None

For the world, it began as a perfectly normal day.  The sun rose, the winds blew clouds over the ocean, and everything was normal.  But one thing was all across the news come midmorning.  Every headline in every newspaper, across every language, said the same thing:

ASTEROID HEADED FOR PLANET

The Revulcanizing Polymer Bonding Shuffler, usually just called it to save time, was encased in a colossal industrial sarcophagus, and stood as an unholy union of the bleeding edges of every field of science and engineering, from Quantum Mechanics to the Culinary Sciences. An outer case of stainless steel covered the labyrinth of coolant pipes, wires, sensors, and air ducts, which surrounded the it, and three huge hoses reached like the fingers of a hand toward the exhaust vents hung from the ceiling.

The room was quiet as David lounged on the couch, Sarah leaning into his body under the blankets. He had long tuned out the show they were watching, instead enjoying the feeling of his girlfriend pressing into him. Times like this were nice and relaxing, David felt he could melt into the couch like this.

I looked up at the blue expanse above me, barren of clouds and silent. Not a single breeze floated through the meadow as I stood there, naked as the day I was born. It had taken three hours to drive out here, to this spot far beyond civilization. I had ditched the dirtbike some miles back, I wouldn't be needing it for the trip home if everything went right. Other people might say what I was doing was dangerous, that I should turn back now, but hey. What's life without a little risk after all? I knew what I was about to do, and I knew how I was going to do it.