By the time Lena reached the Costco checkout, she had learned three things.
First, fifty cubic meters was simultaneously an enormous amount of space and nowhere near enough.
Second, a shopping cart was an extremely inefficient way to prepare for the apocalypse.
Third, Costco employees became noticeably concerned when a woman made six consecutive trips through the warehouse.
She shopped normally.
Aggressively.
But normally.
Mostly.
Her first cart contained food.
Rice.
Beans.
Pasta.
Oats.
Flour.
Sugar.
Salt.
Cooking oil.
Peanut butter.
Canned chicken.
Tuna.
Spam.
Tomatoes.
Vegetables.
Fruit.
Powdered milk.
Coffee.
Her second was hygiene and household supplies.
Her third was less organized because Lena had begun thinking of things faster than she could categorize them.
Batteries.
Flashlights.
First-aid kits.
Pain relievers.
Antihistamines.
Cold medicine.
Electrolyte powder.
Multivitamins.
Soap.
Bleach.
Trash bags.
Foil.
Zip-top bags.
Disposable gloves.
Dog food.
She didn’t own a dog.
She put the dog food back.
“Focus.”
An employee looked at her.
“Sorry.”
By cart four, Lena had opened a note on her phone titled:
OH FUCK
Underneath she’d started categories.
FOOD
WATER
MEDICAL
HYGIENE
POWER
TOOLS
CLOTHING
SHELTER
COOKING
SECURITY
TRANSPORTATION
COMMUNICATIONS
DOCUMENTS
SEEDS???
ANIMALS???
WHERE AM I EVEN PUTTING THIS???
That last question was becoming increasingly important.
She lived in an apartment.
Even with Spatial Inventory, she couldn’t prepare to survive the end of civilization indefinitely from San Francisco.
Earthquake country.
Dense population.
Limited water.
No land.
No meaningful food production.
And if the System’s use of the word planetary was literal, there wasn’t necessarily somewhere else she could simply drive after things went bad.
She needed to know what she was preparing for.
Unfortunately, the System remained deeply committed to being unhelpful.
“What exactly happens during Transition?”
Information unavailable at current Access Tier.
“Does the power grid fail?”
Outcome dependent upon regional conditions.
“Do people die?”
There was a pause.
Yes.
Lena stopped pushing her cart.
She hadn’t expected an answer.
A family maneuvered around her.
“How many?”
Projection unavailable.
“More than a million?”
Yes.
Her mouth went dry.
“More than a hundred million?”
Yes.
Lena didn’t ask the next question.
She didn’t want the answer.
She pushed her cart again.
Much faster.
By her sixth trip she realized she could fit much more on the flat carts.
The cashier glanced at the two flat carts Lena had maneuvered into line.
“You stocking a pantry?”
“Something like that.”
There was a mountain of supplies between them.
More rice.
More beans.
Cases of canned food.
Cooking oil.
Coffee.
Shelf-stable milk.
Protein powder.
Nuts.
Salt.
Sugar.
Medicine.
Soap.
Toothpaste.
Batteries.
Work gloves.
Socks.
Underwear.
Cleaning products.
Paper goods.
Lena had eventually abandoned any attempt to buy sensible household quantities.
If it was useful, shelf-stable, and something she knew she’d use even if the System vanished tomorrow, she bought a lot of it.
The System might be real.
The apocalypse might be real.
But her credit-card bill was definitely real.
That was tomorrow’s problem.
Or possibly a problem that ceased to exist in twenty-eight days.
She wasn’t sure whether that made her feel better or significantly worse.
Lena had spent enough money that she deliberately did not look at the total.
She paid.
Then came the interesting part.
Lena wheeled everything out to the far end of the parking lot.
Her car could not remotely hold it.
That was okay.
She waited until the nearest people were loading an SUV with their backs toward her.
Touched the first cart.
Store.
Nothing happened.
She frowned.
The cart itself was eligible.
So were the groceries.
But apparently touching a cart didn’t automatically make every independent object sitting on it part of the same object.
Good to know.
She worked quickly.
Case of rice.
Gone.
Canned chicken.
Gone.
Oil.
Gone.
Coffee.
Gone.
The empty cardboard boxes went too.
It took less than three minutes.
The second flat cart emptied into nothing.
Lena stood beside two bare Costco carts and looked at her completely empty car.
She started laughing.
A man returning his cart looked at her strangely.
“Good sale,” Lena said.
He walked faster.
The drive home gave her enough time for the excitement to wear off.
That was unfortunate.
Because once the excitement went away, Lena was left with the fact that more than a hundred million people were apparently going to die.
Maybe much more than a hundred million.
And she was currently the only person on Earth who knew it.
Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
She needed to tell someone.
She had known that since Costco.
But knowing what to tell them was another issue entirely.
Hello, government.
In twenty-eight days something called Transition will occur.
I don’t know what it is.
An invisible interface says civilization’s survival projection is critical.
Also I have a pocket dimension.
That wasn’t going to work.
Which was why the asteroid mattered.
Lena parked.
She was inside her apartment less than five minutes later.
She didn’t unpack.
Technically, there was nothing to unpack.
She put her bag down, opened her laptop, and sat at the kitchen table.
“System.”
Listening.
“Show me the asteroid prediction.”
The window appeared.
PRECURSOR FORECAST
Astronomical Designation: 2026 QX₄
Classification: Near-Earth Object — Non-Hazardous
Predicted precursor interaction:
19 HOURS : 12 MINUTES
At the indicated time, object 2026 QX₄ will undergo an anomalous trajectory alteration inconsistent with current gravitational models.
Impact probability following alteration:
Negligible
Cause:
Precursor energy interaction
Several lines of numbers followed.
Lena stared at them.
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
Acknowledged.
“Thank you for your support.”
Nothing.
She opened Google.
The asteroid existed.
That was her first relief.
Or horror.
She wasn’t sure anymore.
2026 QX₄ was a real near-Earth object being tracked by real astronomers.
Its current orbit was well understood.
It wasn’t dangerous.
Nobody appeared particularly interested in it.
Which was perfect.
If the System had predicted an asteroid impact, Lena would have wondered whether it was using publicly available calculations.
Instead it was predicting something nobody else expected:
At a precise moment tomorrow, an ordinary rock was going to change course for no known physical reason.
“Can current science predict the change you’re showing me?”
No.
“Could something normal cause it?”
No known natural mechanism will account for the observed alteration.
“And astronomers will definitely notice?”
Probability of detection within six hours: 99.997%.
Good.
“So if I tell them now exactly what will happen the information will constitute evidence of advance knowledge following confirmation.”
Lena leaned closer to the laptop.
Now she needed to figure out who them was.
NASA seemed obvious.
Twenty minutes of searching introduced her to the world of planetary defense.
Near-Earth-object monitoring programs.
Observatories.
Universities.
International databases.
Lena found recent observations of QX₄.
Even better.
There were specific observatories already watching it.
She started collecting contact information.
NASA.
The relevant near-Earth-object program.
Two observatories that had recently submitted data.
A university astronomy department.
Then a few government scientific and emergency contacts because Lena wasn’t going to trust a single inbox with the fate of civilization.
She opened an email.
And stared at it.
Subject: The world is ending in twenty-eight days
No.
Deleted.
URGENT: Asteroid prediction
Also no.
She tried again.
Subject: Time-Sensitive Prediction Regarding 2026 QX₄
Better.
The body took longer.
Eventually she stripped out everything that sounded like a conspiracy theory and kept only what could be tested.
She identified QX₄.
She gave the exact time.
She provided the predicted observational changes.
She explicitly stated that the asteroid would not impact Earth.
Then she wrote:
I am providing this information before the predicted event specifically so there will be a timestamped record demonstrating that the orbital alteration was known in advance.
If the event occurs as described, I have additional information concerning its cause and a global event expected approximately twenty-seven days later.
Please preserve this communication and contact me following verification.
She added her full name.
Phone number.
Email.
Lena read it.
It sounded insane.
But it was testable insanity.
That was probably the best she could do.
“System, are these numbers enough for an astronomer to verify the prediction?”
Yes.
“Can you format the technical information appropriately?”
The display changed.
A block of considerably more intimidating data appeared.
“I’m going to assume that’s better.”
She copied it.
Then she sent the email.
She found several more appropriate organizations and sent it to them too.
Then she emailed everything to herself.
Saved a copy locally.
Uploaded it to cloud storage.
Screenshotted the timestamps.
Overkill?
Maybe.
But Lena had just discovered that physics had twenty-eight days remaining on its current terms.
She was comfortable with overkill.
The System flashed.
QUEST UPDATE
MAKE THEM LISTEN
Advance warning issued.
Institutional awareness: MINIMAL
Credibility: UNESTABLISHED
Verification event pending.
Reward determined by resulting institutional response.
“Great.
I’ve done my civic duty.”
For now.
She couldn’t make the asteroid move sooner.
She couldn’t force anyone to believe her before it did.
And she had twenty-nine hours before her warning became either the most important email those people had ever received or evidence that Lena desperately needed medical attention.
Which meant she could finally do what she’d wanted to do since leaving Costco.