Terraforming - 13 May
May 13, 2027
Sorry I got cut off. I’ll tell you why, but I’m sort of touchy about doing things in order, so you might have to wait a few entries. Anyway, good news, I managed to find a copy of this leaked conversation on someone’s old laptop. They must have left it when they were trying to get out of the city. Whoever it is, they’re most likely dead by now. Anyway, here’s the conversation, as close as I can get to word for word.
“We’ve been tracking this asteroid for years. There was no sign that it wasn’t anything but another asteroid. It’s trajectory wasn’t going to bring it anywhere near Earth.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“It’s changed course. It’s coming directly toward us at a much higher speed than any asteroid I’ve seen.”
“How is that possible?”
“There’s only one explanation that’s even remotely probable, and even that sounds impossible.”
“And what would that be?” “It’s self-propelled. It’s a ship.”
“How is that the most probable explanation?”
“The asteroid is too regular to be naturally formed. It’s also a combination of elements that we’ve never seen. There might be something out there.”
“Will it crash?”
“We don’t know.”
I’m sure you know what people are like, and this got a massive worldwide panic going. I mean, the backyard “meteor shelter” business was going crazy. Like that helped anyone. All the alien fanatics were saying this proved they were right all along. Turns out, they were. Spoilers.
A lot of people said it was a hoax, especially after a few months when the panic started to die down. This whole thing started about the middle of December in 2021.
After that first leak nothing happened for almost five years. I mean, people still were aware of this potential impending threat, but it was old news. People moved on, like they do. Somebody with all this private astronomy equipment put out a public tracking website for the meteor, but the government shut it down in ‘25 when it really started looking like it might actually hit the earth. They weren’t wrong, it eventually did. That sort of started the whole apocalypse, but it just got worse after that. It hit on June 13, 2026, a Saturday. That is a date I am never going to forget.
First the meteor hit. That was stage 1. About a quarter of Salinas, CA was completely wiped out. Almost 100,000 people confirmed dead in the initial strike, and another 500k missing. That’s including the ones who were caught by the earthquakes that this caused all along the west coast, and the tsunamis in the western Pacific. It hit so hard that almost the entire country felt the shock wave.
I’m going to have to stop writing for now. It’s getting pretty late. To be continued, I guess.
