by Benjamin Lepson

I, Zack, live in California with my two children, Jake and Gretchen. They are both twins. I also live with my wife, Sara. We’ve been married for 13 years. I am a scientist. I study the future.

That day when I went to work, my friend Dylan, another scientist, said, “Look at what I found.”

Dylan was my size. We have been best friends since first grade. Dylan was the best man at my wedding. Dylan showed me on the computer this hieroglyphic writing from when they still existed.

I asked, “Please translate it.”

It ended up saying, “In the year 2011, their will be an earthquake and a hurricane.” Then it said something like this: “In the year 2012 the…” Why did it just stop right there?

“That’s what I was studying all morning and night,” said Dylan. He sent it to my URL document. I printed it out. I took it home that night and showed it to my wife. She said she did not understand it either. We both agreed not to tell the children.

I studied it until the next morning came. I looked through every single book I had. I finally understood what it meant. It was horrific, terrible, and SCARY. I did not know what to do!

I called Dylan. I told him what I was thinking. I said I felt like in 2012, the world will… end. He did not talk for a while. Then he said something like this: “Wow, I never pictured it that way. We will have to send this to the government and the President of the United States.”

The next few days, I was at the White House. It was the end of December. My kids didn’t know. They thought I was at work. This situation was serious. The government agreed: the Mayor and now the President! This situation was HUGE—not tiny. The news reporters reported on TV that there would be an earthquake in California tomorrow at sunset. Then the TV cut through all the commercials and said, “WARNING: NEXT YEAR THE WORLD WILL… END.”

I called my wife. “Make sure the children don’t watch the news. Only cartoons.”

One day later, the earthquake was here. Everyone was so scared, even my own children. We hid under the table and tried to call the police. But the police wouldn’t answer. I took the kids and my wife to the car and started driving crazily. There was a road that was right on top of another road so my car just jumped over it. I shivered. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to protect my family. Jake was crying and asking me, “What are we going to do if we can’t survive this?”

“It will be all fine,” I said. He didn’t answer.

My wife whispered to me, “How can we explain this to the children? How can we explain that the world will end?”

We drove all the way to where the earthquake didn’t hit. The earthquake only hit our town. We went out of town and into the forest. We camped out there. My son and I built the tent. My wife and daughter cooked and started the fire while my son and I were out building the tent. We saw a trailer with a guy with really long, blond hair. We knocked on the door, and he had a farm accent.

“Do you have any wood?” I asked.

“Yes. I do. But come in. I need to talk to you. My name is RJ,” he said.

We went inside and he showed us a cartoon video of how the world would end. RJ was riding a fake dinosaur in the cartoon, saying that the world would end in 2012.

“Don’t worry. I will protect you, but don’t tell your sister,” I said to my son.

The guy with the yellow hair said, “The only way to survive…”

RJ worked for the radio. His trailer was really messed up and scary. There was a twitching light on the side. Jake started crying.

“I really have to get my son out of the trailer. I am very sorry.”

“You never told me the world would end,” said Jake .

“I am sorry, son. I didn’t want to depress you.”

Jake asked, “How is the world going to end?” I didn’t answer. Then he asked, “That guy back there in the trailer with the blond hair said the world is going to end. How will it end?”

“I do not know, son, but enjoy every moment you have.” We got back into the car. My wife and I were exchanging a serious look.

“Daddy, where are we going?” Gretchen asked.

“Children, we are in a dangerous situation. We are going to China.”

They both started crying. “It’s okay. We will be safe there,” I said. China was the last place where the world was going to end.

When we were on the mountains in China, it was a really cloudy day. We saw a Chinese government building in the middle of the mountains. We stopped off and asked, “Do you know where the Indiana Ship is? That will take us safely through 2012?” The Chinese government took us in the car and took us south for four hours to this huge boat the size of a town.

There was a guy named Zeke who brought our luggage in. Zeke showed us our room. When we got settled in in our room, Zeke told us to stay inside until they said it’s safe to get out of the boat. While all the storms mixed together, we were safe inside. They forgot to close one door, so there was a flood. We had to evacuate to the top floor.

While we were evacuating on the top floor, we met this rich couple with two twin boys complaining that there was a flood in their room in first class. They asked us if we were in first class, too. I said, “No.”

“Take care of our room instead of everybody else,” said the rich people.

While they were complaining about the flood, they tried going downstairs, but the security guards wouldn’t let them. They went downstairs anyway.

After the evacuation, we got to go downstairs to our room. Everything was fine, except the government said that they kicked the couple with the twins off the boat.

Three years later… Gretchen and Jake’s 13th B-day

We got off the boat, and all we saw was water and a bridge that looked like the George Washington Bridge. We saw buildings and the Empire State Building, and then I said, “The world didn’t end after all.” I thought that I couldn’t take care of my family, but I did anyway.