I Don’t Want to Go

January

2013 NGP

“And t-this- this is happening soon.”

“…It won’t take it more than a year, sir.”

“Y-you’re joking…. So there’s- what, there’s nothing we can do? Can’t we sever the-“

“You made the cables specifically so that they could never be severed or removed.”

Kidney dryly laughed, inhaling.

“Of course, it’s too late for that anyway, by now.”

“W-we can’t just nuke it?”

“No…. Sir. The resulting rubble would cause just as much damage as it hit the Earth’s crust. Maybe more.”

“So- w-where will it land-“

“It won’t matter. It probably won’t land to begin with. The results of it merely growing a step too close will be unilateral. Nobody will survive. We have no other colonized planet to go to. At most, you might hope to live in space for a time… I’d get started on that soon if I were you. Of course, it… would be a little lonely, to be one of the only people still alive.”

“I-It would, wouldn't it…?” His teeth chattered.

“Sir, if I may speak to you casually?”

“G-go ahead…”

“If you’ve any good in your heart, you will stay here and die with the rest of us. I hope you burn in hell, you rotten bastard.”

Hanging up the phone, Walter was beginning to black out. As the first of many panic attacks set in, it all struck him. Just how much he was going to lose. Just how much of a mistake he’d made. Above all else- just how little he could do about it.

The room spiraled all around him. He saw his creation reflected in the insides of his eyeballs, the Genesis bending atop the moon inside the fisheye lense. When it sprung from the moon, the moon bled, and it flooded the Earth in a red mire of death.

Kidney choked on his own spit.

Sobbing, tearing his hair out, Walter Roscoe Kidney took his first step into accepting that his dream was dead.

That bothered him more than the fact that everyone on Earth was going to die.