I was there when the first breathless commentators reported the appearance of a vast comet on the fringes of our solar system.

I was there when the images began streaming from The James Webb Telescope of the shimmering, blood-red aura and vast, glittering tail of orange and yellow that followed in its wake.

I was there when the various sects and religions on our planet began prophesising it was either our salvation or our doom.

I was there when NASA released the projection of the comet’s path in a worldwide broadcast.

I was there when all hope died.

And I was there when the real horror began.

**********

I suppose I should go back and reflect on some of the details relating to the rather dramatic one liners I hit you with. After all, if you can’t be dramatic about the end of the world, when can you be? In all honesty, I’m not sure why I’m even writing this journal. Or is it a diary? No, diaries are a daily thing. Yeah, this is a journal. A retelling of the last three weeks, six days, fourteen hours and twelves minutes of my life. I’ve never been a writer, truth be told. I’ve never been much of a reader either, but for some reason I felt the need… No, the compulsion to log the events of the time I had left. For whom? No bloody clue. There would be no one left to read it. The pages themselves would be so many atoms drifting across a cold, dead galaxy. Maybe that would be enough. To know that as pathetic as my life was, at least something of it continued on.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I told you I wasn’t a reader or I’d know how to tell a story.

It went like this.

When the truth finally hit like a wrecking ball, I’d calmly walked into my nearest store and picked up a four-pack of A5 notepads and an expensive set of rollerball black pens. As someone with natural frugality, the £0.99p price tag on the own brand biros was a siren song I had to fight to ignore. Even as the mascara streaked checkout girl scanned them through I nearly broke and ran back to grab the sensible choice. Her tears rooted me in place, begging for words of comfort I couldn’t provide. I paid and left, feeling like an arse that I couldn’t lessen her burden. Realistically, we were all being crushed beneath the weight of the news and I was barely holding it together myself. As I found an empty bench in the local park, an epiphany hit me. Or it might’ve been the reduced price prawns I’d eaten the night before. Suffice it to say, as my belly reeled from potentially iffy shellfish, my mind had been no less impacted by the breaking news that had stopped me dead in my tracks.

Looking down at the torn wrapper fluttering away on the cool afternoon breeze, I turned my attention to the first blank page and realised I had found my coping mechanism. The pages would allow me to document the end while remaining detached from it. Most people I saw were running in all directions, screaming or crying. Others just walked robotically, expressions blank, their minds unable to comprehend the truth.

I’m waffling again.

Give me a break, I’m new to this.

Back to the comet.

The James Webb had been scanning the farthest reaches of the universe for months, providing a slew of images that on their own were earth shattering. Life sustaining planets orbiting suns not unlike our own. Conjecture about the future possibility of manned missions that would take centuries to cross the distance in search of new life. All of that was forgotten when the glowing red pinprick appeared in the night sky. Questions were raised about how the eggheads had missed it. A leaker from within the space agency confirmed the object hadn’t come from interstellar space, they would’ve seen it. The first thing that whirled around conspiracy websites revolved around its sudden appearance. What was this thing? Was it extra-terrestrial? If so, how had they crossed the span of lightyears when there was nothing about the nucleus that gave a hint of life? This gave rise to further theories of cloaking technology which, in turn, opened up the floor to rabbit holes questioning the motives of said comet. Why would an inanimate object hide itself? If that was the case, didn’t concealment indicate a hostile intent? Was it actually inanimate or had the powers-that-be lied to us all along about its true nature like they had so many times before? Round and round the arguments went as the hours passed until one user said the line that best summarised the truth; no one had a damned clue.

If only we’d known.

Every sect of every religion claimed the phenomenon as their own. It was a sign from God of, depending whether your faith was fire and brimstone or light and love, the End Times or the rising up of humanity into a state of eternal bliss. I don’t mind telling you that far more people thought it was a portent of Armageddon rather than a flowery utopia. While the priests, imams, rabbis, monks, pujari, and their ilk called the faithful to worship, I was praying to the god of self. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in something after, it was the thought of a single omnipotent being with flowing white beard and Santa complex that I had an issue with. My belief system came down to the basic tenet of - do to others as you would wish done unto yourself. Ok, so I’d stolen it from Christianity who’d probably stolen it from the Babylonians, who’d probably stolen it from the Hammana-Hammanas ten thousand years ago. The history of religion wasn’t my forte. Lets just say I walked through the world trying not to leave it any worse than it already was. I’d walk old ladies across the road through traffic. I’d help carry their shopping. I’d hold the doors for people. I’d tip healthily on the rare occasion I went to a restaurant. I’d take injured animals to the vets for treatment.

I was an all-round good-egg, or so I told myself. Pride wasn’t a sin in the Religion of Mark. That’s my name by the way – Mark Craig. Born on the eighteenth of May, 1996 to an unknown mother and father. Jane and John Doe are listed on my original birth certificate which was created after my squalling form was found swaddled tightly and abandoned on a (so people tell me) warm, sunny day by a dog walker called Mr Henderson. Technically, it was his cockapoo who’d discovered and urinated on me. I can’t blame Tulip (the dog) as she was just doing what came naturally. If it couldn’t be eaten, slept on, or played with, it got a spray of wee and was soon forgotten. Thankfully her aim was off and only my legs got a drenching.

I’m getting off topic again. You don’t want to hear about my troubles. Well, tough. I’ll get to them when I can.

But back to the comet for now.

It had been found, and it was now being worshipped. The news that had the cashier so bereft had come exactly forty-two hours after the first picture was transmitted around the world. The boffins at NASA carried out their usual computations of the trajectory the crimson star would take. At least it looked like a star as it glowed fiercely in the black veil of the night sky. Their findings were checked, triple checked, and quadruple checked. Heads of state were the first to be informed. It was Prime Minister Miriam Osgood who had delivered the message via a lectern outside 10 Downing Street to the British public. Similar broadcasts had been undertaken across the world by their own country’s leaders. I can still picture her now, all sincerity and strength. At least superficially. Looking closer I could see the red tinge to her eyes as if she’d recently been crying. Her grip on the slanted wooden reading top was hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Periodically, the view would change from Osgood to the newly released models from NASA. They’d dumbed it down and prettied it up for morons like myself, but all I noticed was the curved green line of the comet’s path as it slingshot around the sun. That same dotted emerald line ended with a red X over planet earth. Now I’m no astronaut or big-brain, but I guessed the X wasn’t a good thing. Kind of like eating shellfish that was a day past its best. Except for explosive gastrointestinal issues, the explosion we faced would be our world and everyone on it.

A timer had been put up on every TV program and broadcast across the world. I thought it a bit of a dick move to be honest. As each second ticked away, our mortality was hammered home. The finality of our species counted down in sterile white digits. I walked in a trance out of the pub where I’d been eating my lunch, straight to the nearby shop to buy the journal. The timer on the TV screen when I'd left the bar read; 03:06:14:12. I checked the internet as I sat on the bench after collecting my scribbling utensils and it was 03:06:13:47. If it wasn’t for my writing and work, I’d probably have stared at it for the entire 2,382,420 seconds remaining, minus the brief spells of exhaustion induced unconsciousness. Yes, before you ask, I did calculate exactly how long I had left when the nexs broke of our inevitable destruction. Such a high number might’ve seemed quite comforting. You’d be wrong.

So, as I’d sat there ignoring the chaos unfolding all around me, I began to write. And here we are now, a little under 4 weeks later, T-minus fifty-two minutes until X. Looking back to the computerised illustration of our end, I think I’d have been happier with a Deathstar explosion on the screen rather than the seemingly benign, browser closing cross. Then again, what was the comet except for the creator’s cursor, scrolling towards the top right to shut down the page of humanity?

Bloody hell, you can tell I went a little stir crazy, can’t you? If it wasn’t for my ever faithful Labrador, Honey, I think I’d have opted out long before the one hour marker. Her resolute love (and dependency) had stayed my hand from the packets of tablets piled inside my bathroom cabinet.

Damnit! I’m getting ahead of myself again. Sorry.

The days following the announcement were a shitshow. Mass civil unrest broke out across the world. Only by the most draconian measures could the people be brought under control. On the dark web where the banned websites relocated, the number of executions was estimated to be in the high millions. The initial terror of what was coming had been replaced by the imminent terror of a wall and firing squad. The raging infernos had been put out. The bodies cleared. Mankind emerged from the chrysalis of pandemonium a more cowed, reflective species. Thoughts turned to cooperation for the first time in our history. The news was filled with stories of Arks; humanity’s chance for continuation. Built in secret, they would carry the most perfect specimens in a state of stasis to one of the recently discovered worlds. We would be gone, but our people would live on. The dark web blew the lid off of the program in short order and revealed it would be six months before the first ark would fly. It was a placebo, nothing more. Cue a renewed bout of tantrums, or as I like to call them, deadly worldwide riots encompassing every major city and population centre.

Luckily for Honey and I, we’d been robbed once and forgotten. I’d not fought the looters. I’d left the front doors and the cash trays open. I’d almost wet myself laughing as they mocked me about my cowardice, but the axes and bats had stilled my wayward tongue. They’d made off with about three thousand pounds in coins. The true value of that money was zero in the big scheme of things, but they still acted like Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. Still, if they’d got high or drunk on the proceeds, more power to them. Would it be better not to know? Not to feel the searing heat as the comet vapourised the planet? All questions for another life.

The talk of cash trays brings me to what I do for a living. I own a modest amusement arcade in a seafront city on the south coast of England. The rent was a steal, part funded by a government initiative to rejuvenate certain seaside locations following decades of neglect. The boarded up and shuttered arcades all around the city hadn’t put me off. I was raised in those places. If anyone knew how to get one to reach financial success, it was me. I knew what people wanted, because it was exactly what I had always wanted; a place to escape the piss poor life I lived. A safe haven of magic and adventure. Sure, the fruit machines were the better earners, but it was the refurbished games in the back that were my favourite. Through velvet curtains sat a treasure trove of nostalgia. A classic table Asteroids. The insatiable yellow, pill muncher Pacman. The barrel rolling fury of Donkey Kong. Right the way through to spamming hadouken’s in Street Fighter 2 Turbo, the grisly shooting joy of House of the Dead, and the four car racing phenomenon that was Outrun 2. It’s my pride and joy. And, as most people had warned me, a complete lemon. It gobbled money faster than Pacman’s drug habit. For every half-pissed walk-in from the nearby pubs chucking a fiver into my slots, there were zero teenagers. It turned out a bed, headset, controller, and massively improved graphics were the “in thing”. Chalk that up as a mistake on my part. At least the world would be wiped out before the courts could take my home and place of business.

The nukes had been launched an hour ago and should be impacting any moment now. I’m going to go and lament my life’s failures with my faithful dog as we watch the fireworks. I’ll see you on the other side.