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With all apologies to Mr. Vonnegut.
So it goes.

       No one knows that it was a coincidence that Adam caused the apocalypse a year before the world ended in 2008, and that’s because everyone’s dead now.  That’s part of the world ending.  Here’s how it happened.
In 2007, Adam heard about Kurt Vonnegut’s death on a Sunday News program.  In about two minutes, the program had neatly and concisely summed up the writer’s life and the details of his death, then cut to commercial.  Adam had never read any of Vonnegut’s books or even heard of him before, but he was intrigued.
       The next day, Adam went down to the library and checked out two of Vonnegut’s more famous books, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five.  He started with Slaughterhouse-Five, and read it from time to time on the subway over the next few weeks, then lost interest as he became confused with the plot.
       He eventually forgot about the books altogether.  If he had remembered, he wouldn’t have been surprised, when, six months later, he received a bill for thirty-two dollars from the library, stating that unless he could produce the books, a collection agency would be dispatched to collect his late fee.  Adam paid the bill, even though he knew roughly where the books were in his house.  He decided that he did want to read them, eventually, and if he paid the bill he could keep them to read at his leisure.
       If he had actually opened the copy of Cat’s Cradle, he might not have been so confused when a tall woman in a dark blue business suit knocked on his door some time later and offered him a suitcase containing a large amount of money.  She was a severe looking woman with blonde hair that fell like blinders to either side of her face.  With heels she was six feet, four inches high.  Her gaze cemented him to the floor in the doorway.
       “Please just sign here, sir, and everything will be in order.  The money will be yours, no strings attached, and I will take the book.”
       “Wait, what’s going on?”
       “The book you purchased from the library, um…” She paused as she checked a list on a clipboard. “Yes, Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. The Library of Congress is interested in purchasing your copy.”
       “What would they want with my copy?  Aren’t there other copies? I mean, I was going to read that!”
       “Sir, I have been authorized to offer you thirty million dollars for your book.  I’m sure you can buy a new copy.” She gave him a tired, frustrated smile.
       Adam eagerly signed the waivers and authorization forms, then set about rummaging through boxes of junk to find the wayward book.  He found it on a shelf among other old paperbacks that he’d collected and forgotten about, including a copy of 1984, which he resolved to read as soon as he found the time.
       “On behalf of the Library of Congress, sir, I thank you for your cooperation.”  She turned and left with the small paperback in her jacket pocket, and the sound of her clicking heels echoed sharply down the hallway.
       The woman did not tell Adam the reason for the Library’s interest in his book because she had not been instructed to, nor had she been told the reason herself.  The previous owner of the book, a Dr. Elmo Saltz of Roanoke, Virginia had left notes in the margins of Adam’s book.  Dr. Saltz was a highly respected physics professor, though few outside the academic world recognized his name.  He had retired after thirty years of teaching at Cornell University, and died some years later in the year 2000.  In 2003, his widow, Allison Saltz, donated his collected journals to the Library of Congress, thinking that she could see to it that her husband’s work would go to use after his death.  She also donated his books to local book drive.

       Allison never noticed that her husband had grown bored in his retirement.  Without the students and the immersion in learning, Dr. Saltz began to fear that his mind was slipping.  To keep himself sharp, he read science fiction books and tried to determine whether or not the marvels written there were indeed possible, if only on a theoretical level.  While analyzing Cat’s Cradle, Dr. Saltz discovered that the apocalyptic water isomer Ice-Nine that Vonnegut imagined was indeed possible to fabricate, just as Vonnegut’s character Felix Hoenikker had. He had written his notes and formulas in the margin of the book, and only mentioned his findings briefly in his journal that night.  Then he kissed his wife Allison goodnight and made her promise that in the event of his death, his work would only be used for good.

       If Adam had read the documents he signed that afternoon, he could have checked a box on form 67-K, allowing him to restrict access to the text.  If he had, the issue would have gotten lost in red tape, and the world probably wouldn’t have ended for another thirty years.  But who reads fine print when presented with thirty million dollars?

       In 2004, military scientists had been hard at work for nearly two years designing more efficient means of transportation in desert battlefields as war raged in the Middle East.  The problem was sand; a logistical nightmare.  It was everywhere in the desert, choking engines and burying jeeps.  Soft sand slowed foot travel too.  Generals complained that it was bad enough they had to fight the enemy, but fighting the sand was too much.  “Get rid of the sand,” they said, “and we’ll win this war.”
       In time, researchers stumbled upon Dr. Saltz’s journals, and a few scientists that had the time for light reading understood his references to the Vonnegut novel.  None of them had read Cat’s Cradle to the end, but they knew that he had talked about getting rid of mud in the book, so perhaps there was something to it.  They told their superiors, who told their superiors, and in 2007 someone in an office somewhere signed a form and approved a budget of thirty million dollars for the acquisition of Dr. Elmo Saltz’s annotated copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, for the purposes of military research.  The next day, a severe woman in a dark blue suit was dispatched to collect the book, carrying with her a briefcase containing thirty million dollars.

       After Cat’s Cradle, Dr. Saltz read a book involving floating cars traveling over vast alien deserts, which he determined to also be feasible, and he mentioned this on the next page of his journal, right after Ice-Nine.  Unfortunately, the scientists didn’t bother to keep reading.

       The rest is history, really.  Or it would be history, if there were such a thing anymore.  Part of the world ending.  In 2008, with the Presidential election looming on the horizon like the glow of an atomic explosion, Congress approved the new military grade synthetic firming substance known as Saltz Compound for field testing.  Lab tests showed that this substance would turn loose sand into a solid mass, making travel across the desert infinitely easier.  For the first field tests, conducted in the vast desert of Nevada, a Jeep outfitted with tanks of the stuff set to spray ahead of it sat at the front of a column of army vehicles.  Assembled in the crowd of military personnel were several of the scientists involved in spearheading the Saltz Compound project.  The success of their project would definitely get them a big raise, and probably a promotion.

       At the same time, Adam was lounging in his new home, a massive Tudor hall in Nantucket that he had bought that year.  He had quit his job, having suddenly become financially secure, and he finally had the time to read.  He was about halfway through 1984, but still had yet to read Cat’s Cradle.

       Allison Saltz had heard on the radio that the government had unveiled its newest technology to fight the war on terror.  She perked up when she heard that the findings of the acclaimed physicist, the late Dr. Elmo Saltz, had been essential to this breakthrough.  She was so proud that she had kept her promise to her husband.  She invited all her friends over to watch the field tests on the cable news channel.

The Jeep at the head of the column slowly started forward, its tires slipping in the soft, loose sand.  It turned on the sprayers, then jerked to a stop.  The driver looked around helplessly as he revved the engine.  Soon cries of panic started to rise from the crowd as people realized that the sand had hardened around their feet, cementing them in place.
Calls poured in from across the world from people who had suddenly become stuck in the beach and from farmers who had broken their tractors trying to plow their fields.  In a few months, there wasn’t a living plant on the planet since they couldn’t absorb any of the solid water from the solid soil, and in a few months more livestock were also casualties of Saltz Compound.
       By that time, Adam had finished reading 1984 and was thinking about starting on his brand new copy of Cat’s Cradle.

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