The Discovery
The astronomers,
their eyes fixed on the distant stars and their nights sacrificed
to the demands of their ethereal trade, were the first to report
the comet's imminent arrival. As if the comet had come from below
the plane of the solar system, or from behind the sun, it had
caught them by surprise. That was clear in their rush to announce
its discovery. Their press releases were full of statements about
velocity and trajectory but the import was obvious. The comet
would be passing close enough to Earth to be seen by the unaided
eye.
From arcane
reports in the back pages of academic journals to the news stories
on slow days, the momentum of the discovery began to grow. The
reactions were varied. Those whose research required intemperate
heavens--such as astronomers and cosmologists--excitedly prepared
for its arrival, but others--whose interpretation of the universe
was dependent on magic--denounced the science which would interpret
such spectacles. Drawing upon their considerable reading about
the heavenly spheres, those trained in obscurity and denial claimed
that merely human calculations were in error and that the night
sky would go on shining in its dim glory like it had for millennia.
For the public
at large, their lethargic blood only slowly stirred even by an
immediate danger, the age-old fears took some time to boil to
the surface. Some country people claimed that comets were the
harbingers of disease and they cited the Spanish flu to support
their case. Although only the vaguest shift in the stars was apparent
when the flu was coughing out lungs in much of the European population,
the association of illness with the comet was intuitive enough
to become the source of rumours and quack medicinal remedies for
a disease which had not yet arrived.
For others,
steeped in a tradition older than the church itself, the comet
was a sign of Jesus's imminent return. Shoving the confining scripture
to one side, they gathered on street corners and talked about
Jesus' coming. He would arrive in the same dirty robes he'd been
wearing two millennia earlier, and his sandals would be nearly
rotted off his feet. Others promised that if the faithful were
gathered to listen to him preach he would appear on a fiery chariot
pulled by two horses. The comet signified his robe, and its arrival
heralded the end of days. Some said he already walked among them
in the form of a child, albeit one who didn't yet recognize his
high ancestry. Once the comet came, he would put aside the toys
of childhood and take up the mantle of leadership. Regardless
of how they imagined his return, they all agreed that he would
collect the faithful even while the night sky was disrupted by
the pale glory of the comet. The Christians would be called home,
and they smacked their lips with delight as they described the
Earth sown with darkness and dissension after their escape.
Those who
listened sold their houses and pulled their money from the bank.
They gave away the lawnmowers and barbeques which made their lives
bearable, and waiting for the cleansing of the lord, they stopped
bathing. Their children were kept home from school and forced
into intensive pamphlet study. Their animals were given to the
shelter. Where they were going they could not afford burdens.
By all accounts those who fasted had it the worst. The kids cried
about their stomachs' emptiness while their parents crept to the
corner store in the night, all so Jesus could take them to where
they would never eat a full meal again.
Even while
the scientists prepared their instruments, set rockets to launch
in case the visitor thought to be from the Kuiper Belt proved
to be the once-in-a-million year comet from the far Oort Cloud,
astronomers gazed eagerly into photographic plates sensitized
by a toxic brew of chemicals. They were looking for an out-of-place
star, for a glimmer in the sparkling reverse-colour splendor of
the universe that would indicate that their career would either
be established or disappear. They called each other, eager in
the darkness beside huge telescopes scanning the night sky, and
when woken from a sound sleep their first thought was of the comet.
"What news?"
they would ask while spouses grumbled beneath the blankets. "Any
change?"
Their profession
was one of solitary card games in cold desert installations. It
involved calculations so obscure that even their peers objected
to the formulas used to obtain the results. They were a haunted
people, their faces drawn by their discipline. The cherubic astronomer
was an outcast, and many thought that those who were overly optimistic
about certain signals should save their "Wows" for the public
sphere. A serious astronomer expects the mundane, plans for the
mundane, and keeps their wishes for the spectacular private. Secretly,
not even admitting it to themselves, they wished for the phenomenon
which would undermine everything they believed. Only in a complete
denial of modern physics could their secret desire for disruption
become reality, but they dared not whisper such heresy to anyone.
They spoke of findings and expected results, instead of the dreams
which had originally driven them to the blackboard and the photographic
plate.
Although the
initial announcement of the comet wasn't calculated to stir much
public attention, it was picked up by Dander's doomsday cult,
and within a few days it became a major news story. The Dander
crew used abandoned cars and shopping carts to build massive non-functional
radio telescopes in the desert, and the faithful ran around them
with homemade stethoscopes, listening for messages that the comet
was bringing on the solar wind.
Eager for
fodder in their endless news cycles, the reporters circled their
encampments like stray dogs, until the images were nightly news
and millions of others, inspired by the nonsense, began to build
mud piles in their back yards and to hoard their trash. Before
long, Dander's cult had gone national and then international and
he was asked to speak at press conferences and advise presidents
and prime ministers.
"We are living
in a time of wonders," Dander broadcast around the world. "As
much as the internet and the television have brought us together,
it has also divided us."
He spoke before
an audience of a hundred thousand and more than a few confused
looks greeted the statement.
"We are one
people divided by the Tower of Babel. We are Babylonians waiting
to get back to the hanging garden."
The lengthy
diatribe which followed, concerning as it did garden centres and
backyard flower baskets, was generally agreed to be more metaphorical
than prescriptive, although potted plants flew off the shelves
and many who grew tomatoes thought they were looking at the single
worst mistake of their career.
"The leaders
of all nations know that the comet presages the end of times,
but they have kept that from you. You are rudderless in the storm,
and they cannot guide you anymore. I am here--"
When the broadcast
truncated his speech many thought his message had troubled those
who wanted to remain in power. Like the acceptance of currency,
faith in authority was largely a matter of trust, and with Dander
diverting that trust to himself, people hit the street to burn
cars and disrupt traffic. Dander was about to divulge what he
knew about their future, and they would not rest until they found
out what had been lost.
The Dander
cult, as it came to be called, was disbanded once the sexual assault
charges were laid, and by the time he went to prison, only a few
of his more fanatical followers were present at the courthouse.
The cult had come and gone as quickly as a comet, although the
comet which was such a large part of his way of thinking about
world government and apocalypse was still weeks away.
Once the cult
stirred up interest in the comet and then disappeared, people
became curious about what had inspired Dander and his group. They
were less interested in psychological evaluations of cults or
weak-minded people than they were the comet itself, and before
long the news services were pursuing the scientists responsible
for the announcement.
The attention
turned out to be a mixed blessing. More funding was suddenly available,
and most governments diverted the waste stream of their public
purse to astronomical work and scientific research. Unfortunately,
the renewed interest meant that astronomers had to make public
statements. Blinking like moles suddenly exposed to the daylight,
the astronomers found themselves pulled away from their work by
department heads eager for publicity. As quickly became apparent,
synthesizing mounds of data for the public wasn't their best skill.
They laboured far into the night--deeply resentful that they weren't
crunching data or poring over photographic plates--to cut down
complex papers into the bite-sized slogans the media companies
wanted. They were forced to make scientific-sounding statements
about the comet that a layperson could understand. Stripping away
their knowledge of velocity and trajectory, apogee and gravitational
perturbations, they spoke in terms of hours and days. They assured
the fearful that the excitement was purely intellectual. Although
it pained them to answer such questions, they said that the monstrous
tail of the comet, illuminated by the sun even though the sky
was dark, was harmless. Despite partnerships which had endured
academic rivalry, they fought with each other over catchy names
for the comet and other visible phenomenon which were more accurately
described by mathematics.
Beckoned into
their offices and laboratories, the public relations machines
took over where the scientists had faltered. Men and women who'd
spent their career using the accomplishments of others for their
own gain rallied their buzzwords. The camera's glass eye was their
friend, and they fancied it winked at them as they wrapped the
obscure multisyllabics of the scholars in the soft blanket of
platitudes and funding requests.
For most people
going to and fro on their daily rounds the comet didn't register
as important. Car insurance had climbed steeply for the third
year in a row, the vacuum cleaner needed a part that could only
be sourced on the other side of the city, and their boy was complaining
about his stomach and the nearest clinic a twenty-minute drive.
Their attention was already held by more plebeian concerns, and
they cared little about the rest of the universe, the rest of
the world, and even their own country. They could be relied upon
to keep their garage painted, to comment on the length of grass
in the neighbours' yard, but didn't feel that they should be asked
to care about something as meaningless as a passing comet.
The globe
continued to turn as it had for billions of years, its orbit slightly
decaying as the tidal drag made its minute effect felt over millennia,
but on the surface of the planet few were those who cared to look
past the city lights enough to care about the impending doom,
delight, or evidence, depending on who was watching.
The scientists,
fooled a hundred times by their eagerness for rarity, made cautious
assessments. They watched their peers' faces while they explored
the routine march of the heavens, even while their bones cried
out for the bizarre. The fear-mongers--who could turn on a dime
to take advantage of the crowd's trepidation--prepared their speeches.
They dusted off placards left over from the end of the Mayan calendar,
the turn of the millennia, and the computer scares of the year
two thousand bug. They adapted the stories they'd been telling
for half a century. The immigrants, who some blamed for the virus,
sighed with relief as those who capitalized on public fear turned
their attention to the heavens. Old prophesies were revived and
bearded recluses interviewed. "Read my book about the coming disaster.
Watch my speech. Listen to my broadcast." Believing in media saturation
as though that were their scientific verity, they choked the bandwidth
with anxiety and curses, with cures and sacred psalms, and promised
relief was only as far away as the donation button.
The fundamentalist
preachers, like Reverend Dander, whose talking points required
the denial of impermanence, dreaded the night of the comet's appearance.
Although such scenes had been as regular as clockwork since biblical
times, the preachers had been telling a different story for so
long that they woke sweating to images of a mass exodus. They
feared their congregation would seek out the long arm of the Catholics,
whose embrace of scientific consensus meant they were more evil
than those who sought to uncover god's handiwork. Even if their
parishioners left for the comforting stories of the fear-mongers,
Dander would have been happier. Even a child might be inspired
by the comet to seek out a more convincing explanation that he
offered from the pulpit. Thinking about his audience turning to
evil was also heresy, Dander reminded himself as he flopped over
in his cell, and could be punished by excommunication or murder.
Although much
of the world reacted to the comet's coming with a mixture of scholarly
excitement and doom-laden trepidation, the small town of Boltzman
was at first largely unaware that the incomprehensible clockwork
of the heavens was throwing a cog. Carrying on with their lives
as they had through several wars, an attempted genocide, and multiple
invasions, the townspeople relied on stolid good sense as though
it were both a shield and a meal.
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