Dragon
I was born in the Year of the Dragon, as was my mother before me. The Chinese Zodiac is a twelve-year lunar cycle, and I was born just before her forty-eighth birthday. She had my brother Paul first, but it was four more years of trying before she and my father were able to conceive again.
I was the stubborn one, so they said. Even from birth.
“Zara!” my mother would say in exasperation, arriving to fetch me from middle school, and finding me in one scrape or another. Or, if I was really in trouble, she’d use my full name—“Emzara Elizabeth!”—with an emphasis on the beth!
Once, when I was nin
e, it was Emzara Elizabeth! time when she discovered the after-school teacher from Meadow Green Academy pulling me away from pummeling a boy a head taller than I was.
“He was throwing stones at the rabbit!” I’d said. The Eastern cottontail had been munching clover in the playground grass, and had frozen in the middle of the yard when the kids came out for playtime, hoping that no one had seen it, pretending it was part of the landscape.
Everyone else—the girls giggling, the boys open-mouthed—had stood still at the teacher’s urging. Nathan had picked up a handful of pebbles, and before anyone realized what he was doing, launched them at the unfortunate thing. All the teacher could do was gasp. I yelled, livid, and meted out justice with my nine-year-old fists.
I had no dinner that night. It was stir-fried shrimp and tofu, one of my favorites. As my father and mother ate, I sat in one of the ladderback chairs, facing one of the dining room’s corners. I remembered the rabbit twitching its ears as I yelled, and before the stones hit the ground around her, the white puff of its tail as it scampered clean away. Yes, I smiled.
The next day, I found Mom had packed me last night’s leftover dinner for lunch.
Like the Zodiac year that I was born in, my mother bequeathed me a love of animals.
We lived by woods near a ravine, close to the Credit River in eastern Mississauga near the lake, and there were all manner of creatures that would make their way across our lawn and backyard.
“See, there’s a fox peeking at us from that bush!” she’d say, as we took a walk around the neighborhood. She’d point up to the sky and exclaim, “A falcon! Look at those wings!”
Mom would help get animals through the winter, buying walnuts and almonds and pistachios; she’d put them out on our backyard porch, which faced the woodlot bordering the Cawthra Estate. She’d get me to help, taking the bulk bargain nuts she had in the bag and scattering them far and wide so that everyone in the backyard could get a share.
At first, we had squirrels, brown, black and red, and the occasional chipmunk. Birds began to discover the bounty, mostly blue jays and cardinals. They would swoop down from the rooftop, and carry away nuts in a flash of blue or red.
Smaller birds would also try their luck, but the nuts caught in their beaks, far too large. Instead, we hung feeders filled with suet and seeds on the branches of the birch trees and Manitoba maples in the backyard.
My mother read me a poem once, from an old poet she knew. It was supposed to show how different birds can symbolize different things, and it went like this:
Fourteen Birds
1
A solitary blackbird wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Hollow, like my heart without you.
2
A red-breasted robin wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
The bright, clear chime of spring.
3
A dark-cloaked owl wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Night tolls a savage premonition.
4
A ricebird wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Your bamboo flute replays a gentle harmony.
5
A hummingbird wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
The calla lilies quiver, a delicate carillon.
6
A starling wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Lost in the verge, a single, cerulean egg.
7
A golden-cheeked warbler wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
The memory of your smile.
8
A hill robin wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
In the hedgerow, the tail flick of a siamese.
9
A raven wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Its caws betray the cacophony of a cracked bell.
10
An osprey wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Across the sandbar, the ocean`s dark savannah.
11
A mountain bluebird wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Its bright wings fray into the cobalt sky.
12
A rosefinch wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Amidst the garden bric-a-brac, a pink flamingo tilts.
13
A great blue heron wings away in the backyard,
ringing the rim of a metal fence post.
Like the dream of my father, escaping.
“But there are only thirteen birds!” I protested.
My mother smiled. “No, dear, there are fourteen,” she said. “Let me read it to you again. Let’s see if you can find it.”
She would, and I did.
One particularly cold February morning, after we had scattered a supply of almonds, I was sitting having my milk at the granite island and Mom was making breakfast, when she realized that there was something peering at us from the edge of the Cawthra woodlot. She called me over to the patio door, her finger on her lips.
As we watched, a deer emerged from the trees, and then another. The two of them made their way across the snow in our backyard, to where the jays were flying at the edge of our patio. We could see their footprints in the snow, padding down the white in soft impressions.
Briefly, the deer glanced at us through the double panes of the patio door, absently sniffed the air, then dipped down their heads, their tongues flicking out for almonds.
On a chilly weekend in September about two years later, when I had moved on to high school at Holy Name of Mary College School, my folks were planning to go to a farmers’ market in Burlington.
I usually ran through the hay mazes with my brother Paul, but he was away at Pioneer camp, so I asked if I could spend the afternoon by myself, biking along Bronte Creek, and if I could catch them on their way back. They said yes, but to be sure I wore something warm. So I put on my eiderdown coat, threw the bike in the back of the truck and they let me off at Burloak Drive, which was a few kilometers from the creek.
It was the perfect time, a crisp chill in the air, but sunny, a Canadian autumn with reds and oranges only just beginning to appear alongside the yellows of the leaves. There had been a bit of frost earlier in the morning, and some of the leaves had already fallen. Luckily, I was prepared, and I zipped up my slate-gray eiderdown jacket against the cold.
I’d been down and up the trail several times and was headed back to Burloak Drive, when I saw something move in a clutch of bushes. I got off the bike and moved closer on foot, to take a look.
There was a rustle, and something in bushes stood up, a horse. Except it wasn’t a horse, it was a small horse with black and white stripes. A zebra.
It sat down again, and picked at the dry leaves on one of the bushes. It looked like it was in rough shape, shivering and half-covered in leaves and frost.
There we were, a forlorn young zebra and an eleven-year-old girl. I wasn’t sure what it was doing here, but I guessed it didn’t like the cold and had wandered far from wherever it was it originally came from. Definitely not from around here.
I inched closer, and made what I thought were soothing noises. It didn’t bolt, just shook its head and ears.
I needed something to lead the zebra with, so I took off my long wool scarf and tied a makeshift collar around its neck.
“Come on,” I coaxed.
The zebra tried to get up. She was a little wobbly, and no taller than my shoulders, but made it to her feet. Oh, I thought, a she.
“Come on, Leia,” I said.
When my folks came back down Burloak Drive, they found me waiting on my bike by the side of the road, my new friend beside me, wearing my scarf.
“Look who I found,” I said, when my parents arrived. “She’s cold, and she’s lost. Can we take her home?”
They looked at me, and then looked at the zebra, perplexed.
Dad went down the trail to see if there was anyone there who might be looking for a missing zebra, while my Mom stayed with me and Leia. In a few minutes, Dad came back just as perplexed.
There was no choice—we couldn’t leave her out on Burloak Drive to fend for herself—so we took her home. That’s how I came to have an zebra as a pet, if only for a short while.
We put her in the garage for shelter, and Dad put out a bucket with some of romaine lettuce, spinach, and other greens from the farmers’ market, that Mom had been planning to used for our dinner salad. It took to the tender vegetables voraciously.
Mom thought it must have come from one of the zoos or wildlife sanctuaries close by, so she did a search.
“Don’t worry,” Mom said to me. “When we find where she lives, you’ll get to visit her anytime you want. Promise.”
I did want to find out where she came from, so that evening, between her and myself, we called every single place in the Greater Toronto Area that might possibly have lost a zebra, or might possibly want one. No one reported missing any animal, and no one wanted to take her in—until finally we got through to the Glen Eden Zoological Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in Milton, Ontario.
I know—some will say that zoos are an anachronism, that they should all have been closed decades ago. Why are many of them still operating?
