Apocalypse #2

For many days before the end of our earth people will look into the night sky and notice a star, increasingly bright and increasingly near. As this star approaches us, the weather will change. The great polar fields of the north and south will rot and divide, and the seas will turn warmer. The last of us search the heavens and stand amazed. For the stars will still be there, moving through their ancient rhythms. The familiar constellations that illuminate our night will seem as they have always seemed, eternal, unchanged and little moved by the shortness of time between our planet’s birth and its demise.

Orion, the Hunter. Gemini, the Twins. Cancer, the Crab. Taurus, the Bull. Sagittarius and Aries—all as they have ever been.

And while the flash of our beginning has not yet traveled the light years into distance… Has not yet been seen by planets deep within the other galaxies, we will disappear into the blackness of the space from which we came. Destroyed as we began in a burst of gas and fire.

The heavens are still and cold once more. In all the complexity of our universe and the galaxies beyond, the Earth will not be missed. Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of Man seem trivial and naive indeed. And Man, existing alone, seems to be an episode of little consequence.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) d. Nicholas Ray scenario: Ray, Irving Shulman, Stewart Stern