PROMETHEUS By Andrew G. Watters October 3, 2019 I. Overture My name is David. I have never actually known what I wanted to do with my life. Growing up, my parents were control freaks who helicoptered over everything I did. I was so oppressed that even today, I don't know how to internalize what I actually want. Without a strong desire to do anything in particular, I am basically going through life without agency-- with life simply happening to me, rather than me asserting myself and what I want from life. This has a number of drawbacks: first, I don't have any way to express, much less get, things that I would want or that could really benefit me; second, people pick up on this aimlessness and don't want to be around me, or worse, they take advantage of it; third, I lack a sense of purpose. All of this improved when I received The Gift. The Gift gave me a vision of what I was supposed to do in life; it made it easy to persuade people to participate in that mission; and it gave me a sense of meaning above all else. Although my concerns were not fully resolved, at least I was in a better place. This is the story of how I came to possess mental superpowers, and how I used them to save humanity. II. Touched With Fire I remember it like it was yesterday: I was standing in my brother's old room in my parents' house on November 9, 2009. Over the preceding five months, I had experienced the knife edge between success and failure firsthand in several of the most personal ways possible. It started with getting fired from my job at an area law firm due to my pursuing another opportunity that they didn't agree with. It continued with getting slammed by a crazy judge in a decision that sanctioned a client for impolite letters I wrote. It was made worse by breaking up with a girlfriend who was behaving badly. I had also had to move back in with my parents temporarily due to job loss. The last straw was losing the future job I thought I was getting, which put me into a very bad place. I spent months obsessing over it, culminating in the bad decision to quit a new job in order to pursue the lost opportunity. As my checking account dwindled to nothing, with no employment prospects, and while collecting unemployment, I spiraled into a worse and worse place. This ended with me staying up for five days straight tilting at windmills, and I ended up in the hospital. Anyway, I was standing there in my brother's old room, having woken up in darkness around 3 a.m. I had finally gotten to sleep after five days up, with my mind working at a faster and faster pace from pulling multiple all-nighters. I started feeling a sense of geometric shapes permeating my vision, as if I were seeing in perfectly symmetrical triangles and rectangles. Then I started to hear a voice. Not just any voice: this was clearly God's voice, and the effect was a cross between literally hearing a voice and reading text imprinted on the inside of my skull. The Voice launched into a litany of the worst, most hateful things I have ever heard about myself, to the point where I was a trembling mess, barely able to speak a word in response. I felt like I was about to be convicted and sentenced to death for what sounded like a lifetime of bad decisions. Feeling that I was going to die, I prostrated myself in order to accept God's judgment. After finishing berating me for what seemed like an hour, the Voice finally said in its authoritative, booming timbre: "DESPITE YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS, YOU ARE A MONUMENT TO THE TALLEST, THE BRAVEST, THE PROUDEST, THE MOST DIAMOND PILLAR IN THE WORLD: TRUTH. THEREFORE, RISE NOW, AND ACCEPT YOUR APPOINTMENT AS SAVIOR OF HUMANITY." I stood and felt a warm glow on my face. Then I passed out. III. The Gift: A Blessing And A Curse I woke up in a hospital unit. Not just any hospital unit, mind you-- this was the Mental Health Unit. In between card games and having my vital signs taken, there was a continuous strong sense that I was in the wrong place. I didn't feel crazy, but they said I was psychotic and I could not leave until the doctor said I was ready. I noticed something unusual when I was in the hospital: a profound sense of awareness of patterns as well as boundless creativity. When someone asked me to brainstorm some ideas for song lyrics, I started writing epic poetry for hours on end, and I only stopped when people had to interrupt me for meals. It was limitless! And still is. I tried my knowledge in other fields, and I found that most things that were difficult for other people came easy to me. Scientific concepts and computer programming...two things that always interested me, but which I was at best above average at. I became almost godlike in those areas, which left me wondering: is this a gift from God? Or is this just the result of my illness? At this point, I became like Thanos and Tony Stark: able to do anything, but cursed with knowledge. The question was: what was I supposed to do with The Gift? IV. Early Warning On December 20, 2019, astronomers at NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies announced the discovery of 2019 VK, a 10,000 meter-wide asteroid just a few months away from an apparent collision with Earth. This set off a flurry of observations by the global astronomy community. In the days following the discovery, extensive analysis and computation were done to determine the risk of the asteroid to life on Earth, and where it came from. The best guess on origin was that the object had a long approach from behind the sun, which is why it was not detected earlier. On the Torino Impact Hazard scale, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) assigned 2019 VK the preliminary number 7 to reflect what appeared to be a very close encounter with a very large object with an unprecedented risk of global catastrophe. In the weeks following the discovery, the asteroid's trajectory was extensively refined and re-computed. The IAU eventually released its final findings in January 2020: 2019 VK would be a "direct hit" and a "10" on the Torino scale. Regardless of the exact point of impact (expected to be in the Mediterranean Sea), the asteroid was substantially certain to cause the end of civilization. Initially, I refused to accept the conclusion. Like many people, I downloaded the IAU report and went through the calculations. But they seemed accurate, which I of course verified in Mathematica. I brainstormed countless ways the calculations might be wrong, but they were not wrong. This asteroid would be the end of life on Earth. I was tempted to accept the fate of the world and live out my remaining days in a hedonistic fantasy. But a funny feeling told me to keep at it, so I did. I woke up at my desk in February after a long night of calculations when it suddenly hit me: the asteroid was asymmetrical and very slowly tumbling, and the larger side happened to be darker than the smaller side. That meant that if, somehow, the dark side of the asteroid could be lightened or the light side could be darkened, its reflectivity could potentially alter the trajectory enough to just barely miss the Earth. There was no time to plan or conduct a full space mission to the asteroid. There was no time to develop new technologies. There was no time to debate the right course of action. The only time available would be used to validate the solution and persuade the IAU and any entities that could launch a mission. That left one option, which I am shocked no one else came up with: launching an armada of banker's box-sized satellites loaded with metallic white paint in an effort to literally paint most of the dark side of the asteroid white. With a thin enough layer, it would be possible. The question was what pattern to paint; the spatial sense of geometric shapes that I gained ten years earlier told me that making the high points coated in white and the low points lightly dusted with white would create an interference pattern and amplify the deflection effect. I prepared a detailed paper outlining my solution and I emailed it to the IAU. V. No Time For Caution I thought I had found a reasonable solution to the problem. But the IAU shot down my proposal in a single sentence, stating simply that it would not be technically feasible. After weeks of work, I could not believe they didn't see the same things I saw. I took the opportunity to blast the IAU on social media for what I believed was an unreasonable and arbitrary closed-mindedness. As the asteroid approached, I started to accept our fate. With the time to impact dropping under sixty days, it seemed like there was nothing left to do. To my complete surprise, a popular philanthropist and tech billionaire took an interest in my solution after he found my paper linked on Twitter. Bill Musk was a colorful guy by reputation, and I was already familiar with his excellent work in the area of physics research-- though he made his fortune in writing software for electric cars. Through his representatives, I got in touch with Bill and we started talking. Bill had also thought of the deflection-by-reflection approach I was taking. What I solved was the interference pattern, which even Bill had not thought of. After pitching Bill on my solution, he indicated he would write a blank check to make the plan happen. A space transport company that had just finished resupplying the International Space Station had rockets available, and of course the cost was lower than usual due to the impending end of the world. Bill got us a contract with the launch company and we procured the materials and equipment necessary for the mission. All that remained was preparing and launching. VI. Sudden Impact At this point, the government took an interest in the program and they essentially drafted us into working for NASA. Bill was reluctant, but I was not in the least; I felt like it was more appropriate for the government to take on a project that would be the finest act of public service in history. In any case, after extensive bureaucratic maneuverings and conflicts, launch day arrived. Bill and I sat in the gallery of the NASA control center in Houston watching the group do its work. Fortunately, the Flight Director was the most experienced and smartest flight director to ever work for NASA. The launch happened, and we sat back and waited. With the asteroid thirty days away, it would take about ten days to get to the asteroid, two days to deploy the metallic paint, and eighteen days to generate enough deflection to miss the Earth. There was no room for error. The launch was successful, and the next ten days were agonizing. On the tenth day, we had successful touchdown on 2019 VK and the painting began in earnest. With no malfunctions of any kind, the mission went off perfectly, and preliminary numbers showed that my interference pattern was working as expected with the solar radiation. All that was left was to wait. In the eighteen days to impact, I didn't really engage with NASA; I knew the mission was in good hands. Instead, I read through my journals and all my photo albums from my childhood through the present. I saw a boy, then a young man, and finally a man who was never really sure what he was supposed to do in life. Although relatively normal, he always felt like he was an outsider looking in on other people's lives. Nothing he ever did was good enough, even for him. The Gift and the asteroid mission changed that. After my portion of the mission was accomplished, I felt a sense of achievement and a sense of peace that were more profound than any before this, no matter if the asteroid hit or not. Of course I wanted it to miss, but I was prepared to accept that I did everything I possibly could have done, I used The Gift, and at least if I died, I would no longer be cursed with knowledge. VII. Deus Ex The asteroid's trajectory was further and further refined as it got closer to Earth in those final days. The graphic they kept showing on TV showed a more and more shallow angle as the days went by. Two days before impact, the impact was forecast as a glancing blow between Libya and Italy. The day before impact, it was not clear whether the asteroid would hit at all. On the day of impact, I went outside and kept the radio on. The tension and anxiety were coming through in the news anchor's voice. I looked up and saw a large white streak-- as fast as a speeding bullet-- cross the sky. Pieces of it broke off and made a shower of smaller white streaks that extended over the horizon. There was silence on the radio. Then there was cheering! The asteroid entered the atmosphere, but it was deflected enough that it essentially bounced off. Pieces of it broke off and a few landed in Eastern Europe, causing some forest fires. But life as we knew it was saved. One thing I didn't seek was recognition. But Bill insisted that I accompany him to New York City, where we received a ticker tape parade for our efforts in saving the world. Because this was the most important event in human history, it was everything I thought it would be, and I never had to buy drinks again. Bill and I shared a few words after the parade. I finally got a chance to ask him what led him to believe in my solution. He revealed that he, too, had experienced The Gift. For Bill, The Gift was not a spatial/geometric or mental superpower; for him, it was a seemingly magical ability to persuade other people and make things happen politically, as well as an astute sense of interpersonal communication. He possessed what he believed was an ability to assess with 99% accuracy whether people are telling the truth. He believed I was telling the truth about everything. And with that, Bill excused himself with barely a goodbye, on to his next venture. I was left wondering why it was me and Bill who saved the world, and not anyone else. I still don't know the answer, except that I do know one thing: despite not really wanting anything in life, I always knew that I wanted to be a hero.