A Chilling Message

What? The celestial poltergeist they were tracking as a side project was predicted to head straight for the Earth? Unlike his friend, Clement was far from amused upon hearing this. The stack of papers he was holding - a record of members with just five names on the top sheet - fell out of his hands as he crossed the maze of junk with great agility.

“Did you install the program I told you to? From the link I sent? Or is this from one of your shady websites again?”

“Nope, this one’s legit. Spent thirty bucks on it, too. Here, see for yourself!” He passed the laptop over.

Clement briefly ran his eyes over the screen. The version code seemed both legitimate and up to date, all the numbers were entered correctly, and the program ran just fine.

“You seeing that trajectory? Whoever coded this thing is a comedic genius!” Andrew was right, of course. The trajectory looped inwards around the Sun, curved around other planets’ gravitational fields, resulting in a very strange curve that ended at the Earth.

“This shouldn’t be a joke. It’s as close as we can get to what the NASA guys have without hacking them, or something.” Clement stammered.

“Could it be a bug then?” Without any warning Andrew reached over and hit the reload button on the screen. The touchscreen obliged, and the two friends watched the unknown object loop around the sun, curve and flail about, and strike the same planet again.

Not knowing how to react to this, Clement allowed himself to join his friend’s bellowing laughter with a small chuckle. “The trajectory is way too janky. And even if this were legit, it would be all over the news. Faaaar bigger guys than us would see it first.” he reassured himself.

“Yeah. I’ll try to get a refund for this junk, but something tells me we’ve been rugpulled.” Andrew lamented.

“Worth a try anyways. But before that, why don’t you check the One-Fifty-Mil while I redo the calculations on the big computer? If anyone would have information about this, it would be them.”

“Sure, why not.” He heard springs groan in protest as Andrew shifted to a more comfortable position on the couch behind him. This “One-Fifty-Mil” was their nickname for 150000000.net, an online forum called Astronomers United. Long ago its admins chose that URL because there were 150 million kilometers in an AU, but that joke had gotten old before the duo were even born.

Clement settled down on his stool, booted the backup copy of the program he had downloaded yesterday, and activated it with Andrew’s login credentials - a process no doubt familiar to him. As he was punching in the numbers, his friend called out:

“Nothing but stale memes and comet-posting. Did you know that exactly fifty years ago Apollo 11 landed on the moon?” So, the usual sludge. No world-ending cataclysms to speak of.

“Fifty years ago? Feels just like yesterday…” To his great shame, Clement had actually forgotten about this rather significant date in the rush of graduation, university preparation, and event planning. Wouldn’t stop him from bringing it up at the party, though, he decided.

A press of the ENTER key and a minute that seemed like an hour later, the program spat out the exact same output: on July 20th, 2020, an unknown celestial object at least half the size of Pluto will hit the Earth. Clement snorted.

“Same result on the big guy. Guess the fault really is in our stars, not in ourselves.”

“Take that, Cassius!” exclaimed Andrew, happy to finally understand one of his friend’s literature references, even at the great cost of suffering through this particular play in English class.

“Wait. Duuuuuude…” It was no secret that a certain childish spirit was better preserved in Clement, and he just got one of his funny ideas again.

“Oh boy… What are you thinking?” Andrew asked, not without interest.

“If there’s nothing on the forum, then why don’t we make a post? It would be SO funny - imagine the arguments!”

“You’re so right. They might even make one of those disaster movies about it and we’ll never have to work a day in our lives.”

“I’ll compile all the outputs right away. Images, too. The more the merrier, and let them sift through it all looking for nonexistent patterns!”

“You’re so right, Clementine. I’ll send you my results too. Gonna rename it to “Supercomputer Output” or something to make it look more credible.”

When they worked together like this, differences and quarrels temporarily set aside, they became a formidable force indeed. After not even ten minutes, all was ready and they stood in front of the computer, cursor hovering over the bright red PUBLISH button.

“You sure the title can’t use a bit more work? Something more extreme like “We’re all gonna die!” would be more fitting, no?”Andrew asked, excitedly.

“Nah. I bet they get a dozen posts like that every day. They’ll delete it without even looking.”

“Fair enough, hit it, then!” Andrew tapped his friend’s shoulder, increasingly more excited. With a pleasant click of the mouse, the post was off to the web. The two friends chuckled, imagining the outrage it would cause. Then, the page refreshed.

“What? Already removed??” Clement couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Are you serious? Are we still banned for that fake asteroid prank?” suggested Andrew, his excitement quickly fading with the smile that melted off his face.

“No way, that was years ago! Plus, I remember begging for help with our telescope long after that…”

“Well, check if there is a reason why the post was removed. Use my account if yours is banned.”

Before they could do that, though, the tiny mailbox icon to the right of the main forum page flashed. Clement cried out, triumphantly:

“Aha! They better be sorry and say they removed it by accident!”

“They’ve sure been sloppy lately, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Clement clicked the button and read out the sender information: “This one’s from a CatLover 86. Didn’t know they got new admins.”

“That name could use a bit of work. Regardless, let’s see what our feline friend has to say” said his friend, rather dryly.

Click. Clement’s heart sank. Andrew’s jaw dropped.

20-07-2019

3 Attachments.

ATTENTION CLEMENT WILSON, RESIDING AT 45 EDWARD STREET, RIVERBURG, ONTARIO, WITH JOHN WILSON, DONNA WILSON (RICHARDS) AND VICTORIA WILSON. YOU ARE FORBIDDEN FROM DISCLOSING OR DISCUSSING THIS INFORMATION BY THE ORDER OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN POLICE.