A terminal prognosis affects people in different ways—focusing attention, providing perspective, stoking regret, fueling panic, delivering composure, inspiring epiphany. I anticipated that my own reaction would lie somewhere among these. But the prospect that earth and all of humankind would be wiped out triggered a different kind of reaction. The news would make everything seem rather pointless. Whereas my own impending end would heighten intensity, endowing with significance moments that might have otherwise receded into the daily humdrum, contemplating the end of the entire species seemed
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