Eiros Charmion exited the drab noise filled auditorium and basked in the warm light of the summer sun. The golden orb seemed to be agreeably intent upon concentrating it's considerable warming talents on the smiling face of the distinguished astronomer and, to him, that seemed entirely appropriate. In fact, the Sun was no match for the even warmer glow exuding from his sated ego as he reveled in the memory of his keynote address to the first Annual Armageddon Comet Prevention Society. He was particularly pleased with the way he had overwhelmed them with the thoroughness of his calculations and silenced all dissenters by pointing out how mind bogglingly insignificant they were.
    The professor looked at his watch and shrugged. He knew he should be on his way to meet one of his colleagues for lunch, the only one he considered to be worthy of his valuable time, but he couldn't resist standing on the steps and feeling the warmth of the sun and listening to birds singing - and being rather startled by the enormous comet that was hurtling toward his sun warmed face on a collision course with the Earth in general and his own locale in particular.
    If we could summarize the complex interplay of thought and emotion as his imminent demise made itself apparent, it would be with the phrase: "That's rather odd." The oddness in question was largely caused by the fact that his inner glow inspiring address had been on the subject of the vast improbability of a comet striking the Earth in our pitifully short lifetimes. He may have wished to have had time to revise his meticulous calculations in light of this new glaring fact or perhaps to at least see his wife one last time and tell her again what he really thought of her but these things are speculatory and uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the comet entirely vaporized his body and, taking great care to mix the atoms with the entire area within a radius of fifty miles, spewed them into the upper reaches of the atmosphere to form a rather pretty mushroom cloud. As Professor Charmion had earlier pointed out in his speech, this was precisely the kind of thing that had occurred at the end of the Cretaceous Period and had wiped out the dinosaurs amongst many other life forms leaving only the small rodent-like mammals and assorted insects and other such meek creatures to inherit the Earth and continue the river of life. These things, he had assured his audience, were to be expected from time to time and mass extinctions were, in fact, an important element of the evolution of the river of life on Earth.
    This comet, however, was having none of it! All it knew, if comets can be said to know anything, is that it's own existence was coming to an end and, as far as it was concerned, the river of life could go boil it's head in primordial soup and if ants thought they were about to be promoted to the highest form of life on Earth then it was hard cheese and they could angrily wave their antennae about all they liked as the atmosphere thickened with sun obscuring dust.
    As the formerly dignified professor lost his composure and composition in a mist of atomized matter, he was startled to find himself shot into the now sooty ionosphere, giving him a disturbingly accurate idea of what it must be like to be sprayed out of an aerosol deodorant can only to end up in somebody's armpit. The professor's mind groped in the darkness of this strange new existence for something of his old prestigious self to cling to and remind him of just how important he was. Catching a glimmer of familiarity in a seething sea of electrical impulses, he latched onto one of humanity's last e-mails which happened to be en route to his very own computer. Getting attached to an e-mail as it shot through cyberspace at the speed of light should be excitement enough for anybody at the moment of their death but the Fates seemed to think the opportunity was too good to pass up. As the professor slowly became cognizant of the contents of the e-mail, he was shocked to discover that it was a rather lengthy missive from his wife finally telling him what she really thought of him!
    As the Earth settled into an ice age like no other before, his automated e-mail system downloaded the message to which he was attached, scanned him, decided he was a virus and deleted him.