Contents of Capsule S.87 - Exhibit K (Kayla)

In exactly 3 months, 13 hours, and 47 minutes, a supermassive asteroid will strike Earth. The impact will be so devastating that it will immediately kill all life on the planet: grass, trees, bees, birds, dogs, cats, horses, elephants, sharks, whales, blue whales, sperm whales, tiny little crabs and all of those aspens in Utah that are connected by the same massive root and exist as one superorganism. And humans. Us too.

We’ve had our suspicions since the dawn of the decade, when Shaun Michaelis, a former specialist aerospace technologist at NASA, was found hanging in his Los Angeles apartment exactly two days after making vague comments on X that hinted at a mass extinction event. It started as conspiracy theories, the sort of thing we joked about with the same half-hearted enthusiasm as the ‘Beyoncé is a lizard person who runs the Illuminati’ crowd. For about a week, the developing story dominated the front page of every newspaper in every country on every continent, and the tone was jovial, light-hearted, even amused. ‘Top NASA specialist death treated as suspicious by elite TikTok detectives’, ‘Asteroid 68C – redundancy payback or real possibility?’. After that, it died down, and it was mostly forgotten.

Section of transcript from ABC’s Monday, June 16th 2053 broadcast:

Andrea Clemmings, 69th AMERICAN PRESIDENT: Good evening, America and good evening to those of you watching from overseas. In my short term as your president, I have had to deliver some truly awful news. Two years ago, I stood before the White House to call upon all eligible men and women to take arms; one year ago, I addressed you all to inform you that our great nation was under threat of nuclear warfare. Eight months ago, I delivered the news that our neighbouring country of Canada had fallen; two months later, we were at war, and I once again had to rob you of your sons and daughters, only for us to lose the battle regardless.

Today, I am tasked with delivering the very worst of news. Three years ago, NASA began observations on Asteroid 68C to assess its threat level. I can now tell you that this is a threat level 10. This asteroid will hit Earth, and it will destroy our planet.

I have spent the last three years in constant communication with representatives for NASA, and the decision on whether or not to go public with these findings has not been an easy one to make. My fantastic friends and colleagues within the UN have held countless summits; we have had hundreds of conversations, heard from thousands of advisors, and, for perhaps the first time in human history, nearly all world leaders have unified in their decision to release these findings.

68C will strike somewhere in Europe on Saturday, August 28th, 2055 EDT. This object is 250KM wide; we have been advised that it is of a ‘planet-sterilising size’. The fallout will be catastrophic yet immediate. There will be no pain.

We have two years, two months and twelve days. I want to be clear: we cannot stop this; we cannot fight it; it is inevitable. Starting tomorrow, we will bring all American soldiers stationed in other countries home to their families. We are withdrawing from all conflict, and our friends and allies have agreed to do the same. We have enough food, water and energy to see us through to the end, and as of tomorrow, no American citizen will be required to work. We hope you find a way to enjoy the rest of your lives, and I am dedicated to helping you do that.

Good luck, America, and God bless.

Shortly after that world-stopping broadcast, most of the governments quietly disbanded. Clemmings was originally thought to have moved to Honolulu to be with her late husband’s family, though images of her dressed as a witch at a lesbian orgy surfaced not long after. The British Prime Minister, a rather eccentric man called Kellen Brady, wrangled an associate into letting him fly a commercial jet, which he promptly crashed into the Antarctic ocean. The Norwegian King managed to get himself an invite to North Korea and, weirdly, seemed quite happy there.

The news stations kept running for a while before they too began to fall off one by one. First it was CNN, then ABC, then CBS. By year's end, all that remained of English and American mainstream media was the BBC, CBeebies and Fox News, which continued to peddle the idea that there was a big ship being manufactured somewhere to take all of the god-fearing Republicans to Mars.

By the dawn of 2055, babies were scarcely being born. Crime was beginning to taper off after a brief but bewildering spark during 54’. The suicide rate plummeted; what was the point, we didn't have long to wait.

The asteroid was visible in the night sky for a while, then grew so large you could see it all the time. We formally called him Michaelis, but more often he was Shaun. People painted him; Taylor Swift wrote a chart-topper about him that played constantly in every looted Target; the robot David Attenborough model housed at the British Museum spent all night watching him through a telescope, often surrounded by a flock of pigeons.

I used to be an anxious person; nothing scared me more than the one thing I knew was coming: death. I used to calorie count and lift weights and spend hours googling symptoms on WebMD. Oh yes; me. I’m more than the narrator, you know; I have a part in all this. I won't bore you with my name, my age, my fittingly tragic backstory, or the hopes and dreams I once had, but hello, I’m here (or rather, I was). Okay, now I'm getting sentimental; my name is Kayla; the rest really is irrelevant. In the days after the announcement, I took to drinking heavily and often. I polished off every bottle in my tiny apartment; I joined the crowds raiding liquor stores; I ran around my neighbourhood because I needed to move, to escape the inescapable.

During one of these frantic sprints, a man grabbed my arm and pointed up, straight up; and there he was. Flickering and white and tiny up there in our sky, headed for us.

“Is that it? Is that Shaun?” I asked, and the man didn’t respond. When I turned, he was halfway down the street; he’d stolen my bottle of gin.

I swore and swore and then spent the rest of the night staring up at him in awe. Strangely enough, his presence helped, and after that day, every time I found myself engrossed in thoughts of calamity and the great ‘after’ and the fact that I never learned to ride a bike, I’d look up at him and remember that he did not care, and I could not stop him.

It was a strange time to be alive; the initial hysteria had well and truly died down by the turn of the year, and in its place came a strange sort of peace. People had had their wild swingers parties; they’d done gratuitous lines of cocaine; they’d plucked mushrooms from the forest floor just to see if they’d get to meet God early. They had had their electric experiences. Now they were bored again. If you want to know what humans were doing in the year leading up to humankind's end, watch a shitty musical about the ‘power of friendship’. We played football; we wrote poems; we got married; we threw parties and had a truly egregious amount of sex with one another. The beaches were always full, and everybody danced in the rain; that’s what we did.

I traded an aged Whiskey and a packet of Red Superking cigarettes for two puppies, and I took them everywhere. The dogs are Marlboro and Red, nicknames that stuck. We did the whole of Route 66 in our first five months together, and let me tell you, it was beyond crowded. We were packed like sardines on that supposedly serene trail, and we loved it. We met young people, old people, retirees, and teen mothers; black people, white people, people with dogs, people with cats, people with lizards and stick insects; Mexicans, Chinese, British, and Irish; Welsh; Wiccans; Christians; Muslims; Buddhists, lots and lots of Buddhists. Some were on their way to scream from the mountaintops; others just wanted a nice bit of greenery to do some Heroin on.

After that, we flew back home to Sydney (God bless the pilots) and my brother taught me how to write a haiku. He had always been a bit morbid, and he told me he liked them partly because they could convey a huge idea without stealing much of a lifetime to create or observe, but mostly because they did not try to give too much. We spend so much time looking forward, he had told me in a McDonald’s drive-through a month before I left for the States, that we waste our life skimming over all these tiny electric experiences. This moment, he said, sat in traffic, playing crappy air guitar and listening to Elton John as we waited for a lukewarm Big Mac; the stars, the lights, the heated seats. I couldn’t decide then whether that was puzzling or profound. Later, watching my country disappear beneath me, clutching a copy of ‘The Odyssey’ in my lap (a book I never got round to finishing), I decided that I sort of understood his sentiment, though I felt that the ensuing rant about the ‘rat race’ and the 1946 Movie ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ could’ve been trimmed down a little.

The moment I got signal, shivering on the Denver International Airport tarmac and lusting over a YMCA bed, I sent him a message:

What was it that you were telling me last month about Haiku’s?

Ten minutes later I got a response.

Michael:

 A dead man would give

eternity for a day

in gridlock traffic

Not much to do out -

there in the after: silence.

The road is so loud.

The music, the lights;

the heated seats; electric.

Sing, sway; air guitar.

Me: I thought Haiku’s could only have three lines?

Michael:

Shut up, who asked you?

Who made you Haiku expert?

Shut up, shut up; prick.

My brother Michael was meant to marry a woman named Sandra, but they both decided it would be a waste of their short lives, so he was alone in our parents’ farmhouse. I hadn’t been back to Australia since I was in my early thirties, and truthfully, in part, it really was because of the spiders. People assume that Aussies have some immunity to them, that we aren’t as horrified as any other sensible human being when confronted with a creature so bizarre, but this is an entirely false sentiment; I, for one, hate nothing more.

The first few days at the farmhouse were hell. I woke up to them in my hair, my sheets; once, I swear one tried to crawl into my mouth. I tried to distract myself. Mostly I wrote haikus. I wrote many, many haikus, though I admit they’re not any good and they don’t convey any beauty. The whole structure – five, seven, five- you end up just squeezing in whatever words will fit. I wrote one about Shaun that exemplifies this:

Shaun is very big

He will disintegrate us

Oh dear, sad sack Shaun

Now, if we weren’t on the precipice of extinction, I’d reconsider the phrase ‘sad sack’ because nobody says that anymore, and it’s wildly out of place, but in three months we will all be dead, so what use is there in worrying about a strange turn of phrase?

I’ve met some lovely people lately; you’d be surprised how many outrageous personalities hide beneath the constraints of a 9-5 or an upcoming performance review. The well-to-do former businessman who used to order just one brown butter Old Fashioned and talk my father's ear off about ‘the state of the stock market’ has a drag persona called ‘Lady Louboutin’ that he debuted at the town hall to a fairly positive reception and now makes regular appearances round town. The preacher’s wife is the unbeaten champion of keg stands. The former mayor leads a class on parkour. Our townspeople, with whom I had previously exchanged only polite chatter, are now my family, my closest friends. I am the Godmother to the neighbour's daughter, and I have taught her every swear word I can think of.

Three weeks ago, I met a woman named Nayeli on a dog walk who pried a huntsman from my hair while I flailed, screamed, and swore. I tried to thank her, but she is French and does not speak English, and I am Australian and do not speak French, but our families are both from Mexico, which we discovered through some trial and error that culminated in ‘Espanol?’ ‘Espanol!’.

She was staying in a furniture-less new build, and so I invited her to live at the farm. She crochets me blankets with the speed of someone who knows they are on borrowed time, and I cook us steak every night because I'm past calorie counting.

So what of all this? What am I telling you and why?

Better yet, who are you?

Well, I can’t help with that, but I do have a few guesses. Maybe you’re a big green fella with wide white eyes and spindly little arms, or perhaps you’re not humanoid at all? Maybe you helped us build the pyramids, maybe you’re a lizard person; maybe you’re Beyoncé? If so, huge fan. Regardless, if you're reading this, then you aren’t human. If you’re reading this, we weren’t alone. Indeed, as I’m writing this, we’re not alone. Neither of us is. You’re out there somewhere, and I’m down here, and here I am writing this just for you!

Maybe you are just like us, or maybe you know all about us, and if so then you’ll know what a ‘time capsule’ is. If you know nothing about the human race, then I really ought to have cut back on the references.

No matter; here it is. You’re reading this; we’re dead, and we left you these capsules to help you understand who we were. They’re filled with diary entries, novels, art and music. Be careful with the ones in the States; I guarantee Elon Musk has crammed himself into one. They’re the remnants of our lives, our species; photos of us and the creatures we shared this world with. We hope they survive the blast, but if not, then… well, I guess I can say whatever I like. I once stole fifty quid from my mum and then pretended I saw the dog eating it. I never learned to ride a bike, though I brag about my athletic abilities. I cheated on my GCSE maths paper by hiding in the toilet and googling the answers midway through the test. I love my dogs more than I ever loved anyone I met in the States. I lost my virginity at age 23 to a 68-year-old woman, and it was the best sex I ever had. I can’t whistle, and it genuinely makes me angry. The most fun I ever had in my life came once I knew when it’d end.

There’s a Buddhist parable about a man being chased by tigers. He reaches a vine and begins to climb down, only to spot a tiger waiting below. He can’t go up, he can’t go down, and worse, as he considers this utter lack of options, two mice emerge and start eating the vine. He looks down, looks up, looks straight ahead at the mice, then leans left, plucks a great big strawberry off the neighbouring vine with his teeth, and eats it whole.

What is an eternity of nothingness to a man with a perfectly ripe strawberry? What is a whole load of nothing to one tiny something? There is always so much to do: good, bad, ugly. Every electric experience; I implore you to taste as many strawberries as life allows. Juicy, rotten, squishy and hard; one day you’ll find yourself starving forevermore, but for now you have nothing to do but eat.

We are all going to die, and that is horrible and unfair, but for now, we eat strawberries. For now, we play football. For now, we swear freely and frequently (‘cunt’ is really making a resurgence these days). For now we write Haiku’s because every word counts. For now, we ride our bikes in unison down busy streets; we argue with strangers, and it ends in hugs and laughter. We watch TV. We watch CBeebies (we do not watch Fox News). There is a game of cricket in the village tomorrow, and my brother and I are going, and we’re taking the dogs. We always take the dogs.

For now, I sit on the porch of my family farm with a woman I have known for less than a month. She is naked because she likes to feel the air on her skin; warm or cold, it’s all strawberries. I am wearing a full-body Ghillie suit because it seemed like a funny idea two hours ago. Later I will cup her breast in my hand and feel her heartbeat through the curve of her waist, and she will tell me in our mother tongues that the ghillie suit was sort of funny at first, but would I take it off now, please. For now, she pets the dogs and waves at Shaun. For now, we talk about our names, our ages, the fittingly tragic backstories that matter only to us. For now, there’s so much to do on this porch, but here, now, I watch a fat black spider crawl toward my thigh. Every experience is electric, and I steady myself.

Big scary spider

Spindly legs on shaking hand

Night sky; strawberry.