“Three, two, one.  There, if our calculations were correct, we have approximately 8,000 years before we get roasted like a marshmallow.”  Professor Ribald’s students gave him a little chuckle.

Tina didn’t know why her classmates were laughing.  “Sorry Professor, but what are you talking about?”

“If you’d get to class more often, I wouldn’t have to repeat myself. Quickly, however, we were discussing gamma ray bursts last lecture. I used a star called Wolf-Rayet 104.  It’s a massive star about 8,000 light years away. Using the van Trek method that you will learn in Intermediate Astrophysics, I calculated the date when WR-104 would go supernova, plus or minus five hours. When it goes supernova — went supernova, sorry — it shot out a massive jet of high-intensity light along its axis.  And I’m talking massive. More energy escaped in that gamma ray burst than Sol will produce in its entire lifetime.”

“And what does that have to do with Earth?”

“Well, the star’s axis was pointed precisely at Earth.”

“But isn’t it far enough away that we’d be safe from the high-intensity rays?”

“That’s a tricky subject. First of all, we don’t know the exact distance of WR-104.  Some estimates put it as close as 5,000 light years, but most astronomers tend to lean toward the further distance. Second, something very peculiar happened when WR-104 exploded. That star is in fact part of a binary system. Its companion star had a van Trek date of 300 days from now. For a star, that puts it on the razor’s edge of collapse due to gravity. The energy waves caused by WR-104 as it exploded and collapsed also caused the destabilization and supernova of its companion, also as a gamma ray burst.

“Now, two supernovas in that small of a space cause some strange wave interactions, and it ended up that both axes of the stars shifted just a bit, microseconds before the bursts were released. And it just so happens that those two beams will converge here.

“So yes, we might have escaped from the supernova of WR-104, but not from two that will meet up and enhance just miles away from the surface of our planet.”

The room had gone silent. Professor Ribald smiled. Of course, in the stellar world, today’s exact is tomorrow’s ether.

“Class dismissed.”

2221

Giffri Goffro slid a filter over his night-goggles to give him better infrared capabilities. His protective parka shielded him from the radia and the nasty chems in the air, but it was hot as all get out. He wondered how his children would get on if the temperature kept rising, and if he was allowed any.

Giffri went back to his job: digging nuclear waste trenches. The machine stood like a retro-future dinosaur, silhouetted against the orange-yellow moonlight. He climbed back into the cab and gave the beast some fuel, it’s engine belching gray-green smoke into the atmosphere. The hungry monster chewed rock, digested it, and shat out tubs of useful ores and minerals, all the while getting deeper into the Earth’s scarred crust.

His shift ended and Giffri climbed out of the cab. It was just before daylight, and only a few stars could be seen against the increasing glare, one of which was an oblong splotch that reminded Giffri of an ice cube he had seen when he was young.

3221

Holden Smith cradled his mewing organocomp, tickling it under its silico-carbonic chin to access the net. The electrocilia-fur sprung into motion, creating waves and colors to display the results he was searching for.

“Planetary futures is up. Three more colony ships go out next week. Buy 200 shares,” he told the comp.

“Stellar Neighborhood Mining Corps is pulling out of the six belts. They say the rays of WR 104 will get them in a few odd centuries and they need that long to clear out the Webs. Sell 50.”

Smith patted the organocomp on the head to turn off the browser.  The fur started flicking erratically.

“Damn old model!” he said, slamming the comp into a passing autotram.

5221

Sarabella crawled out of the rubble of her old mega-high-rise only to see two more antimatter bombs dropped a distance off. The shock wave dissipated before it got to her. But the hot, fetid breath of the dead hit her nostrils as if it were clutching at her ankles.

Ever since the Mining Corps collapse of 5k, tensions have been high. The increasing presence of the Rayet is making it hard to sell anything in the immediate area around Earth. People were already evacuating to other planets, even though they still had 2,000 odd years before the thing hit. And Earth still had plenty of good resources, including the stockpiles of spent radioactive that were being reprocessed into spaceliner fuel.

Her mother’s prosthetic hand scuttled around her, looking for its departed owner. Sarabella sat down and cried.

10020

The 4,000th anniversary celebration of the X-51 Dynasty had been going on for nearly a century. Grand Priest and High Kaiser G-44 prayed in his stone tower to the Wolf God and Rayet Demon. Their clash had been going on for twice as long as the X-51 clan had been in power, and it was finally going to cleanse this world of the evil of the heretic race that was homo augmentis.

It was a new moon when the dark turned to light, a blinding light, a giving light, a destroying light. The ozone turned to rust and in an electromagnetic flash, the biodiversity of this planet was once again free to choose the correct species to inhabit the top of the evolutionary pyramid.