He posted the thing at 3:17 a.m., from his phone in the back office of the Warminster Tesco — in between stacking bananas and binning the out-of-date hummus.
The thread was posted on Reddit in r/conspiracy. The title: “Crop Circle near Upton Scudamore: 3I/Atlas connection???”.
A nothing title, a midnight doodle.
By breakfast it had 2,000 upvotes.
By tea-time, forty thousand.
By midnight, it was a meme.
The internet took it like a communion wafer — thin, flavourless, instantly dissolved into meaning.
There were charts. Simulations. A man on TikTok explaining planetary ratios in the voice of a priest performing last rites. Someone slowed Simon’s drone footage and added that funereal music you get in UFO documentaries from the ’90s.
And yet — the ratios held. The damned numbers matched. From Earth as one: Mars 0.53, Venus 0.95, Jupiter 10.97. It was almost too good.
And that was what made it viral. Because everything viral has to sit on the knife-edge between obviously bollocks and just maybe.
He watched his own discovery proliferate like mould on warm bread. “The Warminster Witness,” one YouTube channel called him. It had a kind of ring to it, didn’t it? Something biblical, something doomed.
Two days later, a BBC South West van appeared in the car park at the end of his shift. They wanted to film him at work, the poor sod — the prophet among the punnets. He stood by the trolley bay while the reporter, all gloss and grin, asked her question.
“Simon, crop circles aren’t exactly new around here. But your theory — the link to comet 3I/Atlas — that’s got the internet buzzing. What’s different about this one?”
He gave her the talk. The numbers, the orbits, the ratios. “It’s a message,” he said, quietly, as if addressing the air itself. A warning, perhaps. Atlas isn’t due to pass anywhere near Earth — unless it changes course. And these circles—these are in scale. They know something.”
The segment ran six and a half minutes.
When Simon watched it on YouTube later, he saw a man who looked both older and newer than himself. A man selected by history for a particular kind of attention.
Comments poured in: finally someone with brains, Warminster’s Galileo, don’t laugh, he’s onto something.
The other half laughed anyway.
At Tesco next morning, Kev from produce clapped him on the shoulder. “Fair play, mate. Always thought you were a bit of a space cadet, but that was a proper interview. You looked sharp.”
Simon smiled, half-gracious. “Yeah, it’s gone global. Fortean Times DM'd me on X - asking for some quotes for their next edition. Couple of American stations want the interview footage. It’s all… really happening.”
Kev grinned. “Big time, mate. Astronomical.”
Simon gave a small, strange laugh — thin as static. The kind that lingers in the air long after the speaker’s walked away.