The Asteroid

A short story

Photo by Bill Adler

“Object 54? You waited weeks to name it and all you could come up with is Object 54? That’s a terrible name. You know that you can name the asteroid after yourself because whoever discovers it gets to name it.”

“I have zero desire for the asteroid that could destroy all life on Earth to be named after me,” Kaori Sasaki said. She rubbed her temple with her left hand as she blew on her tasteless coffee to cool it. Her tenth cup in twenty-four hours.

Kaori shuddered. Coldness seized her.

Object 54, a fifteen-point-three-kilometer nickel and iron asteroid, is a planet-killer and on a trajectory to sterilize Earth in three days.

Impact will vaporize parts of the Pacific, create tsunamis hundreds of meters high, ignite firestorms across continents, trigger mega-earthquakes, and bury any survivors beneath lethal ash and deadly cold temperatures.

Minako Sawada, PhD, senior astronomer at Jododaira Astronomical Observatory in Fukushima, Japan, and Kaori’s boss, asserted, “Except that it’s not going to annihilate Earth, Kaori, because you built the machine that will save the planet.”

“I built a machine that might save the world. We won’t know for another—” She twisted her wrist and glanced at her Seiko—“twelve more minutes when we fire up the deflector.”

“When you fire up the beam that you invented it will distort local space geometry and deflect Object 54 away from the Earth into a safe path toward the Sun.”

“I’ll press the button, but despite what the theory suggests about gravitational displacement, we won’t know if it works with such a massive object until that moment. And if it doesn’t work, that’s it. The end of life, the end of everything. We haven’t had time to test it at scale.”

“I have faith in your machine because I have faith in you, Kaori.”

“A lot of people don’t.”

“They don’t understand the equations of gravitational topology distortions and how your vector engine works as a deflector beam.”

“I’m not sure I fully do, either.”

They sat in the dark observatory dome room, sixteen hundred meters high. It was two-fifty-five in the morning. Even at this elevation, the sweet scent of apricot and jasmine kinmokusei flowers, which bloomed in October, filled the room.

“Do you smell that?” Kaori asked.

“I love kinmokusei. It’s my favorite flower. And thanks to your invention, we will smell kinmokusei next autumn, too.” Minako tapped her watch. “But I think it’s time to get to the control room.”

“The control room is only a twenty-second walk from here. We have time.”

Minako stood. “Let’s go, Kaori. Savior of the world you may be, but I’m still your boss, and I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

Over one hundred souls crowded the observatory’s control room, a space usually occupied by no more than twelve. Among the crowd were Reiko Higuchi, Japan’s prime minister, Harlan Cole, the president of the United States, their security teams, camera crews from NHK and CNN, a dozen pool reporters, and other astronomers, scientists, and engineers.

Kaori sat in the one remaining chair in front of a white panel with a square, red button under a plexiglass cover. A large digital clock with blue numerals on the wall in front counted down the remaining minutes.

Nobody spoke. The room was quiet, as if the world had already ended.

Nine minutes and thirteen seconds.

Some of the assembled closed their eyes; others mouthed prayers. The video camera operators silently panned the room back and forth, like a muted metronome.

Kaori took a moment and thought about everything in her life: from her first boyfriend, to her decision to choose Kyodai over Tokyo University, to a chance encounter with a physics professor at lunch one day during her junior year, who inspired her to take a class that gave her the idea for a vector engine that would percolate in her mind for a decade until she developed the invention. She thought that if she’d not been hungry that day, how different today might’ve been.

After what felt like a century, Kaori took a deep breath and turned her head to scan the room.

Prime Minister Higuchi nodded, raised her hand, and crossed her fingers.

Kaori lifted the clear cover atop the button.

When the countdown reached exactly zero, Kaori pressed the red button.

A click echoed.

The deflector, located a hundred meters from the observatory in the Azuma Mountain Range and connected to every power plant in Japan for maximum energy, fired a bright yellow beam into the night sky. The quarter-meter-wide beam bubbled as if filled with sparkling water. The deflector beam intercepted Object 54 two-point-five-six seconds later. It tracked and held its position for nine seconds, the amount of time Kaori calculated the vector engine would need to change the asteroid’s trajectory, and also the amount of time the deflector could fire before burning out.

Nearly everyone in Japan lost power as the country plunged into darkness.

New York, London, Paris, Seoul, Sydney, and dozens of other cities turned off their lights in solidarity with Japan, a global symbol of hope.

Kaori had also calculated that it would take approximately five minutes to determine if the deflector was successful or if the world was doomed.

Two seconds after the beam stopped, night flipped to daytime. Bright light streamed through the control room’s windows.

“What?” Minako said. “What happened?”

Kaori, Minako, and then the Prime Minister and President, their security teams, and everyone else ran outside.

A flock of crows crossed above the observatory from east to west, cawing and screeching as they flew. Two bears emerged from a nearby grove, apparently woken from sleep, confusion painting their faces.

Kaori tilted her head up and turned a full circle.

The radiant sun blazed midway between the horizon and the zenith.

The sun is larger, Kaori thought.

Another sun, a bigger, red ball, hovered on the opposite side of the sky.

Between them, a translucent yellow, green, and indigo planet with six silver and gold rings occupied about an eighth of the sky. A ribbon of stars like the Milky Way, as seen from the African plains, twinkled through that planet.

Iridescence infused the sky, a deeper, richer blue than Kaori had ever witnessed before, even in Antarctica.

The air chimed with invisible resonance.

Prime Minister Higuchi strode to Kaori. “What happened?” she asked. “Did we deflect the asteroid?”

Kaori looked up again, studying the sky, her mouth agape.

The Prime Minister stood for a minute with her arms folded across her chest and then tapped Kaori’s shoulder.

“Give me a moment, Prime Minister.” Kaori paced in a tight, slow circle, her head tilted toward the sky. After a minute, she said, “Oh my god. The deflector didn’t change the asteroid’s trajectory. It pushed our planet to another solar system, maybe even another galaxy. It will take time to figure out where we are, if we even can.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re forever safe from Object 54. This is the same Earth, only in a different part of the universe.” Kaori took in several shallow breaths in quick succession. Her face paled, her legs wobbled, and she fell to the ground.

The Prime Minister extended a hand and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Kaori answered. She looked at the sky again, gestured to the ringed planet above, and smiled. “I’m just overwhelmed by the view.”

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like The Lost Explorer.