Single Male - SM6

You are the first to awaken in the cottage on Friday 13, 2029 even though you spent several hours in a sleeping bag out on a sunning couch looking for the asteroid until realizing is coming from the other way.  At two AM you said to yourself, “Earth turns!”  But, the time was not wasted.  You thought of all the girls you knew and dated in college and after.  

You didn’t date in high school as you were a nerd and awkward.  And, all the girls you knew you had known all your life.  They felt more like sisters than girls you would go after for sex.  “God, adolescence is confusing,” you thought even though you were far from it.  You vowed that if this thing didn’t happen you’d find some nice woman and marry her.  “It’s our choice,” you think aloud.

Everything flashes through your mind as you deal with the coffee maker and warm up a breakfast roll in the microwave.  The cottage is a mix of stuff from two centuries.  The pan in your mother cooked three big Walleye steaks is over 100 years old and the microwave is about three.  It “dings” about the time the coffee machine gurgles that it too is finished.

You go outside to sit at the family picnic table of rough hewn wood.  It was built on site from logs by an uncle many years ago and it just goes on like it will be there forever, but maybe today is it?  You turn on the little Grundig radio you take on trips.  It has six bands and you can get stronger stations from Chicago as well as Minneapolis.

“The New York Times headline this morning is, “World Ends Today!  Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”  For more on this story we’ll talk to George Gibbs White House Press Secretary who is giving a briefing from the White House Press Room.  One moment.”

“Oh my God!” you think, the President will explode!  This is the last thing he wanted to have happen.  Can George handle it?”

Poor George Gibbs does his best, but like all White House Press Secretaries he is the last one to know the facts in order to have deniability and the first to be pumped full political propaganda.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” starts Gibbs, “The old gray lady has lost her mind.  It is just that simple.  There is nothing to this story.”

“Monica Tewksbury, Fox MegaMedia, what do you say about all these astronomers that have disappeared or been killed, sir?”

“I’m unaware of any such story.”

“2,000 of them!” yells a male voice and the new conference becomes chaotic.  You turn it off as you hear noise in the house.  You see your father in the kitchen so you go to him.

“Thought I’d make us all a nice breakfast.  I’m going to cook some more of that Walleye.  Why don’t you go down the road and get the paper. I called the Minneapolis paper before we left.  I like to stay in touch.”

“That’s why I always have my Grundig, dad.  I can get Europe and Australia on it.”

“Really?”

“Some of the time.  It depends…”

You walk down the 500 foot long drive to the road for the paper and then you see what looks like a star in the east, but it is in broad daylight.  Not big, but visible!

“Oh my God!” you yell aloud, “That’s it!  Holy shit!”

A chill passes through you like none ever has.  You are looking at death on a world scale and you know it.

Continue.