At Swatchity, we try to foster a nurturing workplace. We like to encourage our people to pursue their interests, so when some of our Swatchers took up an interest in astronomy a few months ago, our leader Mitch happily bought a used telescope off of eBay and installed it on the roof of our flagship Color Center.

Being situated in bustling downtown Berwin, we have to battle with a fair amount of light pollution, but in spite of this we think we have managed to witness some truly spectacular views of the stars, planets, and galaxies in our celestial neighborhood. I say we "think" we saw these things because you can never be too sure. With a tiny 4" mirror, it's difficult to see anything clearly. That could be Jupiter or it could be dust in the optics.

Two nights ago, though, we saw something that was unmistakable. This was no dust mote or scratch. There can be no doubt about that. Through our second-hand observatory, we witnessed an object of incredible brightness and clarity racing across the sky. More remarkably, we could see flares or sparks of every conceivable Color shooting out the back. It was a comet, but not like any comet seen by human eyes before. The next night we saw it again, and it was bigger now an appeared to be moving faster.

The comet is coming.

We immediately reached out to the science department of a local community college. Unsurprisingly, the person we spoke with (we didn't get the name so we will refer to him as "Professor Funkiller") tried to pour cold water on our excitement by telling us that the comet we described had already been discovered by pioneering astronomer Caroline Hershel almost 250 years ago. Funkiller went on to say that the rainbow we saw was probably just "chromatic aberrations" resulting from a poor quality mirror.

First of all, that's impossible because the eBay user who sold us the telescope had very high feedback ratings. So, what right does he have to cast aspersions on our observational setup? For all we know, Funkiller is the one who sold us the telescope in the first place, and this is all a scam to get us to buy a bigger, more expensive version, part of the astronomy catchfishing scams everyone has been talking about. Regardless, we realized that the conversation was a waste of precious time so we hung up on him mid-sentence.

We may not know much about the rainbow comet, we know it is real and that it is coming. Is it a completely meaningless byproduct of orbital mechanics or does it mean something? It could just fly right past us, which would be awe-inspiring in and of itself, but what if something more substantial occurred. What if, and I'm just spit-balling here, what if the comet is the harbinger of a new era of human consciousness just like it says in our Book of Colors? I'm not saying that's what this is, but wouldn't it be amazing if it was? Hypothetically, I mean.

That would be amazing, but are we ready for something like that? For example, if a species of highly intelligent aliens were riding the comet like a celestial surfboard and wanted us to come visit with them because we're cool and we "get it," are we truly prepared for that? Not that it's going to happen- because it isn't. But what if it did? Say, just in case we meet the aliens in a few days when the comet arrives, do I have the right pants? And if so, are they clean? These are important questions that need immediate answers.

The comet is coming.