Shrodinger’s Comet

They call it Shrodinger’s Comet, ‘cause there’s a 50% chance that it might crash into the Earth, destroying all life.

Shrodinger’s the guy who came up with the idea of a cat, locked in a box, inside of which is a complex mechanism involving a quantum particle and a vial of poison. If the particle ‘spins’ one way when the box is opened, the poison is released and the cat dies. If it ‘spins’ the other way the cat survives.

In other words it’s fifty-fifty chance, same odds as the flick of a coin. Some of us would just call it the fifty pence comet, but the media have to be so clever about everything.

What you really need scientists for is to shoot down comets that are about to crash into the Earth, but our scientists spend more time fretting about hypothetical scenarios involving entrapped felines than they do about useful things like inventing comet-repellent. I often wonder what exactly I pay my taxes for.

At four o’clock this morning the comet will either hit us, or go whizzing by. We won’t know until minutes before.

Four o’clock. I’ll be sound asleep by then. There’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll sleep through the end of the world.

The rest of the world’s gone mad. Everyone’s holding comet parties, where they’ll watch the latest news feeds. See live footage of the comet as it crashes towards us, or speeds passed. Drinking like there’s no tomorrow, when in fact there’s only a fifty-fifty chance there’ll be no tomorrow.

“The party will really begin at a minute past four,” a friend said to me.

“It might, I replied. “Then again, it might not.”

People are surprised I’m not staying up. My friend invited me to his party, but I said I’d rather sleep, if it’s all the same with him.

“What, and miss this.  How can you sleep? It’s the biggest event in man’s history.”

“I’ve just worked 68 out of the last 96 hours,” I said, “the only one working a longer shift is god himself. I’m going to go home, hit the pillow and enter oblivion.”

“But it might actually be oblivion, don’t you want to stay up and find out?”

I shake my head. As if I care. I can barely hold my eyelids apart as I drive home. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. Stay up? I wouldn’t know how. I’ve more chance of stopping the comet with a piece of string and a cupcake than I have of staying awake.

People think they know everything. “You shouldn’t live alone,” people often say to me, “You should make more effort to find someone special. Work less, do more socialising. Otherwise you’ll die unmourned. Unnoticed.”

Ha! I wonder what they’re thinking now. If the comet hits tonight their loved one won’t be mourning them. Nobody will. An entire planet will die unmourned. Unnoticed.