Jake sat in his dad’s recliner; the contours matched the outline of the progenitor, so to Jake, they were foreign and ill fitting. Every time he sat in this chair he noticed their dissimilarity, but that feeling had become familiar. He glanced down and noticed his dad’s discarded newspaper, the number 54,759 was prominently displayed in the upper right hand corner of the margins. Someone at the newspaper decided to give voice to the collective angst currently swirling through homes worldwide. Interestingly enough the source of society’s consternation was due in large part to the newspaper’s decision to add the numbers to the front page of every issue, of every paper, every day. Jake played with the corner of the paper as he read today's op-ed.
“Today’s date is irrelevant, all that matters is how much time we have left. Scientists, the hubris bunch, are encouraging us to believe their ‘countdown’ is legitimate. It seems they’re opting to bludgeon us with fear until we concede and accept their lies. Newspapers around the world are displaying this grotesque sequence of numerical digits, and without context might I add. You’ve seen them, a series of large and inornate numerals distracting you from everyday living. Well, have you ever wondered where this number came from, and how it's synchronized worldwide? How is it that every paper on the planet chose to participate? I for one am not comfortable with the level of centralization it would take to pull off this type of coordinated operation. If the world is ending, I don’t need a reminder everyday, especially if there’s nothing we can do about it. Even worse, if it isn’t ending, then what’s the purpose of all of this…? Now that’s a question you should start asking.”
Initially, paper readers everywhere protested the unsightly display of doom. Jake’s dad usually employed the popular method of strategically spilling a cup of coffee over the numbers. Other adults used less discreet, but equally effective methods of obfuscation, including scissors, matches, markers, or crayons. More concerning though was the rapidly growing number of people refusing to read newspapers. The world was ending, there was nothing to be done about it, and most people preferred to forget it was happening. Though the absence of attention has never effectively prevented the undesirable from coming to pass.
The news wasn’t all doom and gloom, one of the more recent discoveries carried with it a speck of hope, and in that speck lived a sliver of a chance of survival. Humanity has a chance, albeit a small one, and our salvation is a tiny planet orbiting inside a galaxy discovered almost one year ago, its name is Unum. As of right now we don’t have the means to reach Unum, figuring out how to get there is going to take some time, maybe all the time we have left. This is a race we literally can’t afford to lose. We are at a significant disadvantage of our own making, so the timeline of our demise is considerably shorter than the amount of time it should take us to concoct an escape plan off of our doomed planet.