Submitted for the March 2025 prompt: Begin at the Big Ending

Nash picked up a bright yellow box. “No. Way. It’s the same set I had as a kid! Weird name though.” He teared up, then smiled. “Diane, what’s this mean?”

 

“That I’m not the worst theoretical physicist ever,” I said, heading for the cashier. “Let’s go before we get a ticket. You parked in a handicapped spot.”

 

Walking the aisles, I saw what he meant. Everything at Rick’s Sporting Goods had weird names: Vike, Over Shield, The South Place. How far did we go?

 

The seemingly human cashier asked, “Illway atthay ebay allay odaytay?”

 

What the?

 

“Onay, ustjay ethay awnlay artsday,” Nash replied.

 

What the actual…? “You understood her?”

 

“She’s speaking Pig Latin, dummy. Did you even have a childhood?”

 

“Aatthay illway ebay entytway-ivefay olarisay,” the cashier said.

 

Nash turned to me. “Should have thought of this. They don’t take dollars. You don’t have any of their ‘solaris,’ do you?”

 

I winked. “Nope. Time for a childhood classic.” I snatched the box from the counter. “Run for the Hula Hoop!”

 

Bolting out the front door, I glanced back to see Nash following, laughing for the first time in weeks.

 

Now, shoplifting with my NASA mission commander wasn’t on my bingo card when I woke up this morning. But two weeks ago, we watched Earth get obliterated by an asteroid the size of Pluto. Yeah, that happened.

 

Then a week later, we saw it happen again. That’s when things got tense between me and Nash.

 

The Hula Hoop isn’t the toy we stole. That was a lawn dart set. Bear with me.

 

The Hula Hoop is what Nash named our Wormhole Transport Craft, the smallest ship since the Apollo capsules. Wormholes absolutely eat energy, so the smaller the better. But a ship the size of a camper is not where you want to be stranded with a coworker who hates your guts at the moment.

 

Fun fact: Nash named it the Hula Hoop because he’s obsessed with old-timey pop culture. He won’t shut up about the 1980s. The circular wormhole rig swings down from the roof. The ship flies through and boom: we’re in Alpha Centauri. Or Andromeda. Or Delaware.

 

Now here’s what went down. NASA spotted the Atlas-22 asteroid way too late. One month wasn’t enough to prep a kinetic missile defense. They fired, but it was too close. The broken pieces destroyed the Earth anyway.

 

We were already off-planet collecting exotic matter to power the wormhole generator. When Earth looked doomed, we became the backup plan: travel back in time and give NASA more warning.

 

And that’s when I caught a bad case of “overpromise and underdeliver.”

 

You see, Nash and I used wormholes to bend space and hop around the observable universe. My job is the math: calculate how much energy it takes to travel whatever distance.

 

But bending time? It’s never been done. The exotic matter needed is exponential.

 

Nash had doubts. I caught him scribbling on the back of a flight log and snatched it for fun.

 

“What do we have here? Time Travel Bucket List? This outta be good,” I said, expecting a list of sappy retro nonsense.

 

“No. Give it back, Diane. That’s an order,” he said.

 

“Skipping to the good stuff. Number 3: Tab. What the hell is Tab?”

 

“It’s what Marty McFly ordered from that diner in Back to the Future. Now give it.”

 

“Number 2: lawn darts. What the hell is that?”

 

“It’s an old game I had as a kid. You’d throw big steel darts through a hoop at a picnic or whatever. Then some kids got pin-cushioned, so they banned them. Now everyone plays with crappy bean bags. Can’t beat the original,” Nash said. “Now hand it over.”

 

“Number 1: Cl—” I stopped. “Clara.”

 

Clara was Nash’s wife. Lovely woman. She’d invite me to their Sunday dinners. She died on Earth.

 

Nash had Clara. I had my work. Crunching numbers for the last week, I had missed how badly my friend was hurting.

 

“It’s okay. The math checks out. We’ll burn 90% of our exotic matter but travel back a full year. Plenty of warning for NASA.”

 

“You sure?”

 

The odds were 17%. “I promise.”

 

The good news? We time traveled.

 

The bad news? It only took us back a week. We saw Earth die – again – which was always the most likely outcome.

 

Nash took it hard. “You're the worst theoretical physicist, ever.”

 

We used to banter like that. This time he meant it. I got the silent treatment for days while we prepped our final “mission.”

 

What mission, you ask? NASA protocol states: in the case of global obliteration, boldly go where no man has gone before.

 

Kidding. There were no habitable planets in the observable universe to go to. We’d seen it all.

 

Our only move? Go beyond. Outside the observable universe. We set the Hula Hoop for the max distance our remaining exotic matter allowed. And passed through.

 

To our surprise, we were right back orbiting “Earth.” Kind of.

 

“Why is Australia in the Northern Hemisphere?” I asked.

 

“It’s not. That ain’t Earth.”

 

“But how does it look so similar?”

 

“Parallel evolution from another big bang? A multiverse? Glitch in the Matrix? You're the theoretical physicist, you tell me,” he said, finally speaking again. “I’ll set us down by Bizarro Jacksonville.”

 

Nash came in hot, landing in dense fog. We had no idea what we’d find. Life? Sand slugs? Hostile tribal warlords?

 

“I think we’re in the suburbs,” Nash said.

 

As the fog cleared, I saw it for myself: a parking lot. In a shopping center. By a Barstucks and Lulumelon.

 

We hopped out of the ship and waved at a few confused locals who looked vaguely human.

 

“This could have gone worse,” I said.

 

“Yeah, I thought I was gonna die with you in that tiny ass ship,” Nash said with a half smile. “It’s not your fault. You know I know that, right?”

 

“Yeah,” I said, nodding toward Rick’s Sporting Goods. “Wanna go shopping?”