The Way It Went Down: 9 Years, 160 Days, 15 Hours, 3 Minutes, 22 Seconds

The anomaly was nothing, they said. Ignore it. It wasn't a problem. A mass of ice and stone tumbling out of sequence at an oblique angle from the sun—a runner. Something outside the pull of the giants, lost and whipped around on a great 10,000 year ellipse. It would come too close to the sun and burn or disappear in the black. Forget it.

    But-

    That's the first thing you should know about me; I don't let things go. It's not in my nature.

    Example: when I was a kid, I found a baby robin. I brought it home and it lived in a shoebox. It died in the there too. But even that wasn't enough. I was, what, six? I don't know. I put the box outside on my windowsill and waited. Every day that summer I'd look at what it was becoming. When my mom found the maggot-filled-box there was a lot of shouting. And the therapist. I just needed to see it through, you know? I needed to see it all.

    So, when I left JPL, I kept the object data. That was 2000. I've worked on it on and off since then. Something about the math bugged me.  

    Like the box on the sill I needed to finish it.

    The event will happen on December 31, 2025. It's been difficult to work out the math, but I've had all the time I needed. My mom is dead. No one cares anymore. Doesn't matter anyway. I finalized everything in 2011 or so. Halloween? Worked it all out. 

    What did I do with it? This math? Nothing. I watched the snow that winter and thought about something the size of Venezuela hitting so fast it liquifies a quarter of the mass of earth in a tenth of a second. The shockwave and heat so great the thin skein of air ignites and burns off like the plume of a candle. Then, ashes and molten rock. Scraped bare by fire.   

    They showed up later. The Feds. They knew. They'd seen everything on my machine. They'd been watching me to see what I might do. They seemed pleased I had kept my mouth shut. Didn't matter. 

    I told them whatever, it was over. Who cared? They didn't need to worry about me. I wasn't going to tell anyone. There was no point.

    They looked at each other. Finally the woman who looked like my fifth grade teacher wearing a gun on her hip, spoke: 

    We need your help. Uh...it's transmitting...something.