6
The news about Apophis was not a surprise, but it was the first time I remember feeling deeply afraid.
We'd heard about the asteroid for years, of course. Ever since it was discovered, people watched it very carefully each time it slid past Earth on its own course around the sun. Apophis anime got more views on the Record than anything, and not just from children. Cartoons were the best way to reach the great masses of semi-literate adults, too.
One day, Mother was scanning the Record for daily news, like she always did, and stumbled on a report in progress about the asteroid. I was attracted to anything about space and science, so I stepped over to the table and sat down next to her. She shifted her pad so I could share the view.
A news reader said that if an asteroid the size of Apophis struck the Earth, it could take out an area as large as Manchuria. Not an extinction-level event, she explained, but a nearly three hundred meter rock like that would certainly get the planet's attention. And if it hit a city, well, it and all its people for hundreds of kilometers in all directions would likely vaporize within seconds.
Then they played a very good video about asteroid impacts throughout history. Like the one that made the Moon and the one that that killed the dinosaurs. Now, Father's grand plan to use comets to terraform the inner Solar System made a little more sense to me. The amount of power one could unleash was immense.
The reader went on to explain that Apophis hadn't even been discovered until the beginning of the century. But since then much data had been acquired, and most scientists now agreed there would be a clean miss on the next pass in the spring of 2029.
"Nothing to worry about. Go on with your lives," she concluded. "Better odds you'd get winning the lottery." And then an advert popped up, selling tickets for the National Lottery.
I took a deep breath.
That's only two years from now. I thought. I'll be fifteen when Apophis comes.
Father was one of the first scientists in the whole world to measure subtle changes in the path of Apophis during its approach. He explained it to me as we gathered for breakfast one day. Well, he explained it to Mother and I did my best to follow.
Joo Chen, his hat on backwards, was tapping away on his pad, earbuds in, pretending not to listen, as usual. He was almost nine but trying to act much older.
"We know that there's no chance of a strike in 2029, although it will pass dangerously close. There is, however, a small chance the asteroid could actually strike the Earth in 2036..." He paused, for effect, "...if it hits the keyhole."
The conversation got Joo Chen's attention, too. He popped out his ear buds and turned to Father.
"Keyhole?" he asked.
So he was listening, I thought.
"There is a specific zone in space, just over a half kilometer square. Think of it as a very large football goal. If Apophis passes through this keyhole during its pass in 2029, hitting the goal, there is a one-in-forty thousand chance of a strike somewhere on Earth when the asteroid approaches again in 2036. That is not very great odds against, in the cosmic scheme of things."
The mention of odds made me do a mental comparison. I was good with numbers, but even a child knew a one-in-forty thousand chance seemed a much different risk than the one-in-seven billion of the lottery.
"Are we in danger?" Joo Chen asked.
The worried look that clouded his face was most unlike him, and it startled me a bit. He always seemed so fearless, but I was beginning to suspect much of that was an act to impress the many, spoiled Chinese only boys in his school.
I wanted to reach out and comfort him, my younger brother, my dong-saeng, the way he comforted me that day we left Korea. But I was sure he didn't even remember Korea now, and any move I made would likely just embarrass him.
"It is too early to tell," Father continued. "As it turns out, the difficult calculations needed to determine the exact point of the gravitational keyhole are compounded by our inability to properly track an irregular spinning body so small and so close to us. Also with each pass around the Sun, the asteroid is tugged by other planets as well as by the Earth's gravity, constantly changing its orbital dynamics."
I didn't understand all of what Father said, and Joo Chen seemed thoroughly puzzled. Mother saw our confusion and, as she so often did, began to translate.
"What Father means," she explained, "is that it is likely the only way we will know for sure if Apophis will pass through the keyhole, is after it has or has not."
I was disturbed by the lack of certainty in her answer, so I took a special interest in following the path of the asteroid, as did so many people around the world. We watched and read and shared on the Record, as we waited through the long months until the early spring of 2029, and the near-Earth approach of Apophis.
There was a good deal of sober, scientific discussion, and some thought the approach of Apophis was inconsequential. But there were also quite a few crazy religious fanatics, all over the world, who claimed the end was upon us. The end of what they couldn't quite say, though.
Many nations launched observer satellites to plot the path of Apophis, measure its three-point spin and scan its insides. It was a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a dozen scientific disciplines. But Father did not seem interested. Instead, his mood turned dark.
As for average people, those who thought of the asteroid at all just hoped their satellite service wouldn't get cut off, like it did when I was a child in Wonsan. Back then, sunspot activity had been on the decline, so no one expected a solar flare like the one that fried orbiting electronics and brought down major electrical grids around the world. It took nearly six years to replace all the burnt-out satellites, but luckily no one in orbit or on the moon was killed.
And then the day came, in April of 2029, when Apophis would pass the Earth. It had taken so long to get here and soon it would be over. Just like that.
The near-live pictures from remote orbiting cameras were breathtaking. The animes we were shown up until then did not do it justice. As Apophis slowly rolled and twisted on its journey around the Sun, it passed within the Moon's orbit, and continued on a path towards Earth.
But then it did something unexpected. It changed colors.
In full-on Sun, Apophis seemed to be made of velvety-rich, deep brown and red hues. Almost like a cake with craters. From cameras in orbit on the edge of night, where the sun set behind the Earth from our perspective, Apophis glowed blue-purple.
And, for a few brief minutes after that, moving on the dark side of the Earth, it was an inky black shadow, only visible by the city lights that winked out as it passed. It reminded me of a wolf in the night, prowling for prey and keeping a low profile, and that vision scared me deeply.
But as quickly as it came, it was gone, and the Earth did not get in its way. Just as Father and most scientists said it would, Apophis sped safely past, well within the orbit of the stationary satellites.
People breathed a collective sigh of relief, but within a day, something disturbing became public. The government was confirmed that the asteroid had indeed gone through the mathematical keyhole, and, although it was unlikely, there was a small chance it really could strike the planet during its next approach in 2036.
The Record was full of surprised experts stumbling over the math, trying to explain away their ignorance. Father said really, every serious scientist knew about it for ages but kept quiet to avoid panic.
From then on, it seemed like the Record streamed nothing else but news about Apophis. Some experts thought the calculations were wrong and, besides, they argued, a one-in-forty thousand chance is as good as a miss, anyway. The asteroid would surely pass us safely the next time it approached.
Some even suggested that doing anything at all could make it more likely to strike, so we should enforce doing nothing. And even if it did strike, the damage would be minimal. Most of it, they insisted, would vaporize on entry and any mass remaining likely would fall in one or another of Earth's vast oceans, causing little harm.
Father was not of that opinion. While dark and moody for weeks, now he was positively lit up. He swore me to secrecy — as if I'd ever say anything — and told me his story.
He had convinced a skeptical Central Committee that his calculations proved, without a doubt, Apophis would hit China, and it would hit hard. Now was the time to act, he insisted, and he pushed the government to take swift steps. He believed a new space race had begun, this one to save the planet, but the other nations were reluctant to take any action at all, and time was our enemy.
Some of the top leaders supported him. They were mostly the same people who, some years ago, were enchanted by his vision of a thousand-year Chinese empire spanning a terraformed inner Solar System. But there were others, powerful others, who opposed anything he said. Father had made many enemies in our short time here.
"I argued with them, before the entire assembly," he told me. "I told them it would have to be up to China! No other nation could deliver the kind of intervention needed. And why would they? As long as it doesn't affect them, they'd leave us to perish. Engineering and innovation are our only hope for a way to prevent what could be major devastation to our country, and we have only seven years before the asteroid's next approach... and impact."
And so, Father was selected to organize the Apophis Mitigation Team, using his contacts to assemble the brightest engineers from all across China, who in turn voted him Team Leader. He swore them to secrecy — non-disclosure agreements, he called them — and they went to work.
According to Father, the most promising ideas involved nudging the asteroid to change its direction. Even a small nudge, if it were done early, could be enough, and we certainly had the technology do that.
This was very similar to his ice tug idea, he told me, but he said he'd like to take it one step further and detonate a nuclear bomb next to the asteroid, to give it a push. And that's how I learned what Father's meant by a kickstart.
So, with the support of Government, the Mitigation Team and his colleagues at the China National Space Administration, my Father went about the task of saving the world.
During the planning stage, he often labored alone while assigning teams to various other projects. I think he liked it that way. Sometimes I sensed a sadness, and I imagined that it was the knowledge that his grand vision of Kali, come to remake our Solar System in a dawn of destruction and rebirth, would have to wait. Maybe forever.
One day, curious, I searched all over the Record, but couldn't find anything mentioning Father or his team. I should have expected that, really. The Chinese government wouldn't share any important news. Soon, I got bored reading and watching the news talkers, so I tapped off my pad and turned to my drawing, which I had been neglecting.
I took a sheet of paper from the top of a stack I kept stored on my little desk by the north-facing window. Carefully, I taped the corners of the page to my small drawing board with equal lengths of tape, laid horizontal and straight.
Then, I started to draw.
Sometimes I just stared at the blank page for a while, planning, but on this day I started without thought. I worked in pencil first, then black pen over top, then pencil again. That gave the drawing richness and depth.
I whipped the circles closer and closer, smaller and smaller, building a mass of darkness over the page and getting ink all over my fingers. I took Mother's small knife, which I kept in my pencil case, and began to scratch at the paper, flicking up bits of white, adding texture.
There! I thought. A face! Looking up at me.
It looked like a woman with her mouth open.
It is! It's an old woman! Long white hair, but there's something wrong with her eyes! Are they on fire?
I felt like she was trying to tell me something but I couldn't hear. Her mouth was moving. She looked very sad. Worried. The edges of my vision narrowed. The light around her darkened until all that was left were her fiery eyes. The room grew cold.
I leaned forward. She was trying to warn me about something, I was sure of it. I cannot describe why I thought that. It was just a feeling that came to me. Then she slipped away, into the circles. and I only caught glimpses of her, now and then. I blinked my eyes. She was there again. She moved her mouth and I strained to hear, but no words came. I moved my mouth too, trying to copy her movements. We did this several times.
"Stop him?" The words surprised me as I said them aloud. My drawing was saying, "Stop him!"
Stop him? I thought. Stop who?
I said it aloud: "Stop who?"
But I blinked again, and she was gone.
The chill receded. The lights around me grew brighter.
And it took some time to get to sleep that night.