Insignificance by Ryan Priest

Insignificance by Ryan Priest

The worst phone call a single guy could possibly imagine at 6:13 a.m. An unknown voice speaking in that terse, military grammar, which they think is so esteemed but rings out to the rest of the world as programmed. The voice wanted to verify that it was speaking to Timothy Whittaker, Doctor Timothy Whittaker. And it was there, that subtle intonation at the word doctor, that Tim felt an invisible cold snake slither down his back while the pit of his stomach fell out of his feet.

“Something big? Yes, but not over the phone. Sending a car, strike that. Be outside in fifteen minutes for helicopter pick up.”

He stood outside his house jittering with anticipation. He couldn’t help but wonder if someone had played quite a joke on him. At any minute, one of his friends would jump out from behind a car, with a camera no doubt, to capture the yuks on video. After all, why would the government need him? He was only a radio engineer, not even established. He taught a course at the university. Not only that but that’s not how the government operated. Anonymous phone calls and helicopters were for the movies.

Then he heard it. The aforementioned helicopter. First like a distant lawn mower and then furious and deafening as it hovered above. There were five guys already squeezed into the back.  Tim didn’t recognize any of them nor did they have on lab coats but their identities were unmistakable, scientists.

“Timothy Whittaker?” A soldier asked, throwing the latch to the helicopter open. Without verbalizing an answer, Tim hurried on board. A manila folder was shoved into his hands and he marveled over the words “Top Secret” stamped clearly on the front.

Inside the envelope was a different story. Random printouts of figures and graphs, none of it making any sense. Photos of something, possibly something, all dark. Was he supposed to just know what this was simply because he wrote the letters P, H and D after his name?

“Relax my friend.” Said a green-eyed scientist. noticing Tim’s furled brow, mistaking confusion for concern. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“Then what is it?” Tim asked relieved to find someone in the know.

“It’s the end of the universe.” He busted out with a slack-jawed laugh exposing rope after rope of thick saliva stretching across his open mouth.

“Funny,” Tim said flatly looking away from the comedian’s cackling.

Several more helicopters began to join the flight path. Like a metallic flock of geese, each crammed with its own gross of big brains. The scientists, like children on school buses, all trading curious looks back and forth through the windshields with one another. Final destination was in the desert somewhere.

Below, surrounding sand-colored buildings hidden by the dunes, were jeeps, transports, Humvees and even more confused scientists. One hundred and thirty-five to be exact.

Tim was rushed out of the helicopter and to the ground. He naturally migrated to the large canvas tent with the others. Not one familiar face out of the group, yet he’d known these personality types throughout his professional life. They were academics, men of reason. Which also meant men of ego. One hundred and thirty five chests heaved out in the self-satisfied knowledge that it belonged to the smartest man on the planet. Something terrible or magnificent was happening though and they were the few smart enough or renowned enough to do something about it.

Tim never really liked scientists. He certainly didn’t refer to himself as one. He was a radio geek. He liked wires and motors and Japanimation, in that order. Scientists, he’d found, were never so much interested in science, as they were in convincing the rest of the world, like some love-sick teen, of their undying and eternal dedication to truth. A passion so pure and divine that you, being anyone else, would be too mentally undisciplined and stupid to ever possibly understand. Yes, it was safe to say Tim hated scientists.

“Scientists,” A man, high on the sound of his own voice, called out from the front of the tent. He had on a tacky dark suit and wore a pair of heavy mirrored sunglasses. “I am Colonel Jay Boyd, Air Force. In one hour, the White House is going to need a complete mission plan from us on how to achieve our objective.”

Tim’s head spun. He was not alone either. Murmurs, cocked eyes and shrugged shoulders throughout the crowd let the poor colonel know that he had missed a step somewhere.

“Didn’t you read the file?”  He flustered. It was then that Tim noticed everyone in the room had his or her own top-secret folder, invariably filled with the same useless graphs and pictures that they, being scientists, were supposed to magically understand.

Enter here Nathan Smith, chairman of a board somewhere, professor adjunct at Cambridge or Columbia, somewhere there was an office wall papered with degrees and certificates all bearing the name Nathan Smith. At least, that’s the impression Tim got watching the steel gray, bespectacled Smith taking the center, edging out the disappointed colonel with his dashed expectations of busy little men with funny accents who’d miraculously save the day, using only their collaboration and calculators.

“Ladies and gentlemen. We now know we are no longer alone in the universe. We have confirmed sighting of a single, piloted craft outside of our solar system.” And immediately a pin could drop. Through the silence, a charge could be felt with each foot shuffling, each heart beating like a war drum.  The whole room moved to this quiet and still frenzy only by a single concept: It was over, we finally knew.

Upon later inspection, Tim would note just how crafted and controlled Dr. Smith had been while giving out his next bit of information. Like a sadist, pleasuring in the loss of happiness, he let only the hint of a dimple show and without missing a beat continued, “And it’s coming right towards us.”

At first, they hadn’t known what it was. One night a star had been there, the next night it was gone. Then three nights later, there were even more missing. The theory that had been mostly agreed upon, was that it was an extremely large object, probably artificial, given its apparent right angles. Some even claimed that it had the geometrical shape of a square or rectangle but there was no way to be sure. No one had ever seen anything like it before. Nothing even close.

Whatever it was, the thing was now approaching our direction at high speeds. After confirming its existence, the next step had been to bring in the experts. Now here they were, the experts, each one, including Tim, brimming with a thousand questions.

“It’s big, we think it’s about four light years in length.”

That’s about when everything went to Hell. The physicists and mathematicians were the first to dominate the group’s focus. Then the engineers had it out with one another. The word ‘impossible’ was being brandished on all sides. Tim sat back chewing his lower lip and speaking only to ask clarification about what was going on.

It made sense when he thought about it. Of course we weren’t alone in the universe. Space was too big for that. We’d thought of aliens, to be sure, they wouldn’t look or act like us, it was foolish to think that. However, was it not also foolish to believe they would be anything comparable in size?

Sirius is the closest star to our Sun. It is roughly 4.3 light years away. That is about 24,80,000,000,000 miles. The distance around the Earth is only around eight thousand miles.

“The Earth isn’t even the size of an ant next to this thing.” A man sat crumpled in his exhaustion. They had been at it for hours. Talking, talking, talking and now it seemed there was nothing more to say.

The craft was invisible to the naked eye. The missing stars hadn’t been blinking out, the great mass of this magnificently large machine was blocking them from view.

By now, thousands of stars were being hidden behind this thing as it approached at speeds never reached by our best rockets or projectiles. It was coming in hot, ready to flatten out entire solar system, like a bug on a windshield, across its geometrically smooth face.

Tim had managed to hook up with a guy named Eddie Trenton. He was a British chemist but as far as starched shirts go, he was okay. The two had snuck away from the hubbub in the tents to look for some kind of food. The donuts and coffee that had been laid out on their arrival hadn’t lasted through the first hour.

They found a couple of soldiers hanging outside of a big wagon filled with snacks and sodas and other assorted food stuffs.

Tim and Eddie joined the soldiers in raiding the snacks but just as he was biting down into a Twinkie, they heard the name “Timothy Whittaker” come scratching out of all the walkies.

“That’s me.” He said through a mouthful of Twinkie the Kid’s spongy skin and creamy innards. He hurried from the wagon, making haste back to the main tent.

When he opened the flap to the tent, the remaining scientists were all standing there, with grim faces, waiting for him. Tim looked over his shoulder, hoping they were looking at something else but no such luck.

“We need a radio.” Dr. Smith said from the heart of the crowd. Apparently, scientists had been dropping off all night. Three had already killed themselves but that was it. They were being kept sequestered to keep the lid on public panic. The government’s position was, why bother letting out the secret if we can’t stop it?

The remaining pocket protectors had come to the consensus that the only possible hope the Earth had, was if they were able to convey some message to the craft. The only way they saw to do this was with a giant radio transmitter, capable of broadcasting with enough intensity to catch the behemoth’s attention.

“You’re the radio engineer.” Smith said with a nod as if this was supposed to somehow kick Tim into gear.

Before Tim could even begin to explain why their plan was improbable, the scientists dissembled like a fleeing school of fish. They didn’t even care to hear what he might say on it, they’d come up with the idea and, he guessed, they figured it was his job to make it happen…apparently alone. Not even any soldiers remained in the tent, just the rows of empty chairs, a few tables and a couple of mobile computer desks.

“Weak…” Tim said, still not even beginning to grasp what had been asked of him. He ran after the others just in time to see jeeps and humvees all taking off in different directions, all filled to the brim with soldiers and scientists alike, some even cheering.  Tim scoured the busy crowd for Smith, whom he spotted talking with the colonel.

The two didn’t seem happy. Then all of a sudden Smith pointed him out. The colonel shrugged and then said something into a cell phone that had been handed to him by an attendant. A few more words and then the colonel he put the phone away, before walking directly up to Tim.

“The President has full confidence in you Dr. Whittaker.” He patted him roughly on the shoulder and then, attendants and all, took to making his own haste the hell out of there.

Tim went back to the canvass tent and began shuffling through all the loose papers, hoping to find something, some sort of instructions for what they wanted. This wasn’t even his field, space radios. That field didn’t even exist.

What frequency was he supposed to use? What bandwidth? What type of power sends a signal that can reach something bigger than a star? Those other jerks had tucked tail and left him to design some kind of celestial stop sign. A ‘please don’t squish us’ for some Quasar sized alien family, kicking stars and planets out of their way like pebbles under their galactic station wagon.

Tim thought back to every ant, flea, spider he may have killed in his life. Had those ants been Einstein, could they have stopped him? Isn’t there a certain amount of size difference that no brain power can overcome?

“What’s the problem my friend.” A voice spoke over Tim’s shoulder and he turned to see it belonged to the green-eyed comedian from the helicopter ride.

“I have no idea what it is they think I can do…” Tim said. for the first time in his life relived to see a scientist. He’d spent over two hours alone in the tent already, expecting the world to end all around him at any second.

“Hmm. Well let’s see what we can figure out, okay?” The comedian said. Sure it was patronizing but beggars can’t be choosers. “Do you know how big four light years is?”

“Big,”

“That’s right. To put it more appropriately, if you were to shine a flashlight it’d take four years for someone four light years away to see it. Do you understand how big that is?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Cause I don’t and I’m an astrophysicist. Anyway, this thing is bigger than our planet, our sun, our solar system and it’s blotting out stars, more and more every hour. So that means it’s got to be going pretty fast right?”

“Yeah.” Tim was getting impatient, he did have a Ph.D. The object wasn’t necessarily smashing stars, it was simply blocking them from view, the closer that it got. It was close,

“Well, how fast is the ship…if it is a ship? They think it’s a craft because they think it shows speed variances and articulate course adjustments.”

“How should I know?”

“Uh huh…” He was leading somewhere. “Wait for it.”

Tim waited for it. “Well?”

“It’s over already. It’s not coming towards us; we’re going towards it. It’s the biggest mass we’ve ever detected in our galaxy, all things will gravitate towards it. Even light. So, if it’s strong enough to bend light, then what about us?”

“Oh god…” Tim said as it hit him. He could now see where green eyes was leading and see that he was right. All comets, planets and even light observed from this solar system are based around our sun’s gravity. It’s like a giant dent in the fabric of the universe that we course around the rim of. If the universe is fabric though, then this thing, this big black mass, was like dropping an anvil onto a hammock. All stars, space dust, every atom in the galaxy would inevitably come crashing towards its center. Falling faster and faster, the closer they got. At the end, towards the moment of obliterating impact, the speed would be so great that it’d stretch a man of six feet tall to about the fifty feet long.  Would he even realize it was happening? Not if everything else, every molecule in his being were under the same stress. He might not even notice anything wrong until suddenly a giant black wall came crashing into him squishing him to the size of a dime. Actually, squishing the entire planet to the size of a dime.

“Even if we’re not there yet, by the time we’d be close enough to send a signal, we’d be approaching it relatively faster than whatever waves we tried to send out.”

“Like trying to throw a ball forward out of a speeding car, it’d all just blow back into our tailwind.” Tim said as the scientist nodded.

Tim wondered if he was fifty feet tall currently.  Time would slow down the closer they got and some even theorized it’d stop, a suspended moment for eternity, before the final destruction.

The other scientists weren’t stupid. They had given the answers needed to get themselves the hell out of the desert. They’d left Tim holding the bag so they could get to their mothers and wives. So that they could hold their children to their breasts and await the moment that’d last forever.

Tim looked into the green eyes that were rimmed with pinkish irritation. He’d probably been hitting a bottle of peach schnapps.  He still didn’t fully understand but in a few minutes or even as long as a day it wouldn’t matter. There were no trumpet sounds or angels. God wasn’t coming back to save anyone. At the end of the day, as far as the universe was concerned, Earth would up just like most of her inhabitants, insignificant.

Green eyes said he couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of the end. “We’ll never even get a chance to figure out what this thing was.”

Tim awaited the final dawn, if it even came. Alone in the desert, as the story came to a close, there was at least a little consolation in knowing he’d seen this entire Earth thing out to the end.

There was no mistaking the giant black swathe that had now taken over the sky. There was a blink of light. Like the blipping on and off of a star. Tim knew it was actually Jupiter, exploding against the supposedly sentient object.

Green eyes had passed out drunk but before doing so, he’d warned Tim what was coming.

“First, you’ll see Jupiter go, a few minutes later, it will be Mars. After that, you, me, life as we know it, has about twenty minutes or so left.

“Until what, exactly?” Tim had asked.

“Nobody knows, but we’ll all find out together.” Green eyes had laughed. He then took one final swig of schnapps and passed out forever.

Tim waited outside. He saw the second flicker, goodbye Mars.

There was nothing to do, no last tasks to accomplish. Not even any women around to make mad, passionate love to as the end came. So, he simply waited.

At first the ground began to tremble, like a minor earthquake. Only, it didn’t stop. The quake got bigger, wilder, he watched the landscape begin to undulate like ocean waves, as he was thrown down in the tumult.

The ground cracked and broke apart with a rumbling that sounded like an unending series of thunderclaps.

Half of the sky, the half not facing the sun, was an ever-growing black canvas. Growing, growing, growing until those final moments came.

Dust began to lift from the ground, rising into the air, followed by pebbles and bigger rocks. Next, Tim lifted off the Earth entirely, as if falling in reverse. It took only a second but that was all the time left in the world, as Tim fell upward, through a cloud of dust, before having his body, and everyone else’s, atomized along the side of this unknown and truly alien shape that had found its way into our corner of the galaxy with a fatal thud.

The rest of the universe would go on, in some form or fashion, just without McDonalds or Shakespeare or any evidence that there was once a creature called man.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Ryan Priest 2024