It was December, five years ago, when a man had launched a satellite in his backyard to take a photo of the moon.
It was ramshackle, hardly anything a proper spacefaring organization would have considered launchworthy. It nearly shook itself to pieces in the process, barely making it up a thousand kilometers.
That's nothing to say of the missiles aimed at it. Frankly, if Brian Griffith hadn't threatened to blow up him and his neighborhood if his satellite was destroyed due to hostile intentions, it likely would've never made it near the moon.
But make it it did. And once it had flown past the bright side of the moon, destined to drift in interstellar space forever, it had swung its camera around, and photographed the dark side of the moon.
If Mr. Griffith hadn't automated the upload process, making sure the photo was distributed widely after he had been arrested, it's likely the world wouldn't have gone to such shit. But that's how it is, isn't it?
I had seen the photos a few days after.
It took a day and a half for the photo to be verified by the Chinese, and once it had, NASA had been forced to disclose its photos. The true photos.
It was national news within an hour, with NASA testimonials and explanations. I hadn't seen it, because I was sleeping.
But after I had woken up, prepared myself for the night shift, and come in, I saw it.
> NASA ADMITS TO 'COUNTDOWN' ON DARK SIDE OF MOON — MAJOR COVERUP REVEALED!
It was a sensationalist article. Ain't that always how we find news, though? The most attention grabbing area gets us into it.
According to frederickconspiracytruther.in, NASA had been covering up a massive countdown timer since they first got photos of the dark side of the moon. It was a massive international operation, all to prevent panic.
At the moment, the timer read 00000000000Y - 267145489D. Eggheads said it meant we had a little over two hundred and sixty-eight days until.. it hit zero, I guess. No one knew what that meant.
You ever hear of the countdown experiment? It was a test designed to trigger anxiety responses in individuals, by counting down from 30. They found that the slower you count down, the faster anxiety levels rise. It gives time for the dread and panic to set in.
The aftermath of it going public was.. incredible, honestly. My brother killed himself, and my Dad nearly followed him. The idea that it was all going to end was too much for him to handle, I guess.
I know that North Korea let down its walls. I guess Kim didn't want to spend his last year maintaining that veil of secrecy. Global politics as a whole just stuttered. I mean, shit, how do you plan for the future when there's an end date, right?
Except.. life kept moving. Because people needed food, water. They had to source it from somewhere, and that somewhere needed to be paid for its efforts. The wheel just kept turning.
Turns out, even after the end of the world was announced, the economy kept up. Insanity, I tell you.
It was after my brother's funeral that it really sank in for me.
The service was... fine, I guess. But watching him going into the ground, realizing I'm going to have to live the rest of my life without him... and then realizing the rest of my life will comprise of about two hundred and forteen days of sleeping and night shifts.
I don't know why that broke me, to be frank. But just the idea that I'd be following him shortly after, that our ideas of being retired and traveling the world together wouldn't have ever happened even if he decided to keep on...
I went out and bought a few bottles of whisky. My Dad and I drank on Phil's grave. We poured one out for him every bottle we emptied.
The next day, l quit my job. No one's gonna break into an information storage facility, anyway. Not with the end of the world on the horizon.
Plus, my landlady shot herself, and nobody had picked up the building yet. I had heard that gangs were charging people money to not be robbed, or worse, not have their house burnt down.
Even if they did, what use could my money give me at this point? They can have it.
It kept on like that. I woke up. I drank. I watched the skyline. I slept.
Some days I wanted to go with my brother, but others I screamed at him to leave me alone.
Let me face the end of the world you rejected, you fucking prick.
Fifty days before the end, and it hit me that I had just dragged myself through the last few months with nothing to show for it.
I'm going to be dead soon. There's nothing I can do about it. Everyone will be.
But, sitting there on the roof of the Drerri building, a radio antenna obscuring the stars, I had to wonder: was that any different from what I had dealt with previously?
We were all already going to die. Sure, I'd get a few more years, but comparatively, my life had gone from zilch to zilch.
So. Why not enjoy myself? Drink, fuck, go on life changing opportunities. Why not?
It's not like sitting in my misery had done anything but make me miserable.
So I did. There was an orgy happening down the block from me. You'd think, with the end of the world, people would be fucking in the streets, throwing firebombs, whatever. But the end of the world was weeks out. Nobody wanted to deal with an inferno tomorrow.
They just waved me in and let me fuck some hot lady in a skimpy outfit. Then I got fucked by her, then we both fucked a guy... my memory gets hazy after that.
I know I woke up the next morning deliciously fulfilled, in a way I had not felt in years.
It did help. Having my brains fucked out of me helped a lot with not dealing with life, or my impending death.
Still, there's only so much you can do. And on the last day of humanity, with a livestream showing the countdown on the dark side of the moon as it crossed to one day left... sex didn't really appeal to me then either.
I didn't even drink, the last day. If I'm going to witness the end of the world, I'm going to it stone-cold sober.
Cigarettes don't count.
I walked my street, and beyond. Why should I give a shit about soreness, or a place to sleep? I won't be here tomorrow. End of the world!
I passed on joining a couple fucking on their car, and again on a pipe filled with... something. I just kept walking. Past the town hall, past the McDonald's, out into the fields and farmhouses.
I slept there, in the corn. I'm thankful I didn't sleep too long.
The last hour was... peaceful, but nerve-wracking. The closer we got, the more the comments on the live stream poured in. People wishing each other the best, intimate confessions, saying they don't want to go. I left my own comment.
I'm not telling you what it was.
Watching the timer tick over to one minute made me wish I had brought a book. Who would've thought the end of the world boring? Christ.
Then... zero. I don't know what I expected to happen, but I certainly expected something more than a slight stumble. It was like my center of balance had been thrown off.
I checked the live stream, only to see it had gone offline.
It pissed me off something fierce, when I found out the countdown had been for the moon.