Oscar Pennywhistle Saves the Worlds

LUNAR AWARDS Season 2 Entry

I was so angry when Asteroid 99942 Apophis was downgraded to a zero on the Torino scale. There is only one thing I enjoy doing in life, and that is rescuing Earth from imminent destruction. My favorite history lesson in school was the Tunguska event in 1908 in which a 36-meter wide asteroid disintegrated in Earth’s atmosphere over a forest in eastern Siberia. It flattened eighty million trees in a single moment (a Torino scale eight event). This is no Marvel comic strip. This is real life, people! Someone has to protect Earth from these asteroids of doom—and I couldn’t think of anyone better for the job than me! You could say I showed up for the interview and decided to hire myself. I wasn’t going to let those bullies at NASA deter me with a public declaration that Apophis was a no-hazard-here-Torino-scale-zero asteroid. I knew the truth, which is that asteroids never make promises to stay on their orbits, especially not ones named after the Egyptian demon-serpent god of evil and chaos. We got lucky that the Tunguska asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere over a remote region of Siberia, and that it happened to be at least ten times smaller than Apophis. I say we got lucky, because I wasn’t around in 1908 to protect Earth. But I was around in 2029, when NASA reclassified Apophis as a nine on the Torino scale. It was the moment I had been waiting for. I was definitely not going to show them my asteroid deflection rocket inventions until they had publicly rectified their Torino scale mistake, making way for me to become the hero I deserved to be.

They asked me to present my research to the United Nations in an emergency session. After delaying my response for a week to bring panic levels to a critical mass, I agreed to their request. It would give me the chance to publicly ridicule NASA for not classifying Apophis as a ten, the same classification as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. As a humble hero, a nine would suffice, but I am not ashamed to admit that I wished they had classified it more accurately so that I could have gotten some notoriety for saving the world. But no, my genius would continue to go unappreciated. I looked on the bright side, that a nine classification would at least make my name into a hashtag that would be shared and liked by millions of people. Instead of David and Goliath or Saint George and the Dragon it would be #OscarPennywhistleApophisSlayer.

Now, to explain what I explained to the United Nations. My presentation mostly went over their heads, flying over them like misclassified, unidentified, or unresearched hazardous asteroids. I started with the geometric growth principle. Have you ever seen this principle in action in a domino chain reaction? One tiny domino falls into a slightly larger domino and knocks it down. That slightly larger domino knocks down another one twice its size, and so on. The final domino to topple over is the size of a house. We could then ultimately point the finger at the first miniscule domino and justifiably blame it for toppling over a house-sized object. In our case, the miniscule domino happens to be a photon from our sun.

Traveling at light speed, this tiny light wave carries momentum; and as it absorbs into the sun-facing side of a small, rotating asteroid no larger than a football, it perturbs its orbit ever so slightly—a phenomenon we call the Yarkovsky Effect. A few years later, the football asteroid slams into a car-sized asteroid, setting it off its course. A century after that, the car asteroid crashes into a nuclear-powered submarine asteroid, which dives into an aircraft carrier asteroid years later that it would have otherwise missed. The aircraft carrier asteroid ventures into the Kirkwood gap in the Asteroid Belt where its gravitational resonance with Jupiter ejects it like a catapult, and it rams into Asteroid 99942 Apophis in the year 2029, sending the Demon-Serpent into a collision course with Earth. Twenty years after it had been shamefully classified a zero on the Torino scale, they upgraded it to a nine. All of this, thanks to a massless thermal photon. In other words, I explained to the UN, we must remember that asteroid orbits can change at any moment, lest we become too comfortable with the dearth of apocalyptic events in the world.

Asteroid 99942 Apophis was set to collide with Earth in two months. The United Nations had gathered a team of scientists from around the world in what they called the New Start Space Guard. They put me in charge of that team, and it was a good thing, too; otherwise I could not have worked my secret plan. My biggest complaint was that they put restrictions on my social media posts. They told me to stop posting memes from the movies “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.” They told me to focus on saving the world and they would focus on keeping people from panicking long enough to stave off a self-inflicted mass extinction. Anyway, I was not worried. My asteroid deflection rockets were already constructed and housed in a nuclear waste repository in New Mexico, disguised as storage silos. I had just been waiting for the world to come to its senses that global destruction was imminent.

Now all I had to do was wait. My New Start Space Guard team got nervous. They called me up every day asking me, “Oscar, when are we going to deploy those asteroid deflection rockets?” I told them, “Not yet.” Someone thought I was delaying because I was incompetent, but the truth is, I wanted Earth to be as close to global destruction as possible. My plan did get foiled a bit when they threatened to replace me. Mr. President called me up and told me that dire moments call for heroes like me, so #OscarPennywhistleApophisSlayer answered the call of duty! The team coordinated the rockets and we deflected the asteroid.

The end. Boring.

So I started working my secret plan. The team asked me what was wrong when the rockets shed their heavy bottom half. I told them it was a multi-stage rocket. Oops. I guess I had forgotten to tell them. (Just kidding. I lied to them. They wouldn’t have let me do it otherwise.) The second stage rocket was an experimental anti-matter propulsion rocket. I set the computer to direct Apophis to Mars. The team was brighter than the United Nations representatives, and they figured out the new trajectory of Apophis faster than I had given them credit. “Yes, it is now on a collision course with Mars, and the anti-matter propulsion will take them there in half the time of our traditional rockets,” I told them.

“What are the free flying rockets doing?” the team asked, referring to the rockets that were flying separately from Apophis.

I told them that those were the ones heading for the Asteroid Belt. “Mars needs a moon, after all. We need to capture the minor planet Ceres in its orbit. And we need a few more asteroids, too.”

They seemed upset. I would have been, too, if I hadn’t been the originator of such a genius plan myself. The NASA bullies called me up and told me to explain myself. I told them I was saving the worlds. They asked me what I meant by “worlds.” I told them I had saved Earth from imminent destruction, but that was too easy, so I wanted to save Mars, too.

“What do you mean?” they asked me. Were they really so dull?

“I mean, I want to reboot Mars’ iron core convection currents to generate a magnetosphere which will protect it from solar winds blowing away its atmosphere which will then enable us to scrap the biodomes on Mars for a livable, breathable atmosphere and return Mars to its once habitable state.”

“And how are you going to do that?” they asked me again. I was only too happy to tell them.

“I’m going to do that by converting the kinetic energy of an asteroid impact into heat which will melt the core. Apophis is the battering ram I am using to do that. I’m going to redirect other asteroids from the asteroid belt to slam into Mars tangentially, increasing its rotation speed (which will assist with moving the melted iron core) without diverting it too much from its current orbit, and I am going to place Ceres in an optimal position around Mars to stabilize its orbit and contribute tidal forces to continued movement of the melted iron core. All of these factors lead to a pleasantly terraformed Mars. I call it hitting two birds with one stone, when that stone happens to be the width of the Empire State building.”

NASA was not amused, nor was the President. They put me on temporary leave, which allowed me to post memes on the internet again. Everyone braced themselves when Apophis crashed into Mars, as if somehow Mars would bounce out of its orbit, creating a domino effect of gravity that would ultimately lead to the destruction of Earth. They were reliving their Apophis fears all over again. It couldn’t have been a more wonderful experience, especially when my plan worked and my hashtag went viral.  

The President called me again and thanked me for my work as the appointed leader of the New Start Space Guard. He told me he was grateful that they wouldn’t be needing my leadership anymore since crisis was averted. I was surprised he didn’t thank me for ushering in an era of world peace after the world was so close to annihilation. I was even more surprised when he reprimanded me for being out of order in my actions. I told him it wasn’t my fault. He facetiously asked me whose fault it was. I told him it was the thermal photon’s fault. He responded by asking me if I had any more anti-matter propulsion jets. I told him of course I did. He asked, “How would you like to be the first person to live on Mars?”

I admitted that it would be hard to live without Amazon Prime, but that I was willing to make a sacrifice for the good of mankind, provided that a national monument be erected in my honor. He said it could be arranged. I asked if I could bring my terraforming robots with me. He said that would be fine, and then he asked, “Were you planning on moving to Mars?” I told him that with the housing market the way it is nowadays, and my future Social Security payments likely on the fritz, I needed government subsidized housing and a satisfactory retirement plan. Living on Mars fulfilled both of my needs. Now I just needed to prepare my planet for the Earthlings who need saving in the future.

Things are going extraordinarily well here. Some people might be afraid of constant marsquakes, but I am not. Marsquakes, like earthquakes, tell me that the planet’s dynamo is alive. In that way, marsquakes are like words of affirmation to me. Volcanic activity is even more encouraging, not only because it tells me that Mars has been resuscitated, but also because copious amounts of water vapor erupt from below Mars’ crust, releasing the potential for future oceans and weather. My terraforming bots are busy mining on Ceres, acquiring precious metals and ice, as well as landscaping on Mars’ surface to make room for the construction of my castle. My modest fiefdom is growing in wealth and prestige by the day. When the Earthlings, or serf-lings, as I like to refer to them with affection, set up colonies here, I will be more than happy to share my water and food with them in exchange for their loyalty and dedicated service. Terraforming is hard work, but thankfully I still have time to write this account of how #OscarPennywhistleApophisSlayer saved the worlds. You’re welcome. You know where to find me if you need me.