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Bill had gone to bed early. For some, going to bed is difficult. They roll, itch, and sigh, unable to fall asleep. But since Bill spent most of his day outside, in the sunshine, with soil in his hands and mud splattering on his skin, he found sleeping easy. Usually there are two things that have the power to keep you awake. One was your brain, which you could tire out with a good story (like this one) or a sudoku puzzle. The other was your body, which gardening sorts out. Also, the stomach can keep you awake, with its constant need for gas-creating, or complaints about what you shoved in your mouth earlier. But mostly it’s the brain and body.

Waking up to the chime of midnight, however, was a much bigger challenge. Bill had to remind himself that it was needed. The end of the world was literally in his hands. It was up to him to note and record everything that would happen in the first three hours of this day. Hopefully, one of the notes will reveal what would be the one thing that could potentially end the last hours of the day, and indeed, life on this planet.

He was precisely where he needed to be, at the exact time he needed to be there. And… as was requested by Dave, he was clean. No mud on his skin. Not yet, anyway. But he was wet, thanks to the drizzle of the night.

12:05 am. Drizzle started.

That was his first record. He hoped he was doing it right. He couldn’t really do it wrong, could he? He started to stroll on the wet cobblestones. The light that shone from the street lamps reflected like a starry night on puddles, making him smile. He had an urge to abandon his mission and instead play in the puddles. But he refrained. The end of the world was a most serious matter, and everybody would smack him in the afterlife if they found out the reason they all died was that he wanted to jump in puddles.

There was a noise from up an alleyway. Bill peered in, but could see nothing in the darkness. He waited patiently. There, glowing eyes blinked at him. A dragon. Well, that was alright. It was only a small one, and it wasn’t that uncommon to see them.

“Hello,” Bill said with a smile and a tap of an imaginary hat. Then he continued his stroll around the looming clock that was counting down. He started to whistle. Which then turned into a song.

Keep a double knot tied tight, boys, wherever you may tread,
For the Toshi’s in the bushes, stealing left socks from your bed!
He’ll never touch the right one, no, the right one’s far too clean,
He wants the soggy left one that you wore through the ravine!

There was a growl, and Bill stopped short. His mouth stayed in a whistling pout as he tried to send all his focus energy to his ears. They were only the drops hitting the puddles. He was about to take another step onto the cobblestone when the growl happened again. It was coming from one of the side streets on his patrol. He still had to check the other segments of his pie. Or pizza. No, it was a clock. He had three clock pie slices to cover.

There it was again. Bill looked down the side road. It wasn’t on his segment. But maybe the segments were made up. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe this was important.

Bill took a step towards the side road. The sun was starting to rise up behind him, and it shone straight down the road, lighting it up perfectly for Bill to see exactly what was causing the growl.

This definitely could be it.

It was a weed. As a gardener, Bill knew exactly what kind of weed. It was the kind of weed you didn’t want to grow in the middle of a town, and it was also the kind of weed that would be able to wipe out the town if not attended to. It wouldn’t wipe out the world. Or maybe it would. Maybe if nobody did anything. Absolutely nothing. Maybe then, it could grow and spread and eventually gobble up life as they know it. It was a long shot. Why would nobody do anything?

It was precisely at that moment that Bill saw why nobody would do anything. A door opened, and a teenager came out. A boy of about seventeen. His mother shouted at him about remembering to bring home his hat. Or bat. Or a carton of milk. He couldn’t hear what she was saying at all.

The boy ran his hand through his hair, which extended beyond his face like an awning. A noise, something like a ‘yeah,’ escaped his mouth as he pulled out a device from his back pocket. Immediately, his fingers curled around it, and his thumbs thumped the screen at tremendous speed. The teenager walked right past the weed.

The weed snarled and yapped. Its sharp fangs gnashed and splattered. Blobs of sticky saliva designed to capture all things and keep them stuck flew all over the place. Its sharp, thorny leaves with spiky fur reached towards the boy. He simply walked past. His ankles brushed the lips of the plant that would, without hesitation, chomp his leg off for lunch.

But the boy did not notice. He was in the scrolling automatic zone. His legs simply walked, without the aid of his eyes. They walked the walk they always walked, on the route they knew, without the eyes. They didn’t need them. They sent a message up to his brain: “We got this.” And so the eyes didn’t bother looking where the body was going. After all, they had done this a million times, but they hadn’t beaten this level on the tablet a million times. This was far more interesting than looking at the water reflecting on the cobblestone, or the sunrise. After all, there would be another sunrise again tomorrow. They could always do it tomorrow.

What they didn’t know, since they had only been on the planet for seventeen years, and the first ten don’t really count, is that every sunset is different. No two are the same. So, yes, in principle, they could see “a” sunrise tomorrow. But it wouldn’t be the one that was today. And yes, they could probably see water on the cobblestones the next time there was water on the cobblestones, but it wouldn’t be every day. And the biggest thing the boy didn’t know was that tomorrow was always in the future. If you always make plans to do things in that space, you’ll never experience them today.

But all these things were things the seventeen-year-old didn’t know. And telling him would be a waste of time. You can’t pass “appreciation.”

Bill, who spent most of his days trying to find the snail that nibbled the leaves, watched as the Aggressive Nibble-Weed, as it was so named, chomped at the air as the boy walked past. Then reverted back to its growling, moody position. He watched in amazement as the boy didn’t notice and wandered off.

If this plant did indeed grow, it could have eaten the boy, and the boy wouldn’t have noticed or made a noise. And as people walked past, it would eat more and more, and grow to eat a larger circumference and so on, and then that would be the end of the world.

He took out his record keeper and wrote down: Carnivorous plant appeared in a crack. High risk of potential death. For everyone.

He then turned. It was time to hand over the reins to Dave, who would no doubt be waiting.

Unknown to Bill, as he walked past the window of the house of Dory and Joe, was that Joe, who had stayed late at work to ensure the Impact Analysis of Unforeseen Variable Fluctuations on Operational Continuity (A formal investigation into someone bumping a table and spilling tea), was complete, was now about to retire to bed. But he was running fifteen minutes later than usual…