Epilogue

from The Death of Time; Or, If Highlighters Could Talk, my forthcoming novel

Ultimately, however, it didn’t do much good.

That night, as Brad and Diane slept—peacefully, the first time in years—NORAD noticed several small blips that briefly danced across their radar screens. The scattered photons were so fast and small that the technician on duty merely smacked the radar monitor, thinking some sort of electrical interference must have caused the fuzz.

Naturally, this was a mistake, but one could only reach that conclusion in hindsight. In this technician’s defense, most everyone who sat watching a monitor that night (or night, at least, in the U.S., which makes it night everywhere else for convenience’s sake) saw much the same thing, reached much the same conclusion, and did much the same thing, with much the same result. If nothing else, there was a worldwide smacking of electronics that went largely unremarked by anyone, for reasons that will become obvious shortly.

The one sole exception to the monitor smacking was a lone man in Liechtenstein who understood what was happening. Unfortunately, he had recently fallen in a skiing accident and lay in bed encased in a full body cast so he couldn’t really do much about it besides sit (lie) and stew about it. This is a tragedy on several levels, none of which are of particular interest here.

In space, high above the planet, the little blips turned out to be not-so-little alien vessels that were deploying ‘round the world for a coordinated attack. Lest you think this is going to be a generic version of Independence Day, everyone dies, so don’t get your hopes up. There is no Bill Pullman inspiration; no Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum screwing the aliens with a clever nuke up the wazoo. These were rather clever aliens who were well aware of the mess humans could cause, given half the chance, so they figured they’d just get rid of all of them at once and save themselves a whole world of trouble.

Shortly after 7:30 a.m., as Bob Edwards finished his humorous news brief, the aliens struck and destroyed everyone. This was, of course, tragic for several reasons, not least of which that this is not Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and no one survived.

THE END

Look for an upcoming chapter from my next novel: Where Do We Go From Here; Or, Is That Really That Much Quieter?