What happens when you die?

Will we live forever?

Will we be immortal?

Why do we die?

Incoming, incoming… 

(This whole story is written from a narrator’s point of view on the city crisis when a red giant is coming.)

Beep Beep Beep. That is all that was heard around the one mile radius of NASA headquarters in Houston. This robot voice was saying, incoming. Incoming. Red giant incoming. This was in the middle of the night, so the sleepy janitors in NASA’s hallway suddenly woke up. The janitors here only knew rocket science, so they didn’t really know what a red giant was, so all they did was run. They ran as fast as they possibly could to go outside to see what was happening. Every man and woman was outside and looking at the sky, trying to find the red giant. Indeed, very high up, opposite of the sun, they saw a little red dot getting bigger by the minute. All of the NASA control center freaks who experienced Apollo 11 hurried back to their study and discussed how to stop this massive thing from hitting Earth. One said that they should send a rocket that would blast the thing to pieces. That idea was quickly turned down, for Neil Armstrong shouted, “that wouldn’t do a thing to the red giant.” 

After all, the one who suggested blasting it was a janitor that snuck into the room and skipped his rocket science class. Michael Collins scurried into the room and said, “we can send a rocket that will have a nuclear bomb and a bunch of explosives in it.”

So everyone agreed and got to work. The red giant was outside of Earth’s atmosphere, so if a nuclear bomb went off outside of the atmosphere, it wouldn’t affect Earth. The Buzz Aldrin was quickly at work, figuring out how much time there was left until the red giant hit Earth and how far away it was

30 hours, 48 minutes, 29 seconds, 120 miles away

The top engineers at NASA ran to take a shot of coffee and quickly went to work building a nuclear bomb/rocket and putting a ton of explosives in the rocket. The rocket wasn’t going to get to the red giant too quickly. It was going to be going the speed of an airplane because of how heavy the load would be and how little time they would have to build this. 

22 hours, 56 minutes, 38 seconds, 100 miles away

By the morning, the engineers were finished with the rocket and were starting to make another one because they thought one rocket wouldn’t be enough. The first one was being towed to the launch site. The launch would happen in half an hour

Blast off rocket number one

Once the rocket was ready to launch, a crowd had gathered around, and a 15 minute countdown had begun. When it was time for blast off, the engine stuttered for a moment, and the crowd oohed and ahhed. Once it was about ten feet in the air, the rocket dropped back down, but suddenly a really loud blast caused the rocket to start ascending toward its target. The rocket was ascending at the speed of an airplane, which caused the crowd to worry. In a few minutes, the rocket was the size of the red giant, a small dot.

20 hours, 13 minutes, 01 seconds, 90 miles away

Everyone who witnessed the take off of the rocket was now about to witness the rocket crash into the red giant. A few moments later, you could hear NASA’s loudspeaker telling the crowd that the red giant was unharmed. Half an hour after the news, you were able to see the next rocket being towed to the launch site. 

Blast off rocket number two

A larger crowd had gathered this time, because these people’s lives depended on NASA’s decision. But, right before the 15 minute countdown was about to start, every human being in the USA saw that far to the east there were a whole bunch of smaller rockets being set off into space, and, soon enough, the people at NASA were able to see this rocket trajectory, and it looked like it was heading for the red giant. In a matter of minutes, others at NASA were able to see the launch site of these rockets… It was the USS Armstrong. The USS Armstrong was known for its rockets that, in times of war, could launch little rockets that went so high enemy ships wouldn’t be able to see them in warfare. NASA was quickly trying to contact the USS Armstrong. Soon enough, they got in contact with the ship’s captain, and the captain explained to NASA that the USS Armstrong heard that NASA was sending rockets to the red giant, so they thought that they could too. Maybe more than one rocket at once would be enough to knock it back. So the countdown started, and before you knew it, the rockets were all about five minutes away from their targets. Once the rockets hit the red giant, there was more of an impact. Many tiny pieces were seen coming off of the rockets.

“This is progress, people, this is progress,” shouted a voice from the NASA loudspeaker.

By now, NASA was preparing a third rocket. The USS Armstrong was also planning to send more rockets, which were going to be in sync with NASA’s rocket. Soon enough, the third rocket was already at the launch site, and the countdown started. Sixty… fifty-nine… ten… night… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… blast off. The rocket made a roaring sound, and to the spectators it sounded like the loudest launch. Off to the west they also saw a bright red light that looked like another rocket. They realized that this was a nuclear rocket going off in Japan. Quickly enough, the Japanese airspace was contacting NASA, saying that they hacked into NASA’s countdown and launched their nuclear rocket at the same time. So now they had three different sources of rockets.

And on and on this went, both countries and warships sending up rockets until the red giant entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

10 hours, 21 minutes, 43 seconds, red giant entered Earth’s atmosphere

Now, all over the world, TV stations and radio stations were given instructions by NASA to teach their viewers and listeners how to build small rockets and launch them. So, all over the world, elders, newborns, people in wheelchairs, and people in the emergency room were all building rockets. This was life or death here. The surgeons who were doing life or death surgeries equipped the patients with the right supplies to build rockets. All of these rockets would be the size of those rockets that you would make for a science fair project. They made all of the rockets sync up to NASA’s control center, so they would all launch at the same time. Once all the rockets in the world were launched, the whole world looked up in astonishment. Half an hour later, they saw many millions of pieces coming from the red giant. But there was still one big rock, bigger than all the other ones.

6 hours, 43 minutes, 09 seconds, red giant 30 miles away

By now, the only person with an idea was the astronaut from NASA’s latest mission on Mars, Martian 22. His name was Sir Isaac Newton. He had come up with a miraculous idea, but it may have been the only chance the world had. NASA and all the world countries had sent out alerts to every electronic device telling people to turn on their blow dryers and fans which would hold up the rocks from the Red Giant. NASA would provide 3,000 mile extension cords to all cities, towns, and farms, so they could all keep the blow dryers going. And if the people didn’t do what they said, they hacked the blow dryer and fan companies. Once the rocks were hovering all about 10 feet in the air, a bunch of Robotic Concordes with huge trash cans would come around and collect all of the rocks. And NASA didn’t have to worry about the oceans, because all oceans were dead, for they all died out because of starvation. For this was happening in the 29th century.

30 minutes, 1 mile away

Now all of these things could be easily seen from the naked eye, and the Earth was now at about 200 degrees. This might be scary for you, but it was pretty normal for people living in the 29th century. All the world could do was wait and watch

Red giant 1,000 feet away

You’re probably thinking, why are countries that are opposite North America helping? Well, it was because the aftermath of all of this would wipe out the whole Earth, even though it was mostly going to hit North and South America.

Old man Steve Jobs walked out his front yard, and he saw a bunch of iPad sized rocks plunging toward Earth. He just woke up from a five-day coma, so he didn’t really know what was going on, and he just started yelling at his kids and all of their kids for not informing him about what had happened, so we just thought that all the iPads he ever made were now going to waste. The reason he stopped screaming is that (you will never believe this, but keep reading) all of the “iPads” hovered above Earth, and soon enough, they were collected and put into the dead ocean. But the sad thing was Steve quickly went into another five-day coma.

At the same time as Steve Jobs was experiencing those traumatic things, a little boy was thinking this:

Twelve-year-old Caleb Brokerstein was thinking about death in his room. He was thinking how he wouldn’t want to die along with all the other people in the world. All his childhood death had haunted Caleb. He had always wondered, what happens when he dies? Can we ever be immortal? Why do we die? And now all these thoughts were racing through his mind. Until the thought struck that he was going to die.

When that thought occurred to him, he ran out the house screaming, “I don’t want to die, ‘cause if I do I will never be reborn again!”

These were the precise thoughts that were running through his mind and coming out of his mouth. After a minute of all of this screaming, he looked up at the sky and saw that the particles were all hovering 10 feet above the ground.

When he realized this, Caleb retraced his steps and ran screaming, “We are alive!”

The End