Imminence

"So ends the last will and testament of both the planet Earth and all its inhabitants. Should this video log somehow survive, beyond the chance of an astronomical bit of apathy from the laws of science, then please, seek out those of us who might still be alive out there. If they didn't make it..."
He paused for a second, looking somewhere beyond the small green light of the webcam.
"If they didn't make it, well, just know that we existed. I suppose, I suppose that's enough."
With that, he ended the video and saved it to the flash drive. The few clicks of the computer's mousepad echoed through the empty flat much too loudly for the maintenance of sanity. He ignored the daunting emptiness of the world around him as he placed the flash drive into the heavy iron ball on the floor next to the computer and snapped the latch shut. The world was quiet once again, save for the gentle tremble of the ground.
He stood up from the couch, brushing away the ashes of all the history he tried to recall, grabbed his coat and cricket bat, and left the flat. False footsteps of others echoed around him as he made his way down the building and out the door.
"Right," he said, turning his head.
"Left," he said, looking the other way. The sounds of the Thames and gentle hum of the wind were the only other indicators of sound on the deserted cobblestone street. With a sigh, he trotted down the street.
The cricket bat clunked off the ground several times, testing the air for any muggers or raiders or signs of life. Nothing. He entered Covent Garden, tapping the cricket bat against the cobblestones just loud enough for the world to hear. Nothing came running to or for him during his casual saunter through the abandoned and derelict marketplace.
For a moment, he stopped and looked up, trying to peer through the darkened cloud cover to see something spectacular. Unfortunately, the London weather hadn't left with most of its population.
He walked, unfazed by the nagging screams and shouts of fear between his ears caused by the gentle tremors, until he reached his destination. It was the only place whose lights were actually on, shaking with the gentle wobble of the ground. He entered and the bell above the door greeted him with false familiarity.
"Whaddya want!" screamed the balding man behind the bar. Only the top of his head and his eyes were visible above the counter.
"A drink," said the man. He took a stool and leaned the cricket bat against the counter. The barman glared at this stranger, his eyes becoming miniscule with his squint.
"Whaddya want?" asked the barman, still hidden behind the bar. The man rubbed his cheek. The bristles of his facial hair lent some white noise to the air.
"Don't know, never been much of a drinker. Something strong. I don't need my brain cells anymore."
The barman stood up straight and rubbed his stubby jaw.
"Whiskey?"
"Sure."
He grabbed a glass and a bottle of brown liquid from behind him. Before pouring, his large brown eyes glanced up to the man.
"On the rocks?"
"I have no goddamned clue what that means."
"Ice?"
The man shrugged. The barman poured the drink, stopped for a moment, and pulled out another glass. He poured himself one as well and raised it up.
"To the end of all," he said, his hairy-knuckled hand shaking with a modicum of sadness. The man raised his glass as well.
"To better business," said the man, looking around at the empty stools, chairs, tables, and couch.
"Amen to that."
They both downed their drinks, though the man immediately scrunched up his face. The barman chuckled.
"You're right, you're not much of a drinker."
"Never was," said the man, shaking his head and wiping his mouth.
"Before this mess, I was a vegetarian too. And pretty healthy. Didn't eat candy, or ice cream, or damned near anything with processed sugar."
"Tha' right?"
The man nodded and took another sip.
"Pretty much as soon as it was announced, I gave it up. Well, I was in denial for a bit like everyone else, kind of hoped it was a sick joke or a miscalculation or something, but after a week, I said, 'fuck it,' and gave in."
"Mm. American?"
The man nodded.
"I was a student."
"And you didn't drink?" the barman asked. The man shook his head, and the barman laughed.
"You Americans, always fockin' crazy."
The man ran his hand along the cool, sleek wood of the counter. A bit of dust accrued on his fingers.
"So how come you're still here?" asked the man. The barman downed his drink and poured himself another.
"Well, not much of the church-goin' type meself. B'sides, I've run this pub since I can remember. It's better than my fockin' wife, throwing her caution to the wind and runnin' off with some bloke who came in here every night. Plus, not really of the cultist, 'pray to the oncoming planet and hope for the best' type. This pub is all I have, and I've got some decent drink here. Not going to let this go to waste before we're all blown to high hell."
The man chuckled and looked around the pub. Its softly lit, wooden brown interior led him to believe that, in its prime, this had been the comfortable house of forgotten sorrows for many, and had likely seen and heard much more in its time as a silent listener than anyone still on Earth.
"We're not getting blown up, actually."
"Whaddya mean?" asked the barman in a somewhat upset tone.
"The oncoming planet won't cause Earth to blow up like the Death Star or something like that. First, we've got the earthquakes. They're light now, but they'll get heavier and heavier. Along with the earthquakes will be the unstable tides. I'm willing to bet that the Thames will flood more often than not in the final week. That's just the effect from the gravity of the other planet at a distance somewhere between our moon and the orbit of Mars. Then, assuming that the other planet doesn't collide with the moon, and I don't believe it will, as the planets move even closer together, think between the moon and the Earth, the gravitational forces that caused the initial earthquakes will break the planets. Literally, think of the ground beneath you cracking and crumbling.
"That's not the end of the planet yet, though, because the same thing would happen if the rogue rock skirted right by us. The real end comes when the planet comes into contact with our atmosphere. It'll only be a second or less, but the sheer speed of the planet along with its gravitational pull will disperse our atmosphere, and then," he clapped his hands together, "the planets collide. There'll be some ejecta, something you might see in an explosion, but otherwise, the intense heat from all the kinetic energy will melt both planets and," he interlaced his fingers, "they'll combine into one. Kind of like two people who wander around all their lives searching for each other, except they don't know it: it'll be sudden and intense, and it will be hot, goddamn it will be hot, but two will become one. Of course, all life on Earth will cease to exist, and we'll have a new planet in Earth's stead."
He took a drink from his glass and downed the last of it. The barman poured him more without asking.
"Didn' know all that, really. Not much of a science guy meself. You think the ones who left can ever come back?"
"If they survive and last for a few billion years while the neo-Earth cools and possibly becomes habitable, though it won't be the same planet. It might have a different orbit, it might have some new moons because of ejecta, so who knows. They'll have to find a new home somewhere, the lucky twats."
"Think they'll make it?"
"Better chance than we've got."
The barman sighed and downed the rest of his drink. He smacked his lips and wiped them.
"I don't know much 'bout science, like I said, but I know about drinks. Otherwise, I wouldn't be who I am, would I?"
"Of course," said the man with a small bow. His cheeks turned pink.
"I can tell you, with my very specific and narrowed knowledge, that the swill we are drinking isn't the best bottle I've got in the house. This, this," he said, holding up the glass and inspecting it, "this is aged for only twelve years. It's a damn baby. It's not go experience, it's got no years in it, it's got no, no..."
"Wisdom?"
The barman snapped his fingers and pointed at the man.
"Tha's right, sonny, no wisdom. I was savin' it for the last few days, but I lost track of when that was gonna be. When is that, by the by?"
The man pulled out his phone and checked the calendar.
"Thirteen days."
A bit of color drained from the barman's cheeks.
"Thirteen...thirteen...my, how time just comes up and kicks ya in the arse. I'll be right back." He trotted to a door adjacent to the large bottle store behind the bar and disappeared behind it. The man looked at the various filled bottles in their respective holders, each one's contents vibrating with the gentle rhythm of the Earth. He drank the last of his drink as the barman emerged from the door holding a simple dark bottle.
"This, my friend, this is real scotch whiskey. Brewed in Glasgow over three hundred years ago by me great-great-grandfather and handed down, specifically deigned for the day when our name became the premiere whiskey name in the world."
He chuckled and popped the cork off of it.
"Never happened, of course. Brewery was burned down by some fockers. Great-great-grandad never recovered from it, but the rest of the family kept the bottle in the hopes of some special occasion of the sort. Well, just as me great-great-grandad deigned this bottle for a special occasion, I deign this the special occasion for which," he poured some in the man's glass,"this bottle," he poured some in his own, "shall be used."
The man picked up the glass and smelled the contents. It was pungent and stunk of a river of urine. He raised it up and the barman met his glass.
"To the end," they both said, and downed the viscous liquid. The man gagged and coughed as the barman howled in surprise at the taste.
"Woo!" he shouted, looking at the bottle. "That, that," his face turned a tinge of purple, "that was terrible. Want some more?"
The man, still coughing, tapped his glass.
"Good man," said the barman, and he poured a bit more.
"It's not -cough-, it's not all bad though," said the man, recovering himself from his near asphyxiation.
"How so?" asked the barman, taking a sip and struggling to get it down.
"Well," said the man, shaking his head with the unnatural feeling of warmth. "When the two planets collide, all living things will be incinerated. Poof, everyone and everything is atoms and molecules. But!" he yelled with a bit of spit. "But, the neo-Earth will have a decent chance at reconstructing life."
"Why's that, eh?"
"Because we already existed!" said the man, a drunken smile creeping across his face. "Because we were here, our nice, complex genomes within those molecules will be spread around the new giant rock and have a good chance of creating new life on the new big blue ball that will hopefully emerge within a few billion years. So, really, should those fuckers who got lucky enough to leave all die off, there's still a chance some offshoot of humanity will still exist. That's why I made the video."
The barman raised an eyebrow.
"What video?"
The man shook his head.
"Don't worry about it, it's stupid. It won't survive the cataclysm."
The barman leaned on the bar with a curious grin.
"No, really, tell me."
The man leaned forward.
"Well, I made a video. Kind of a eulogy of the Earth and humanity. Summarizes human history, has accounts of language and species diversity, all that good stuff. It's on a flash drive inside a big iron ball that's reinforced with just about every plastic and metal that I could scrounge together. Thing is the size of a football and heavier than the hope I've got."
"You think it'll survive?"
The man shook his head.
"No, it'll incinerinerate like everything else. Even if it somehow defies the laws of physics and survives, the data on it won't last that long."
"So why do it?"
"To have something that acknowledges that I lived. To acknowledge that humanity existed. To highlight everything we did right and wrong, just to show that we weren't perfect, but we weren't evil. That we didn't destroy ourselves; probability did that for us."
The barman took a drink.
"Here's to you, my friend. Makes me feel like I'm doing shite keeping this pub runnin'."
The man shook his head.
"No, you're doing everything. You're being human and not stupid like the people who think that the power of prayer can divert a planet. You're telling me that my video wasn't wrong."
A sly grin found itself on the barman's face.
"So what's your name, sonny? I don't recall ever hearing it."
The man smiled and finished off his drink with the face of an imploding toddler.
"I am...I am...I am drunk."
He laughed an acknowledgement of idiotic stupor and simple enjoyment. The barman laughed as well.
"Jack," he said, extending his hand to the barman.
"Miles," said the barman, clasping Jack's hand in his hairy own.
"Well Miles, it's good to know you on the edge of infinity."
Miles poured both of them another glass.
"To...death?" said Miles.
"Death!"
Their glasses clinked together, the sound of sweet synchronicity, and they downed their drinks, laughing and smiling at the abyss on their doorstep.

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Question your beliefs until you no longer believe them and then understand why you believed them in the first place.

Rules for Being a Tourist in Another Country

1. Bring an expensive, unwieldy, large camera. If you don't have an expensive camera, bring something equally expensive that can double as a camera. After all, what better way to say you're a tourist than to take a picture of a great landmark with something that looks like a dinner tray?

2. When buying anything, first buy something that no native in their right mind would buy, i.e. a mug with the queen's/president's/prime minister's/national animal's/great athlete's/television character's face on it. You want to stand out, after all.

3. As a corollary to purchasing, always argue with the cashier either in a choppy version of the native language or in a louder version of your own language. This still applies to American English vs. English English.

4. When walking anywhere, take steps no larger than that of the average toddler, and pay no attention to anyone walking in front of, behind, or to the sides of you. Remember, a tourist's job is to soak in the culture, and what better way to do that than to bump into natives and absorb them via osmosis?

5. If you are to take a picture of a great landmark, have a subject (friend, family member, stray orphan) stand at the one end of the walkway while you stand at the other end. This way, the natives will be forced to stop and wait while you take your picture, and you will get one completely unimpeded!

6. Walk everywhere with your rolling luggage. You know why.

7. Always compare everything to your native country. What's the point of going to another country if you can't openly boast about how much it stinks in comparison to your own?

8. After trying some local cuisine from a chain restaurant that also exists in your country, decide that you don't feel like eating anything aside from hotel food. The local food "makes your stomach ache."

9. Pay way too much for everything. Not because you necessarily want to, but because you can.

10. Don't actually indulge yourself in the finer points of the culture. It's all boring music, plays, and history anyway. The big buildings are what matters, and of course the ability to brag to your friends after the trip counts the most.  "Oh yeah, we had a great time in London! We saw EVERYTHING."

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Rejection flounders when a hug is actually a snake's throttle. Open hearts explode upon the mountaintop while the crowd watches in delight. Entertainment is a fool's cocaine, but never will anyone care to disregard it.

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