The Asteroid

Refrigerator Perry dept.

It was a Tuesday afternoon when Neil DeGrasse Tyson made the announcement.

An asteroid, 12 miles wide and traveling 65,000 miles per hour, was on a direct collision course with the Earth.

It would hit in three days.

It had been named Asteroid XRT-12, but astrophysicists were calling it “Refrigerator Perry.”

Tyson, speaking simultaneously on several different news networks, was relatively calm, except for a moment when he blurted, “I Want My Mommy!”

After that he was composed and personable, and explained that they had been tracking the monstrous object for some time, but that only eighteen hours before, it had suddenly veered toward the Earth.

Unlike Chicxulub, which struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, Refrigerator Perry was expected to smash just west of Muncie, Indiana, around 4 o’clock on Friday afternoon.

At first, blame and recrimination ruled the day.

Republicans called out Democrats. Why didn’t DeGrasse-Tyson and his cronies know this was coming sooner?

Democrats blamed Republicans. If they hadn’t defunded science, we would have been on top of this!

The Hindus blamed the Muslims.

The Muslims blamed the Catholics.

The Catholics blamed the Mormons.

In a rare show of solidarity, everyone else blamed the Jews.

Then, after some hours passed, things began to turn.

The reality of what was coming, the enormity of it, the finality of it—began to sink in.

Trump gave a speech before a joint session of Congress in which he tried to take credit for things not being worse, and blamed Biden and Obama for the situation.

“Oh shut up!” several Republicans yelled.

After that, in a show of harmony not seen in many years, all the Congresspeople embraced.

“We are all one!” Lauren Boebert shouted.

“All one!” cried Chuck Schumer.

“Humanity!” exclaimed Mike Johnson.

“One big tent!” shouted Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez

Around the country, Unity was the word.

Police ceased pulling people over for minor traffic violations, or expired tags.

Dodgers and Giants fans met in Bakersfield and knelt together. “We love the same game!” was the common sentiment, “We’ve just been cheering for laundry!”

Branch Rickey

The CEOs of McDonald’s and Burger King worked together to give away 50,000 hamburgers per hour, across the country.

“It’s all low-grade meat,” McDonald’s chief Chris Kempczinski said, “and it’s the least we can do to give back to all the loyal meat-eaters.”

The Imam, the Chief Rabbi and the Cardinal of Philadelphia all proclaimed their common position.

“We all like Jesus,” cried the Imam, as the Rabbi and the Cardinal nodded. “Acknowledge him, provide him, worship him, whatever.”

Martin Luther King, jr.

Around the world, it was the same story. Serbs and Croats had a mass “hug-in” in the hills above Belgrade. Catholics and Protestants played darts together in Belfast. Putin and Zelenskyy slow-danced in the Donbas. In Gaza, Israelis and Palestinians had a giant cookout, complete with falafel, hummus, schwarma—and no pork.

“We like the same food!” many exclaimed. “We love each other!”

Golda Meir

The border between North and South Korea was thrown open, and Koreans of all persuasions broke into a spontaneous fan dance, or Buchaechum, after which they shared kimchi, deep into the night.

All day Wednesday it went like this, and into Thursday. Around the globe, incredible displays of love were seen, and brotherhood, a heightening of consciousness, a shared idea of a common species, an intertwined destiny, a collective oneness on a tiny rock in a hostile, infinite cosmos.

Gandhi

Late Friday morning, with just a few hours until the unfathomable impact of Refrigerator Perry, DeGrasse-Tyson hit the airwaves again.

“I don’t know how to say this,” he said slowly, “but either our calculations were off, or the asteroid has changed course, but it seems we are out of danger! It’s going to miss us by a couple hundred thousand miles. Uranus might not be so lucky,” he mused, “but we’re out of danger. I guess I should say I’m sorry—but after all, this is really good news!”

Spock

It was like the whole world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Had humanity ever been so universally grateful? So simultaneously elated?

After a few hours, Mrs. Frank Ellenbogen was given a ticket for a broken taillight by Patrolman Nevin Pugmiller, near Bellingham, Washington.

“It’s up to her to make sure her vehicle is up to standard,” Pugmiller told a local news affiliate.

Trump announced he was going to initiate a bombing campaign on Quebec, to the applause of House Republicans. A Giants fan was clubbed over the head by a Dodgers fan at a Pismo Beach In ‘n Out Burger. Russia launched a new strike on a cathedral in Kyiv. The Korean border was closed again and both sides tested nuclear devices in the Yellow Sea. Gaza was once again, well, Gaza.

Only in the upper Arctic, in the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, were things calm. Carrying a rifle outside the settlement is mandatory due to polar bears, but the residents are careful to avoid attacking humans.

“We do the best we can,” shrugged Kjell Solberg. “We heard about the asteroid, and it was too bad. But then it missed us. So that was nice.”

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