It was just around past the sharp edge of the twenty-first century, around eleven o’clock in the evening on the last day of an old year. And it was time for the end of the world – ask anyone. There was nothing after the next morning, no point in delaying the inevitable, and that was that. It was the last night of all, and that meant it was time to wrap up all the loose ends.
Paul John Bob (just Bob, not Robert) had thought about it ahead of time, and so the only loose ends he had were two bottles and a quarter-bunch of bananas. So he poured himself a cup of something paler than pure water that hissed at the air, and he poured himself a glass of something darker than the inside of a rock that seemed to hum in its cradle, and he sat himself out on his porch, which was five boards of different sizes put together any old way, and he waited for the end of the world.
It sure was taking its time, it felt like. He was two bananas into the bunch already and time seemed to be standing still. A nice night at least – the stars were bright and sharp up there, twinkling their little hearts out all over everybody’s last evening, and that made it easy to see that person shambling up his hill and into his yard.
“Evening, Sherlock,” said Paul John Bob (Jerry, to his friends and neighbours).
“About there or so, Jerry,” said Sherlock, “if you ignore all the doom and despair.” He was a round, roly-poly man with a face that was built for beaming grins and a mind that lived in grim defiance of this.
“Still an evening,” said Paul John Bob. “Siddown. Have a banana.”
“I don’t have time to sit and talk,” said Sherlock. “I’m on a tour of my closest friends and relations; the last thing I’ve got time for before it’s all over.”
“Well hell Sherlock, that’s one hell of a compliment. I thought we barely spoke outside the bar.”
“What? Nah, nah, I said closest. I live just down the hill, of course I’m going to stop by. Only so much time to say goodbye to folks, we’re almost done, you know?”
“Right, right.” Paul John Bob squinted thoughtfully into his clear drink, then his dark drink, then decided against either. “How about that then, eh?”
“It’s going to be pretty bad,” said Sherlock. “Meteors left and right. Going to slam us into pancakes and the pancakes into mush and the mush into dirt and the dirt down to nothing. Then the ground’ll just shake apart, the moon’ll fly away, and we’ll just be left with a big pile of rocks where earth was.”
“That’s a damned shame,” said Paul John Bob. “I heard we were all going to be infected with a super-powerful virus the likes o’ which shoulda never left the lab, and we’re just counting down the minutes ‘till we all go into septic shock, pass out, and never awaken.”
“That’s nonsense, Jerry.”
“Shucks. Was hoping I’d leave something for my cat.” Paul John Bob sighed. “Ain’t much point in that if he’s going to be pounded into a pancake right alongside me. A real downer, that.”
“That’s life,” said Sherlock. “Nobody said it was going to be fair.”
“Nobody told me any differently, neither,” said Paul John Bob. “Aw sorry, I don’t mean to be grumping. Must need another drink; y’sure you don’t want anything?”
“No,” said Sherlock. “I’m off now to say goodbye to my fourth cousin eight times removed, just over the hill. I might have to jog – goodbye forever, Jerry.”
“And see you later too, Sherlock,” said Paul John Bob, and he raised a glass to the tubby man as he trotted out of his yard and off up the road, a wobbling mass on two dauntless little legs. Then he took a drink out of both his cups and felt pretty good.
Still a good ways to go before it’s all over, he figured. An hour’s a long time, practically years, and there’s still two-thirds of it left. That’s almost a decade. And that’s enough time to finish these two cups here, which is good because leaving half-gone drinks around is something his mother drummed out of him good and hard when he was a lanky thing with too much hair, back a while back.
Moving thing on the upper road, lurching down the hill like Frankenstein, arms waving and wobbling with the force of not a single muscle behind them, a creature that ran on tendons by itself.
“You look just like Frankenstein right now, Julius,” said Paul John Bob (Hob to his dear friends).
“That’s Frankenstein’s monster, Hob,” said Julius, pulling himself up onto the porch with a complicated batch of joints and pulleys deep inside his skeleton.
“Yeah, like I said.”
“No, you said Frankenstein. That was the man what made the monster. The monster’s got no name at all, not a bit. Nobody to name him ‘cause he got no parents. It’s one of those things.”
“Fair enough,” said Paul John Bob. “I’ll remember that.” This was a lie, but they both knew it and it got said almost every visit Julius made one way or another, so there was no awkwardness at all there. A bigger tradition than Christmas-time, no way about it, no two ways about it, or even three.
“Mind if I have a knock of that drink right there?” asked Julius.
“Free country, free to the friends,” said Paul John Bob. “Which one?”
Julius shut his eyes for a bit of thinking. “You got that creamy, thick, sweet one with the colours on top like an oil slick, all rainbows and fumes?”
“Nope. Just the pale one that hisses at the air and the dark one that hums in the glass.”
“Shit,” said Julius dourly. “Forget it then. When’d it run out?”
“Five years ago. Blake died, and his brother can’t make it the same way. Comes out more milky than creamy, and you only get a three-colour rainbow.”
“Man, man, time slides the less you look at it,” said Julius, shaking his head. “Forget it then.”
“Sorry ‘bout that.”
“Eh, forget that too.”
“Done. Nice night, eh?”
“Good enough,” agreed Julius. “Good enough. Bar for the whole oncoming apocalypse and all.”
“Yeah. All those meteors and meteorites. Can you remember the difference ‘tween those again? I never can.”
“Meteorites hit the ground, otherwise they’re just meteors,” said Julius. “But it makes no difference, seeing as we’re not getting neither of ‘em.”
Paul John Bob raised an eyebrow, and the bananas. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Julius, and he took two of them. “I met Sherlock down the way, he was spouting the same hickory-corked bullflies as I hear from you just now. No idea where that came from. Man probably made it up out of half of things he remembered from school days and a misunderstanding on the television. No, there’s no meteors. Calm yourself and your so-and-so.”
“I’m calm and relieved,” said Paul John Bob. “I was pretty scared for my cat there.”
“Nah, he’s got nothing to worry about,” said Julius. “Cats are too furry to get chewed on.”
“Chewed up?”
“Nah, chewed on. Y’see, the aliens, Hob, they finally talked back to us. After all those years of pointing up big dishes into the sky and listening hard, somebody spoke up and sent us back something for all those years of radio messages and mis-broadcast programs.”
“Well now, that’s a stroke of luck!”
“Damn near amazing, Hob. We find something with the right sort of tech, and the right sort of brain to decode us, and the interest to care, and they can talk back faster than light so’s we got a reply nice and quick.”
“So what’d they say?”
Julius was halfway through both his bananas now, alternating bites. “Weell, they didn’t say much. Just screamed a lot.”
“Shrieked?”
“No, pretty much a scream. All one note, very constant, no variations. Not really any room for language there, so we reckon it’s a threat, and they’ve made no diplomatic overtures since. The ships are orbiting us right now – see that bit of dark that blotted out that star there for a second?”
“I took that for a bat.”
“Nah, nah, it’s a ship. They’re powering up their horrible weapons right now. Awful things, they’re going to paralyze the planet and drag us all up to be lunch, supper, and dinner.”
“They’re skipping breakfast?”
“I tell you, Hob, they are just beyond our thoughts. And midnight, we’ll meet ‘em face to tentacle.”
“Grisly,” said Paul John Bob.
“Damn straight and sideways,” said Julius. “I was just heading down the hill now to say goodbye to my auntie – well, and you.”
“Ah thanks Julius, you’re a good people there, you know that?”
“I’m not sure ‘bout that, but thank you much for it. Sure you got none of that drink?”
“We took our last bottle out on your birthday.”
“Sorrowful. Well, good luck to yourself.”
“And yourself too,” said Paul John Bob, and he raised both glasses to his friend as he loped his way away into the thickening dark.
The night was wearing on a bit now, and clouds were starting to crop up around the horizon, making Paul John Bob’s knees ache a bit. There was a breeze in the air, playing with his hair, and the bugs were sparse and polite enough to stay out of his teeth.
“Night like this sure is a waste, only getting half of it before doomsday,” he remarked.
“I agree,” said Sally-Jean, who was sitting down beside him.
Paul John Bob (Petey to his wife) gave her a sidelong look. “Thought you were phoning the kids?”
“Eh, they’re all busy. Partying, hollering, getting into sticky situations with silly sorts. Y’know children, the end of the world’s just a game to ‘em.”
“Yep. Bet they’ll even try to get it on with the aliens, once they land.”
Sally-Jean sighed. “Petey, my love, you denser than my mother’s tombstone. Why you still listening to anything Julius says that ain’t trivia? The man taught himself out of the backs of encyclopedias.”
“They were pretty nice books,” said Paul John Bob. “Had leather covers and everything.”
“Pleather, Petey, pleather. Big difference.” She scratched her back and took one of the bottles. “Ah well, it’s no harm. We got a little ways to wait yet, and time with friends’s not really wasted anyways.”
“Ymm-hmm,” said Paul John Bob. “Hey now, how’s you heard it supposed to go on then?”
Sally-Jean pursed her lips, and took the other bottle. “Well, the phone was a bit busy at the children’s end, but I think they said the ‘states finally pushed the wrong button on their missile silos, and we were all going to get dunked in enough nuclear war to leave us glowing fifty thousand times over in every cell.”
“Ow,” said Paul John Bob.
“Yep.”
“The cat too?”
Sally-Jean spun the empty bottles on her longest fingers, just like pinwheels. “Yep.”
“Well shoot. I was hoping he’d be alright.”
“That cat steals the damned pillow out from under your head nine nights out of eleven.”
“Yeah, but he likes me.”
“Not even a little bit, Petey.”
“Jealous ain’t attractive, Silly.”
“Pshaw,” said Sally-Jean, elbowing him dead in the ribs. “I never was, and you know it.”
“Fine, fine, fine. I admit it. You beat me, woman.”
“I always do,” she said. “And just in time.”
“I guess that’s it then?” asked Paul John Bob.
She tapped her big clunky watch that had belonged to Paul John Bob’s great-uncle, steel and ceramic and a lot of duct tape. “Fifteen seconds.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“It is so. Give or take a picosecond.”
“Shoot twice, hit and miss.”
“Don’t use those words in this house.”
“I’m outside it.”
“Don’t use ‘em outside either. I taught you to swear properly, you want to swear, you can do it that way.”
“Fine, fine, fine,” grumbled Paul John Bob. “Is it time yet?”
“Just about…. Now.”
The night was dead dark now, and the clouds had eaten up the stars. There was a distant rumble of thunder, so small off that it sounded like a purr. The air smelled like tree breath and seaspray.
“Rain, eh?” said Paul John Bob.
“Looks to be so,” said Sally-Jean.
“Well then,” he said, “there’s no matter waiting out here all night anyways anymore. Let’s abed.”
“Let’s,” said Sally-Jean. “The cat’s beat us to it already, and the longer we wait, the harder he’ll fight you for the second-best pillow.”
So they went to bed, and they still woke up the next morning.