Chapter 2 of 25 · 4'09"
It looks like a routine late-night call between scientists: a grad student and her professor reporting a comet to a NASA official. But the numbers are impossible to explain away — "an extinction-level event?" — and the response is a brush-off: "Well, let's not be dramatic here." The real subject is how quickly bad news gets managed.
❝ Monologue · 7 lines Mindy's nervous self-intro
His stammering introduction shows a scientist dragged into a spotlight he never wanted.
They Ask If It's an Extinction-Level Event
Late at night, grad student Kate Dibiasky and her professor, Dr. Mindy, pull two officials into a call: Dr. Calder at Kennedy Space Center and Dr. Oglethorpe, who runs planetary defense. They report a newly found comet five to ten kilometers wide, on a course straight for Earth. One of them asks whether it is an extinction-level event.
On the surface this is a scientific briefing: size, trajectory, who saw it first. Underneath, it is the first lesson in how the world will handle the news. The machine that should be alarmed reacts by slowing everything down — "First move is to get the school field trip out here to DC," and then, when the word "extinction" comes up, "Well, let's not be dramatic here." The gap between the data and the response is the whole film in miniature. By the end, sharing the data is overruled — "This is classified information" — and the scientists are told they serve "at the discretion of the president." Mindy keeps asking the wrong people whether this is real: "This is just some sort of alternate reality, right?"
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“You pulled me out of a meeting where I had to tell my team we lost eight billion in funding.”
A single complaint sets up both her rank and her bad day with one unforgettable number.
Informal
“I haven't published in a while so you probably haven't heard of me.”
Self-deprecation lets him admit obscurity without ever sounding sorry for himself.
Neutral
“Well, let's not be dramatic here.”
Said right after extinction-level event, the calm downplay lands as both control and denial.
Informal
“I serve at the discretion of the president.”
Bureaucratic phrasing hides a personal choice behind the president's authority.
Formal
“This is just some sort of alternate reality, right?”
Naming it alternate reality is how a mind refuses to accept what is plainly happening.
Informal
Hi, yes. Uh, Dr. Mindy. And-- And no, PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky found it. I did the orbital calculations. I, uh… I study trace gasses in dead galaxies. I haven't published in a while so you probably haven't heard of me. But anyway, that doesn't matter. Sorry. What was your question?
Up next · 03skirt around somethingThe scene: Kate and Mindy Wait Seven HoursIt is five to ten kilometers wide. An object that size hitting Earth would be an extinction-level event, which is the question one of the scientists asks on the call before being told not to be dramatic.
He is head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, the office the others joke about not believing is real. He is the one who decides the scientists should be brought to Washington.
The moment the scientists move to share the findings with outside institutions, they are told it is classified information. The decision is political: Calder says she serves at the discretion of the president.
It is her reaction to the scale of the news. Once the call is over and the scale of the threat sinks in, she doesn't process it with calm — she says she has to go get high.
