At Juno’s house we were helping with putting things in boxes, either to be sold or to be moved, because they were moving to Apayao in the Cordillera region. Despite their best attempts Juno’s mom snapped and said that if her family would not come to the Cordilleras with her, then she would go alone. For a while, Juno and her brother Apollo thought that if their mom went on with her plan, they would rent apartments in Manila and live there. But they could not bear the thought of allowing their aging parents to fend for themselves. None of them were well equipped to live in the remote countryside.

When Juno told us at hotpot last Saturday, she said: “What if they don’t know where to get food? What if mom has another one of her visions?”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Your mother has visions now?”

“Yes. She has ecstatic visions. And she’s convinced that she levitates, but she does not levitate. She grabs onto furniture and pretends that she is keeping herself grounded by doing that, but actually she’s not. She’s really not.”

“I’d like to verify that.”

Juno listened and smiled and nodded. She finished chewing and swallowed. “August, I love you. But if you encourage my mother’s delusions even for one second, I will strangle you to death with my bare hands.”

I laughed. “Babe, your hands aren’t large enough for my neck.”

“I’ll use a rope. I don’t care. I can improvise.”

“Fair enough.”

Two Saturdays later we were at her house, helping with the move. I had never been to Juno’s house. It was small but spacious, and much of the place had religious knickknacks: crosses, small statues, plaques, icons, Bibles. And flush against the wall of the living room, which was open and visible after stepping in from the front door, was their altar, with massive idols—yes, idols—of the Holy Family, along with a golden, jewel encrusted cross, all fake of course. There was also another idol of the Virgin Mary, arms folded, blonde, blue eyed, and totally removed from her Levantine origins.

The place smelled heavily of incense mixed with spam or cooking grease in general. By the time we had gotten there, they had not yet started. We assumed this was because up until the last minute they were trying to convince the mom to change her mind. But, from what Juno had told us, she was going to go no matter what happened. Unless she was institutionalized or imprisoned she was not going to be stopped.

Emily, Danny, my clone, Niko, and I arrived a little after noon, having had lunch first. Juno ushered us to the kitchen that doubled as a dining room and asked if we had eaten. We said we did and were ready to help. She insisted we have coffee at least. The way that the house was deserted made me realize that her dad and her brother were still talking to the mom somewhere in the house. Juno made us coffee.

Niko said, “You have a lovely home, Juno.”

“Thanks,” Juno said. “Not our home for long.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Nice going…” I muttered at him.

We were both doing that thing where we were sucked in our lips and bit them to keep from laughing. And while we were doing that, Emily said, “Is Apollo here?”

“Yeah,” Juno said. “He’s in the back with my dad and my mom. They should be out in a bit.”

A few minutes of awkward silence later, Juno’s mom emerged from the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Her face was bitter in the way that only old faces can be. But when she saw us, she managed a half smile, although not too enthusiastic. Juno’s mom had one of those faces that resembled a turtle or a frog, winkled with a flabby neck and thin, protruding lips. Her eyes, however, were sharp and her thin, penciled eyebrows projected with a force her religious contempt upon the mortal world. This filthy, fallen mortal world that she hated so much.

“You’ve eaten?” she said to the group.

We said opo. Juno introduced us one by one.

“Well,” she said. “Thanks for coming to help. I hope all of you are aware of what’s happening. With the black hole, and Iran, and all these things—you know what I’m talking about, right?”

“What is it, tita?” Emily said.

Juno rolled her eyes. Emily spotted it but it was too late.

“Have you read the book of Revelation?” she said. “It’s happening now. You only need to pay attention, ha? You only need to use your eyes and ears. And your heart. Don’t you feel it? Things are happening that have never happened before. The world is ending. It’s obvious. You’re all Christians, aren’t you?”

Mostly we smiled, leaving it ambiguous. My friends were mostly atheists and agnostics, motivated primarily by apathy. And of course Niko believed in other things altogether.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” Juno’s mom went to the fridge and took out a jug of water. “I’ll be in my room, Juno.”

We were separated into rooms. Niko and I were left in the kitchen to pack those things up. We had to be careful with the food in the glass jars. Since they could not be sold or given away, they had decided to bring it with them. We wrapped them in several sheets of newspaper before putting them in one of the brown corrugated boxes they had.

Niko was at the fridge, while I worked on the pantries.

“What’s this?” he said.

I turned, and he was holding a bottle of ketchup.

“What’s banana ketchup?” he said. “Is this supposed to be sweet?”

“During the war we didn’t have tomatoes. So we had to use bananas.”

“Oh. Does it taste just like ketchup?”

“Yes. And it is ketchup. Go ahead and taste it.”

“You don’t think they’d mind?”

“No. They won’t mind.”

Niko opened the bottle and put a little on his finger and tasted it. “It’s sweeter than regular ketchup. I don’t like it.”

“It doesn’t like you, either.”

The time I’ve spent with Niko has taught me that he is obsessed with being liked. I supposed that his German upbringing, perhaps more broadly his European upbringing, had made him reliant on the approval of others, overly concerned with how his community views him. In Filipino culture, being overly concerned with how people view oneself is considered a lethal weakness. “Sino ba sila?” The moment one thinks too much about what others think is the moment one loses one’s verve to do the right thing. Though, paradoxically, Filipinos, like many other Asians, are very community-oriented. The key is to pretend we aren’t. We are up to the point that it does not suit us, or it degrades us, at which point, and exactly at that point, and only at that point, we aren’t.

But Niko is always so eager to please. If someone doesn’t like him, or he feels that way, he feels uneasy and wonders out loud what he could do to change. That attitude disgusted me. It reminded me of a dog.

Juno’s brother Apollo came by and stood beside the fridge, opposite the door. Niko straightened up, carrying two jars, and the two boys looked at each other. Although Apollo had always seemed tall to me, he was a few inches shorter than Niko. And Apollo was so handsome that we always joked about his prowess with women, and how people seemed to naturally assume he was a model or an actor. But face to face with Niko he seemed ordinary, plain.

“Sorry…” Niko immediately said, ducking and moving towards the box on the counter.

“Sorry, sorry…” Apollo said, ducking as well as if he were going through a narrow opening on the way around the fridge door, and taking out a jug of water. He poured it into a giant orange tumbler.

“Hi Apollo,” I said.

We had never spoken before. Juno had always found one reason or another not to invite him to our gatherings. And the few times where he was there, because he gave Juno a ride or because he was her ride home, he sat at a different table or wandered the mall until they had to leave, even if he had to do so for hours. I’ve always suspected that Juno wanted to spare him from my gaze, which was lustful and covetous and intense. Which was fair, so I said nothing about it. Although whenever I could catch a glimpse of him I did. And once in a while I asked her whether she could introduce me. She laughed it off, mostly.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. He placed the jug on the counter. “Thanks for helping out.”

“New life, huh?” I said.

“Yeah…” He sighed. He looked tired and sad. He had the appearance of a man totally bereft of hope.

I wanted to keep talking to him, but I knew nothing about him. So, eventually he said see you and walked off to the hallway and into his room.

We did our work for a while, and then Niko said, without looking at me: “That man was very handsome. Juno’s brother, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yes. A lot.”

“Why don’t you do something about it?”

“I don’t know.” He was wrapping their glasses in a thick layer of newspaper. “We’ve never been close. But I wish we were. We’d be a nice couple, don’t you think?”

“Do you feel anything apart from lust for men?”

I thought about it. “No.”

“Don’t you think that’s something to be worried about?”

“Why would I be worried about it?”

“Seems shallow.”

The box I was filling up was full, so I closed it and taped up the flaps. “I feel the same way about you, you know. So, what’s wrong with that? It’s not like I treat you like an animal or something.”

“Still…” he said, crouching, his face obscured by the fridge. It was beginning to make the beeping noise that fridges make when the door is open too long. “It’s not right. Das gehört sich nicht.”

Niko whipped out the German whenever he wanted something emphasized as the Truth—which, in any case, was to him the German way of life.

A while later, Juno’s mom called for everyone in the living room. The house was small enough for everyone hear her. We gathered there. Juno and Apollo were muttering something to her, probably asking her to stop. Juno’s dad was on the couch already, looking at the corner of the room.

“It’s 3 o’clock,” she told everyone. “Let’s pray.”

We all looked at each other.

“Go on,” Juno’s mom said. “Take a seat.”

She lit the candles and then pulled out a kneeler that was tucked underneath the altar. She knelt down. She held a rosary with one hand and a worn pamphlet in the other. She started with the angelus prayer. Naturally, she knew it by heart. But she didn’t breeze through it; she seemed to be thinking about every word, pausing at every sentence, as if to ruminate on the meaning. That impressed me.

Then, she began to pray in a way that made it seem as though she were merely talking to God directly. “Please, God, pass the cup of suffering that you present before me. But your will be done. Please guide our journey into Apayao. Make that place our refuge from the coming tribulations.”

She bent her face against her hands clasped tightly in prayer. She muttered softly, as if only to herself and to God: “Please, please, please.” And at that point I realized that she was deeply mentally ill, obviously. But during times like these, was it possible to stay sane? She remained in that position until her husband came over and rubbed her back.

Then, she said an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, and made the sign of the cross and walked away.

Before we could stand up, she told us to stay seated and produced ice cream and bowls from the fridge. She turned on the television and ate with us.

Apollo was flipping channels, and we passed a news station talking about the black hole. He pressed the button so quickly that he pressed it like three or four times before the channel flipped, but the mom noticed and told him to go back. She leaned forward, the bowl of ice cream resting on her lap.

The news anchor Julius Babao was conversing with an expert from the University of the Philippines regarding the black hole. Recently, they had contained it, using experimental technology that an international group of scientists and engineers had developed specifically for that purpose within the span of only eight weeks. They called it the Atomic Miracle because everything needed to have some kind of name. It was more or less guesswork at that point because there was almost no practical scholarship on how to contain a black hole, and the little that was there was speculative to the highest degree that speculative theoretical physics could be.

It took weeks and an incredible amount of resources. Many businesses and public services were vacated so that the manpower could be diverted to what was called the Wall of Light. I’ve tried to understand how it worked; there were discussions about it everywhere. New York Times, the Guardian, Vox. It had something to do with photons and radiations and quantum mechanics and everything. But basically there was a massive, more or less spherical barrier around where the black hole was, and this significantly slowed it down. Many people died installing it, and they and the leaders of the effort were more or less considered heroes who have saved humanity, if only for a while longer until we could find a permanent solution.

The devastation spanned around sixty percent of central Europe, encompassing much of France, Germany, and some parts of Italy. Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Netherlands have ceased to exist. The Black Hole was significantly smaller than the area of devastation; it was mostly the gravitational effects that were destroying the area. Time had also moved differently in the areas near the anomaly. It was too early to notice any significant effects. But at some point people who had to remain in those areas would be younger than those outside, given enough time.

I was on my phone. I came across a reel of someone with a filter that made them look like a plate of spaghetti. The caption said: “Spaghettified (al dente) by the black hole.” I liked it. Then there was a reel of someone using audio from some TV show and acting out quitting their job violently, loudly. “I don’t need this! Don’t need this shit!” They were acting it out, tossing things around and stuff. The caption was: “Me quitting my job knowing the world ends soon.” I liked that, too.

Finally, there was a reel of a guy donning a Guy Fawkes mask while reading a pink bathrobe and holding a candle. Gregorian chant music was playing in the background. The caption was: “Me after reading that the cultist nutjobs who worship the black hole pay their hospital bills as a group.” I liked that, too.

I looked up and everyone was still there, except for the parents. We had made progress with the boxes but half the things still needed to be packed. The sun was going down, so I didn’t think that it was going to be finished that day. I realized I didn’t actually know when they were going. But I knew they weren’t leaving tomorrow. At least, I thought so.

I yawned. Juno noticed and said, “You want some coffee? There’s still some brewed in the kitchen.” I said yes, and she told me to help myself, so I did. When I stepped in there, I saw that my clone and Apollo were already at the table, talking. Whatever they were talking about, they were taking it very seriously, and they were both leaning into one another, as if whispering secrets.

My clone, as if through some supernatural connection we shared, instantly noticed me, even if he was facing the wall. It’s like he felt my presence. He turned his head and looked at me in a way that was totally bereft of expression; it was pure gaze.

A few seconds passed before Apollo looked at me, too. He was a little startled, a little uncomfortable. He managed an uneasy smile, and after I’d taken a few steps, he asked: “You need anything?” He stood up. “Let me help you.”

“Juno said you had coffee,” I said.

“Oh. Yeah. It’s in here.” He moved to the cupboards, but we had already cleared them out, so there was nothing in there.

“We put it here…”

I took a cup from where he had kept them. While doing so, Apollo took water out of the fridge and poured it into the electric kettle and put it on for me. I thanked him. He sat back down at the table. I leaned against the counter looking at them, and they sat there awkwardly, unable to continue because I was there. I stood there until the kettle boiled, and I prepared the coffee and feeling unwelcome I walked off back into the living room.

Now, no one was there except Juno’s mom, who was staring off into the corner. I don’t know where they had gone off to. She noticed my presence and looked at me for barely a second before staring off into space again. I nodded a bit in respect and sat down and placed my cup on the coffee table.

“How are you and your family?” she said, quietly. She wasn’t looking at me.

“We’re good po,” I said.

“They’re not aware? That the end is coming? Surely they watch the news.”

“We’re taking it slower, I guess,” I said.

“Don’t you think we’re doing the right thing, by going away?”

“Yes. I do. It is probably for the best.”

“Christ is coming,” she said. “You know this?”

“I know this.”

“Christ is coming, and all our sins will be judged. And no one is blameless. So, we will suffer. We will suffer first—the most terrible suffering that we have ever endured, or will ever endure. And those who are not strong enough will perish. Not only by their bodies, but eternally. Their souls will be extinguished. Gone. An eternal death. But those who survive will live forever. They will have eternal life as promised.”

I nodded and intermittently sipped my coffee. She didn’t appear nervous or afraid or even proud. She was telling me this for my benefit, it seemed. Her eyes looked weary; it looked as though they were coated in tears, though she did not look as if she wanted to cry. If anything, she seemed determined. Ready to do whatever she needed to survive. As if everyone else were fools, and she was the only one who knew the truth, instead of the opposite, which was what I had assumed all that time.

“Do you want eternal life?” she said. “Do you want to live forever?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m not sure anything is so interesting that I should have it forever.”

She stared at me like I spoke a different language but was trying to make sense of it anyway.

“You are one of Juno’s best friends,” she said. “She talks about you sometimes. Remember that. Lead her towards the light, if you can. Do you believe in God?”

I thought about this. But eventually I said: “It’s complicated.”

“Is it complicated?”

“Yes, ma’am. It is.”

“Repent,” she said. “And I will see you in heaven.”

“See you there.”

She stood up and left. She went into the hallway that led to the bedrooms, calling loudly for Juno.

Later, after we’d all went home, and I was in bed about to sleep, I found that I couldn’t drift off, so I scrolled for hours on my phone. Going through every app, realizing that there were dozens now. That there was no end to the things to see, all of them served according to my desires that they had scried from my previous activities. And it worked. Save for my desire for novel things, which was unpredictable even to myself, the algorithm showed me things that interested me.

At the time, it was news and information on the black hole, as well as the various cults and religions and secret societies that were beginning to form around it. People were talking about the end of the world but there was no fear, no urgency. People were selling clothes to die in, containers for things that you do not want to get destroyed when the black hole consumes the earth (to be found by whichever civilization arises next), books for surviving the black hole as a Next Level Organism (NLO). Many people believed all sorts of things about the black hole, too. That it wasn’t real, that it was a very sophisticated ruse that used holograms.

The varied responses fascinated me. When I really thought about it, I realized that there was a good chance we were going to die, although I had hope in the Wall of Light. Humans have survived all sorts of calamities, and this might be towards the very far end in terms of difficulty and peril, but survival seemed by no means impossible. Yet the human experience towards this grim reality was extremely rich; fear was the least of it. I supposed that, in any case, humans have always had knowledge of their death. We all know that, at some point, we will die someday, somehow. Thus, humans learned a long, long time ago to forgo despair when confronted with their eventual death, their mortality.

Most people who were going to die because of the black hole would not die because of it directly. People were being removed from the areas where it had any influence. Instead, the migration crisis and other economic and political effects would cause a collapse of civilization that would then cause the end of the world. Only the few that remain after this would then die as the black hole consumed the Earth. The possibility was remote now, and way more remote than when the black hole first appeared, but it was still there, and many people thought about it. TikTok had hundreds if not thousands of live selling streams hocking “defense material” short of weapons and armor for when the time came.

I thought then seriously about death. About my death. I’ve wondered many times about it, as I know many people. But now it was here. Not where I was, but close by. And everyone knew. It was death itself; destruction itself. The very opposite of life, of existence. The Black Hole. I was not scared. Sometimes, I even wanted to die. Sometimes, I welcomed it. I thought then about my blog. I used to think that, if I were to die, at least I would leave something behind. But if all of this were destroyed, compressed into a single point in space…  

I locked my phone and covered myself with a blanket. And I was finally able to sleep.