"A supernova? How? How could it?!" Led's voice was weak, his tone expressed utter disbelief. He stared Meddles down but Meddles didn't budge.

"Collision with another comet, named X-QC8, just recently visited the Solar System," Meddles replied. "We've had NASA give us this file, about fourteen hours ago. Withers and Morton's team had seen it, right as they were closing the computer... After the collision, Proxima Centauri was sent off in Earth's direction, with a 15 million kilometer radius fault error. We hoped its trajectory would follow another route, a route which passes Earth - but, alas, it's not. It's coming toward us. The distance is decreasing with each day."

Led was frightened to ask how many days were left.

"Shouldn't this conversation be monitored?" he questioned. "Why a library?"

"We've got 24C protection 'round our table," Smith answered, pointing at something on a single computer that had appeared out of nowhere. "About five minutes ago, the conversation had resumed to be encoded."

"Does that make me a fool for confronting you with such direct questioning?"

His question was met with silence.

Meddles showed a simulation on the same computer modeling the pathways of the X-QCB comet and the aforementioned star.

"The collision happened 3 years 10 months and two days ago. If we take this into consideration, then we have,... about 1 month and 28 days before it nears us."

"Why not "hits us"? If it's a supernova, the energy blast will be too much to handle even from a 15 million kilometre radius. How could it-?"

Still, he couldn't bring himself to say the sentence fully.

"Deeply sorry, Led," Miss Chaisson apologized, "but when we heard the news, there wasn't a chance to save the situation at all," she took a breath. "And that was why we were hesitant to let you in on this thing. But then we heard more news. And the news said that there is one chance, a chance with quite low probability, that crisis will be averted. Miss Winner has helped in devising it, but we're not fully sure if it will work."

Arlene Winner sympathetically sighed.

"We are hoping that an energy blast, if it's 15 million kilometers from here, can be generated through force of Sun, equal to Centauri's energy," she explained. "We would have to use the Einstein-Rosen bridge, but at the time of collision, there's a probability it'll work."

"But that's impossible."

"Not unless we try it," Arlene said.

She looked him straight in the eye.

"If the star passes a bit closer within the fifteen million kilometer radius, unfortunately, we're doomed," Miss Chaisson said. "But if the odds are that it won't come closer than 13, in domes we would be saved."

"In domes?" he asked. They nodded. "But I don't understand something. How could it be that a superstar that has collided with a comet has been completely knocked off its axis? As it shows in this diagram here?"

"First of all, it's a very big comet," Mills responded. "And second of all, it didn't knock Centauri completely out of orbit, it accelerated it just at a bit above a hundred thousand kilometers per second. It says there that the comet itself had possessed a lot of acceleration when the collision happened, it gained so much energy from a source we do not know the name of. Truthfully, we do not know how such a comet, whose nature had remained timid for ages, has, suddenly, an insane amount of heat transferred and, suddenly, made a collision of *this* speed and force?"

The question remained unanswered. The simulation went on, with the little black comet increasing in speed and eventually colliding with Proxima Centauri, causing a big "boom" to happen in a graphi-sized set of flames in the Constellation of Centaurus, basked in a midnight starry terrain. Everybody took a breath, all eyes glued to the screen except Led's. Led's eyes were only glued to the heap of orderly arranged papers on the table. By the thick brown leather file titled I-NASA.

"There must be a way to avoid this catastrophe. We don't have to go to the lowest point of the Atlantic Ocean and the only point upon which a potential Einstein-Rosen bridge can be built to see the energy fluctuations there," Led said. He looked up. He had realized the goal of the mission much later than when he was supposed to.

"We don't know."

Meddles sadly smiled at Led's realization.

***

The next few days went on without any major changes. The research team was still as afraid of the newly emerged issue, and regularly met up in the library to think of more solutions to the problem. The Arcana Moda was free 24/7, thus they often stayed far beyond midnight, with Arlene being the grand initiator of working overtime. Nonetheless, the latter wasn't new to them. But the issue concerning the end of the world remained a "bit" concerning, nevertheless.

Led studied the supernova all he could in his leisure. But his determination to find a solution was wearing off, proportional to how much time he spent in the library, meticulously calculating exactly how much force it would take for the Earth to be smashed in half, or in mashed eggs. But it appeared still likewise: if the star would come at least a hundred kilometers closer than 13 million at any time during its journey, Earth would be completely obliterated and humankind - destroyed. Mashed Earth, so to speak. Obliterated Earth sounded nastier. What an exclusive dish at an alien-Earthesque restaurant.

Jokes aside, however, Led was worried. Under the surface, he was utterly terrified. But he didn't let that show as he worked countless hours at the library, and especially at home where he had a huge board - one of his most expensive possessions. It could be said that Led worked "overtime" overtime. He would often find himself working far into the night and glancing at his phone only to find that it was 6 o'clock in the morning and his quantum newsletter had just been uploaded. He got to watch the beautiful sunrises, although. That was a brief break that lessened temporarily all his worries and made him sane again, and feel human. The ochre sun immersed his whiteboard with its reddish glow and backed everything in its radiance. He was glad to be greeted by it. The golden sunrays felt like a warm embrace. A warm, half-forgotten one.

Overdosed on sleep pills and green tea, he sometimes treated himself to a cup of coffee because his body couldn't literally survive on the two hours of sleep he got a day (or night, in his case). His lucky hour was between 6 and 7 pm, since that was the hour he got quality sleep time in, sometimes a half hour earlier, if Miss Chaisson was exhausted. Then he had to prepare for their evening overtime, which began at 8 pm. From 8 pm till 12 they studied different cases, all the way from quantum physics to science fiction, which got their interest since it detailed unbelievable scenarios. And theirs was unbelievable, too. But they had to find a way to solve it. Unthinkable problems require impossible solutions.

Yet the following next few days, they were unsuccessful. The research team was devastated. For how could they find an imaginary solution, and use it in a real situation, however impossible it seemed to the human mind? Such answers were found in mathematics, probably, but in life... There was no such imaginary number, or imaginary variable. You couldn't take the i from imaginary. It wouldn't be an actual word.

So Led decided to go to the library. One last time. He wished to prove that the team was unsuccessful, one final time. After that, well - they would have to go into the Atlantic. And use the last possible option.

At 4 in the morning, he stepped into the sleeping mansion and bought himself a can of coffee from the vending machine on the first floor just with a hint of Baileys. It was de-alcoholized, of course, though still expensive. Yet if he desired to make this visit his last individual visit here concerning the issue, he might as well acquire the most fuel. And, however he liked it or not, Baileys-flavoured coffee made many things work.

The lift began to squeak as he reached it, but Led had already taken the stairs. He was too exhilarated to stay still.

The way upstairs wasn't as easy as he thought it would be, but he hoped his college experience would cover it. It did. And as he reached the 7th floor, his heart jumped in excitement as he strode swiftly to his usual seat. He had some ideas forming in his mind. This was it.

And as he pored over his calculations afresh, he knew there must've been some mistake. He couldn't have done it. The integral was undefined!

That was a schoolboy's mistake. He checked again. The same integral. The same undefined-ness that he hated to see in his freshmen buddies' homework. He checked the source. Yes, this was a reliable source. The Friedmann equation lined it all up, the dark energy wouldn't give it an extra radius fault error.

His fingers gripping the pencil, he nervously put a large dash across the whole 3 pages and scribbled newly the whole set of calculations of defined integrals with the corrected mathematical operator in his thin notebook, which he managed to buy at a gas station. The only pages in the book were all linked to this problem. If he couldn't solve it, he would have to ask for a new notebook from work which he disliked doing. It made him feel like everyone thought of him as a youngster.

However, the new equations absorbed his attention more and more as they were coming to a more and more concise result. What a turn of events! Led didn't think this would actually be possible. All because of a stupid mistake. A simple mistake. That hurt more.

The defined integral, the Lorentz transformations, and... done! The final form! All in one place! And not a single integral missing! The multivariable stuff was over. And now Led had, like a high school student, to find the missing x. Or t. The amount of time it would take to build the most sustainable amount of energy.

And it was found. A relieved breath heaved his chest, as the scientist took a swig of his morning coffee and watched the kids play outside . The Sun was rising. The kids were happy.

He looked again. He wrote down the roots of the equation in his frail notebook of what he thought up in his head.

He crumpled the can of coffee, ready to finally finish it. He closed the lights.

But he jumped.

The x was officially found.

Yet, only, it was less than zero.

(1784 words)