Jo lay back on the long purple grass, she plucked a single blade and idly passed it though her fingers as she watched the sky turn from cherry red through ruby to an ever darkening burgundy, oblivion hurtled towards her in the shape of a massive fucking asteroid.

Deep down below the surface sheltered the natives of the planet. This day had been forecast centuries earlier when a member of the Air Caste turned her telescope to the sky and saw a bright spot streaking past. Something about it concerned her, according to the astrological maps it did not exist. After completing her initial calculations, she informed the Aviary High Command, but they wanted nothing off it. What did they care about events hundreds of years in the future? They had more pressing concerns, they needed swords to beat the Water Clan’s axes and axes to destroy the Earth Tribe’s lances.

Undeterred she reached out through back channels to her supposed mortal enemies, an act of high treason against her own people.

Over the coming months her contacts organised a meeting, on that fateful day a delegation of fellow scientist from each of the “Buki no San-sukomi” gathered. They shared information freely and all came to the same conclusion. The asteroid was on a decaying orbit, it had three more passes until it would collide with them. The planet and all life on it would be destroyed in totality if they did not act.

Within months a bloodless coup d'état had seemingly been won over the old power structures. This was achieved by sound argument, reasoning, scientific proof and engagement with the public. A rare occasion in all of reality.

The Buki no San-sukomi was no more, instead it was replaced with single structure with the sole self-serving purpose of preventing its own extinction. The called themselves the “Gandiva”.

For more than a century it worked. Despite being a materially impoverished world, the Gandiva managed to construct a probe that could be launched from the surface of their planet, land on the asteroid, collect samples and send the data back to them for further analysis.

However, on launch day the old regimes, thought long dead and buried, resurfaced launching their own coup d'état. They failed but in doing so destroyed the probe, the asteroid sailed over untouched, unexplored, the Gandiva had missed a prime opportunity for data gathering.

In the fall out that followed the call for execution from the public was the loudest. Cut off the snake’s head, was the demand but this was the old way, it was counter productive, all it did was create martyrs for generations to come. Instead the new leadership of the Gandiva decided upon a mass education program, it was believed that education could prevent them from reverting to their former barbarian ways.

During the next century speculation as to the asteroid’s composition was rife. The mass and size were well known but how that was distributed and what materials made up the asteroid were the key components of the equation missing. Missing due to the failed probe launch. A consensus between the vast majority of scientists was made, a new probe with a payload designed to penetrate and destroy the asteroid was manufactured. Security was heightened proceeding up to the launch day, ultimately an unnecessary move as the launch was successful.

The mission was not.

A small vocal minority on the planet had disagreed with the scientist assessment, while this minority was educated due to the policies of the Gandiva leadership they had no specialisation in astromechanics. Misbelieving their general intelligence to be equal to that of the experts they channelled their ignorance into subverting the mission to their own belief.

They managed to infiltrate the crew programming the drilling part of the mission, changing the depth to which the payload would burrow too.

When detonation happened the payload was too deep and in too dense a geological formation. The explosion failed to destroy the asteroid as it sailed over them for the last time.

With no other options and only a century until catastrophe a massive redistribution of focus was made, instead of looking to the asteroid they would look to their planet. The Gandiva dug down, deep, deep enough that they would survive the impact of the asteroid. They built massive underground cities and farms, they breed new strains of plant life to thrive in underground conditions. They built a utopia to survive the upcoming apocalypse and it was wonderful, Jo had had the best 10 years of her recent life’s here.

It was a pity that such a race should be hampered by their lowest common denominator Jo concluded. As the asteroid incinerated the atmosphere around her Jo jumped through time and space to three and a half orbits earlier, to before the problem was found and she pushed the asteroid ever so gently, changing its angular velocity by the tiniest amounts, she was certain with Lorenz’s law that the asteroid would now miss the planet and armageddon could be avoid.

Pleased with herself she jumped back through time and space to the purple grass hill, only to find it barren and desolate.

“What happened?” Had the asteroid already collided with the planet.

“Virus bomb dearie” Jo jumped; Death stood next to her. “Yeah, so, you did a good dead and all that, but without the impending doom of the asteroid things kind of got messy here, the Buki no San-sukomi way of life drove on towards its inevitable conclusion. Basically, everyone and everything down to the microscopic scale is dead here. Hence my presence.”

“Oh”

“Sorry dearie. At least you tried your best.”