... and then the earth blew up.

When I was a bright young creative writing student*, there was a guy in my first year fiction writing workshop who is best remembered for two things.  First, every time anyone came in with an untitled story and the class was asked for their thoughts, he suggested Babe:  Pig in the City.  Second, he ended every story he submitted with "And then the earth blew up."  (Now that I think of it, I think Chris routinely ended the stories he wrote in his youth the same way).

The first time he did it, P.S.L., the professor, rolled his eyes, laughed a little, and said, "Ran out of time, did you?"  The offending aspiring writer just sort of blushed.

The second time he did it, said aspiring writer had grown about half a ball.  He blushed, and in his own defence, muttered, "No.  I did it on purpose."

"Chicken," P.S.L. replied.

The third time he did it, he had grown the other half of his first ball, and the second one had just started to descend.  To justify his Molotov cocktail of a conclusion, he said (dramatically), "What other ending is there?  Eventually the earth will blow up.  I'm writing these stories about people and what happens to them and how they feel about it and what they learn from it - or don't learn from it - and then, once you're emotionally invested, the earth blows up.  Because that is what will happen.  I'm trying to put how important we think everything is into perspective."  

He said something to that effect, anyway.  

P.S.L. pondered this for a moment, then said, "Okay.  Well.  I'm going to point out three problems with that.  First, I'm not convinced that you aren't full of shit and just copped out rather than think of a real conclusion.  Second, in terms of perspective, these experiences that people have are important because they're important to them - and I think you'll find that most readers aren't going to like it when you point out that everything that they torment over or that brings them joy is insignificant.  And, that's only if they understand your message, which they probably won't."  He paused.  "Not that whether or not your reader understands your message is all that important, so long as they get something out of what they're reading."  He paused again, seemed to hesitate, then said, "The third thing is, frankly, you don't have me all that emotionally invested.  Maybe work on becoming a better story-teller before the earth blows up."

He said something to that effect, anyway.  Then he looked around at the rest of us.  "Does anyone have anything to add?"  There were some murmurs of assent.

The next and last story this guy brought to class was a little melodramatic - but it worked - better than his other efforts anyway.  I don't really remember the actual story, just that it was sad, things went from bad to worse, and right at the critical, anguished turning point:

... they lived happily ever after.

Everyone proceeded to debate on the content of the story itself, the writing style, etc.  Anything but the ending.  Only one person commented on that.

"So, about the ending," I began.

He didn't interrupt, just sat there looking smug.

"I think I liked it better when the earth blew up."

I'm not exactly sure why I told that story.  I guess I started because I was sitting at work yesterday and out of nowhere I wondered:

If the sun blew up would we have any warning that we would soon be incinerated, or would it just happen?

And if we knew it was going to happen, how much time would we have, and what would we do with it?  Or would we even want to know?

I quickly decided that yes, I would want to know, and I would want to be sitting on my roof or on the side of a hill, facing the sun, so that I'd have those seconds or that split second of knowing, "okay, this is it."  And I'd be sitting with my best-loved person, holding hands or something, and that we'd grip each other tightly right before we were engulfed by flames, the way Thelma and Louise held hands right before Louise drove over the cliff into the Grand Canyon**. And then it occurred to me that at this point, that person would be my cat, who would probably be struggling against me, but otherwise alone, which was depressing, so I very quickly reverted to wondering whether we'd have any warning or not.

I didn't have the chance to look it up right away.  But over dinner with a friend, I asked whether or not he had the answer:  he's the kind of guy who might know.  He wasn't sure.  "But the sun isn't going to explode," he explained.  "Researchers now believe that the universe is expanding like an elastic band, and eventually it will reach a point where it can't stretch any further, and then snap back into place.  So we're going to implode before the sun explodes."

"But," I wondered aloud, "that would mean that the universe has boundaries, and isn't the whole point of the universe is that it's all there is?  If it has boundaries it suggests that there's something outside it.  Unless our universe is suspended like an embryonic sac in the middle of the Negaverse***.  But that means the universe as I understand it doesn't even exist."

I tried to wrap my mind around this and started to get uncomfortable.

"Yep," he replied, conversationally, as he speared some tuna tataki with one chopstick.  "Kind of a mind-fuck, isn't it."

I don't think I'm alone in preferring life when my mind is not being fucked, so I fixated on an especially large piece of maki, and commented, "I don't think I can possibly fit anything that big into my mouth."

I looked the sun thing up when I got home.  Answer:  eight minutes.  Eight minutes from the moment the people of NASA or whoever monitors these things realize that the sun has exploded and the moment we incinerate.  Which would give me enough time to get outside, at least.  And then I wondered whether I could get an app for my iPhone which would alert me as soon as the sun exploded so I could make the most of those critical eight minutes.  And then I remembered I don't have an iPhone.

The good news is that apparently our sun is 4-5 billion years old, and is only about halfway out of gas, so it's a few billion years yet before we need to be start worrying about these things.


*hard to believe now, isn't it.

**spoiler alert?  that movie came out in 1991, so I figure I'm safe from ruining the ending for anyone.

***Thanks for the concept, Sailor Moon.