Despite being the chief editor (and a temporary writer) of The Daily Paper, Jeff McRaft didn’t belong to those who can drink responsibly without being wasted the following noon, so the first thing he saw that Sunday was the porcelain throne, a stronghold of understanding and reliability in the ever-changing world.

“For fuck’s sake,” he moaned through the mouthful of saliva when someone knocked on the front door.

Combating the vertigo, he reached for the hallway, not bothering himself with any extra clothes despite the basic underwear and one black sock already on. Luckily enough, no one was on the porch by the time Jeff opened the door, since all his attention immediately got drawn to a roughly folded piece of newspaper lying at his feet. Not just any newspaper. The Daily Paper. With his very name on the front page under a striking headline:

**“DAY BEFORE THE IMPACT: SCIENTISTS PREDICT THAT A MASSIVE ASTEROID IS ABOUT TO HIT EARTH IN 24 HOURS”**

“I must be still sleeping,” Jeff thought, so he pinched his thigh only to prove himself otherwise. While he was staring, bewildered, at a forming bruise, all the pieces of the puzzle came together.

Ten workers leaving the paper during the week. A call from the board demanding sensation. Him working overtime at the publishing house alone with two bottles of cheap bourbon and a pack of cigarettes.

The result was outrageous, but predictable.

A tiny snicker almost escaped Jeff’s mouth as he closed the door behind him. The next one reached its goal. And before long, Jeff was performing a sort of action he had almost completely forgotten – laughing hysterically. Coughing, he reached for the TV remote and pressed the button for a news channel. The TV, a big grey box in the centre of a messy living room, answered with soft humming and crackling, slowly filling the cathode monitor with images, until Jeff almost choked in surprise because the images consisted mostly of panic and violence. He tried different channels, even comedy ones, but all of them were airing the same live reports, which mainly consisted of people looting stores and overcrowding bomb shelters due to the asteroid coming.

But Jeff knew that it wasn’t coming.

He threw another glance at the headline of the newspaper and quickly regretted that, for suddenly he was sick and dripping with sweat.

How could this happen? Why didn’t anyone refute this big fat and obviously yellow fake? The answer soon came naturally: Sunday. It was Sunday of December 1999, and all the labs and stations were empty, and the news spread way faster than any real scientist could publicly react to it. But even so, Jeff guessed that in just a few hours the truth would hit the world, nonetheless, and he, Jeff McRaft, would be held responsible for all the mess that everyone went through because of his little drunk joke. The best-case scenario was him being formally arrested, the worst — being handed over to the angry mob, and neither of them inspired any optimism in Jeff. He brought the world’s end upon himself, and he needed to think, fast.

The first thought, as primal as it was, was to run. Still half-naked, Jeff rushed to look for his passport, only to throw it angrily in the corner of the room a few moments later after realising that he couldn’t reveal his identity to anyone. And no amount of cash would work, since who needed money anyway when only a few hours were left to the world’s existence? All this limited his theoretical travels to the only country on a small island in the sea: running was pointless.

Soon came the second thought about life, which he didn’t exactly fancy – but then again, what was left of it? Jeff was deliberately destroying every last bit of his life for months now, from getting a divorce where his ex-wife spat into his face right in the middle of the courtroom to ditching his friends for the money he owed them. The only thing he truly wanted was to make a name for himself, as an editor, a writer, or just the man he was – and now he would be remembered for ages to come, but not exactly what he wished for.

Shaking, Jeff went back into the bathroom and opened a dirty cabinet behind the mirror, reflecting his pale and swollen face. He grabbed a jar of Xanax, went back to the living room, crashed on the couch with a bottle of bourbon and swallowed all the pills in one go.

“Let’s see, let’s see…” he said in a bitter voice, tuning the volume of the TV up.

“_…and now for the news for this hour,_” the reporter said on the other side of the screen. “_We have Mr. Flask on the line, a leading astronomer in his field, who wants to share with us some crucial information…_”

“Oh, here it comes,” Jeff mumbled, his vision blurry and his eyes already sticking together.

“_Can you hear me, Mr. Flask?_” The reporter continued. “_What information would you like to share with us for this hour?_”

“_Can hear you all right, Mr. Sommersby,_” the professor replied. “_The AX-1209 asteroid would hit the Earth in nine hours, but the good thing is that, from the trajectory of its movement, we expect it to land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, preventing–_”

“Wait, what–“ Jeff tried to sit straight on the sofa, but failed, while the voice continued explaining with graphics and photos, how only the islands and coastlines of continents would suffer so that the people should move inland promptly, and how crucial it is to stay calm and collected in the times like this–

And with these words, everything faded into the darkness.