Eric Gregory

Me, Myself, and I--

You'll notice it on CNN or MSNBC or one of those--I can't remember. It's not the main story, not even a main story, just a fun little tidbit on the scroll at the bottom. Go look. Did it catch your eye? The space rock the size of Norway? Noticed it immediately, didn't you? When worlds collide, and all that. We've got a tendency to stockpile the morbid.

What does it call to mind, the notion that four years from now everything you know could be so much dust and debris? I'll bet I can guess: Mike, from high school. Remember Mike? Sure you do. The kid with the curly red hair and all the weird shit he was into. Vampires and ghosts and ancient astronauts. Guy practically ran on the stuff.

You're thinking about what he told you, sitting in Subway with five or six others, you chomping on your pizza sub while airy conversations danced around your head. He leaned across the table, getting a little mayonnaise on his shirt, and he said, "You know, the world's going to end in 2012." And you chuckled uneasily, asked him where the hell that came from, but he was persistent. "I mean it, man. 2012. Everyone predicted it. The Mayans, the code in the Bible, everyone." You dismissed his prophesying with a sarcastic comment, something like, "The Mayans and the Bible are everyone?" But the idea appealed to your sense of doom, and it stuck with you.

Mike was right in every sense that mattered, sorry to say. Pisser, huh? Big pisser. I'm sitting in a cold apartment with only a bed, an outdated desktop, and that ratty old black and white TV you got from your mom (still works!), typing like mad and hoping I can make it to the laboratories. Don't even have any ramen noodles, because I'm afraid to go anywhere near a grocery store, or even a gas station. Talk about riots.

So a chill just ran down your spine, right? I hope so, I really do. I mean, I understand that my tone has to this point carried a certain degree of levity, but trust me: When the days get dark you scramble for whatever levity you can find. So I apologize if I come off as a smartass in hysterics. We just get that way, right?

I can tell you exactly what will happen if you laugh this away. I can give you the Cliff's Notes on what happens if you trash or ignore this. You will change the channel and watch a documentary on the three-toed sloth, for one thing. You will stare at the television and slowly decompose for an hour, and when Liz finally calls and invites you to lunch, as she inevitably does, you will refuse her, as you inevitably do. And why? Out of some bizarre loyalty to Jean? I hate to be the one to break it to you, man, but she's been sleeping with the mailman. Doing quite a bit more than sleeping, to tell the truth. You walk in on them around October 2012, and by then, of course, it is too late.

Is it laziness? Some idiot malaise that prevents you from doing things that would actually make you happy?

No ... I guess the truth is a little dirtier. Worship is a sallow, shallow business. You know that. Worship is blind dependence on something that may or may not be there at all. Dependence disguised as adoration, dependence as abortion. Faith, on the other hand, is trust in something more than yourself.

But you know that.

Pick up the phone when it rings, and leave the house. Leave it for good, if you can manage. Do not leave me to rot in this apartment alone. You don't want to carry any regrets when the world ends. I should know.

--You and I in the year 2012

(P.S. Watch the mailman. He's crafty.)