EXCERPT
Vance Harrison didn’t get to go to the Moon. Sure, he’d gotten as close as 20 kilometers off the surface during descent orbit insertion – a hell of a lot closer than most people got. Still a world away from actually putting his boots in the dust down there. When they got back home, the other two guys would be the heroes. The ironic part was, the moon mission was actually a smoke screen this time. Congress hadn’t funded Apollo 18 for another box of moon rocks.
“Houston, this is Sentinel, coming up on Watchdog separation. Would love a double check on my telemetry, over.” Harrison listened for the response, but only static greeted him. Damn.
He checked out the rendezvous window, and saw what he was expecting. Sunlight sliced the Earth into a crescent, blue oceans glistening against the dull green of the North American Continent. But even the dark side of the planet was awash in eerie spectral light. Visible bands of aurora borealis and Australis engulfed the blue planet, a coruscating halo of electromagnetic energy one hundred times more powerful than anything in recorded history. The flares were occurring more frequently, lasting longer, to the point where soon the shroud of electromagnetic disturbance would cover the planet twenty four seven.
These massive flares did more than wrecking compasses and add static to phone calls. Powerlines lit on fire, planes fell from the sky. Last week, Harrison’s aunt’s house had burned down when her toaster, her vacuum cleaner, and her drier had simultaneously exploded.
This latest flare up had probably shorted communications again down in Texas, leaving Harrison to fly solo.
He let out a breath and checked the computer. Twenty eight minutes to separation. This whole mission would be worthless if he didn’t deploy the Watchdog satellite. He could do it on his own, but if anything went wrong he needed NASA there to help him troubleshoot. He didn’t want to be responsible for blowing a billion dollars of tax payer’s money. Not to mention how critical it was for Watchdog to scientists understand what the magnetosphere was doing. Putting the satellite in high-earth orbit was the only way to ensure it wouldn’t itself be disabled by the incredible disturbances.
A new flurry of azure streaks arched up into space from the northern pole, like a spray of slow moving fireworks. Harrison whistled as he pulled out the medium format Hassleblad camera. Pressing the lens up to the command module window wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing. The cameras mounted on the outside of Sentinel could take better images, but they were on remote timers and might not catch the most spectacular flares.
He popped open the top-down viewfinder on the camera and framed Earth in the lens. The 105 mm lens was too wide, earth appeared like a marble in the center of the frame.
Harrison glided over and retrieved the 500 mm. One perk to drawing the short straw: the command module certainly felt more spacious when there weren’t two other astronauts around. The whole cockpit felt smaller than the trunk of Harrison’s Mercury back home.
He screwed the telephoto lens in place and framed Earth again. Now the dramatic sweep of continents and oceans filled the viewfinder, clouds casting long shadows against the raking sunlight. The darkened continents basked in blue and green light from the aurora, almost as if some celestial pool cast its changing reflection upon the world. He snapped a picture. The electric motors in the camera advanced the film, finishing with a click.
“Sentinel this is Houston.”
Harrison jumped. He pulled on his headset and clicked on VOX. “Go Houston. Glad to hear your voice”
“Harrison, we’re on our third redundancy down here – another flare and we’re looking at a five hour black out before we can get running again. Wanted to confirm the numbers for Watchdog before separation.”
“That’s affirm,” Harrison replied. Another wave of electromagnetic pyrotechnics erupted from Earth’s poles. Each streak of color spanned thousands of kilometers. “Looks like Santa Claus celebrating Fourth of July, Houston. Get ready for another flare.”
“Roger that, Sentinel.”
Harrison opened his mouth to crack another joke, but he choked it down when something changed on the surface. A filament of gold ran down from the light side of the planet into the shadow. At first he thought it merely a strange variation of the aurora, but then he noticed how the light was shadowed by storm systems. It was on the surface, beneath the clouds. And it was growing fast.
He focused the lens of the camera, scanning over to the eastern seaboard of the United States. The line of yellow light expanded across the Atlantic. Jets of haze built up around the light, blurring it. Harrison hastily snapped a picture, and the motors advanced the film.
“Houston, I’m seeing something strange up here. Looks like… some kind of light down on the surface.”
Harrison waited for a reply.
“Houston, do you copy?”
The line of golden light spread, and oceans erupted along its path. Now it looked like a 10,000 mile long volcano, spewing pyroclastic clouds into the atmosphere.
“Damn!” He gasped. “Shit!” He clicked back on VOX. “Houston, seeing some serious activity up here. Please respond.”
The Auroral lights surged brighter, and an explosion of colorful plasma lashed out into space. Harrison felt the command module shudder ever so slightly. Then every light, instrument, and system onboard went dead.
Terrifying silence. No instrumentation. No air filtration.
Harrison flipped the VOX several times, stupidly. Completely dead.
They’d known this would be a risk, an EMP resulting in total system loss. They had some contingencies in place, but the procedures they’d ran had involved having three able bodied astronauts to replace damaged components. The clock was ticking for his breathable air. This was worst case scenario, to lose all instrumentation occur now, during the lunar surface mission. When he was alone.
Glancing out the window again, Harrison saw golden lines running across the entire planet. He suddenly recognized the vague, jagged outlines of tectonic plates, the planet sectioned off like a jigsaw puzzle.
Then Earth shattered.
The glossy surface of the ocean instantly became a mist of white. Continents heaved into space, trailing hazy atmosphere behind. It was like watching a slow motion movie of a vase smashed against a sheet of black velvet. As the crust came apart, the exposed core burned crimson gold, fountaining vast columns of liquid rock out into the void.
Harrison felt his whole body convulse with physical shock. He gripped the handles on the rendezvous door as if to keep from spinning off into space. Then he threw up against the glass. His vision swam. His heart pounded like a drumroll in his ears.
He wiped globules of bile off his face, then tried to scrub them off the window. Without gravity to draw it down, the vomit proved difficult to remove. All the while, Harrison had to remind himself to breathe, to remain calm. Sure, he was probably screwed. Sure, he had probably just witnessed the death of every living being on Earth. It wasn’t the time to panic.
Well, maybe it was. His parents, his friends. Everyone.
Through the smudged glass he could see the scattering wreckage of continents, like bits of eggshell. They hovered in a cloud around the burning furnace of magma beneath, as if floating on a thick bed of atmosphere, as impossible as that sounded. The fires beneath surged in apocalyptic fury. Much of the detail was lost as dust, steam, and pyroclastic clouds fountained up from the unveiled belly of the earth. Swirling storms surged between the jettisoned chunks of continents, igniting vibrant lightning storms that sparkled amidst the cataclysm.
Harrison lifted the camera with shaking hands, snapping another picture. This ought to be documented. But who the hell would develop the pictures?
The shutter flipped, but the camera sat dead. Damn. The electric motor had stopped working, of course.
The broken segments of continents floated like an aura around the shattered planet, forming a macabre mockery of its once circular silhouette. Harrison couldn’t understand why all the pieces didn’t plummet back down into the core. Perhaps they’d been blasted into low orbit, only they didn’t seem high enough for orbit. A good chunk of North America actually seemed intact, shadowing a seething ocean of lava. The outline of Lake Erie was perfectly recognizable, a strange paper cut out from an atlas. The other great lakes, appeared changed, smaller. The coastline of Atlantic Ocean was almost unrecognizable. The ocean was draining away.
Massive rivers snaked their way through the old sea bed, cascading down to vaporize against the magma. Portions of the core blackened as millions of cubic miles of water rushed over the glowing surface. Then the dark basalt broke again as more upheavals from beneath forced magma back to the surface, evaporating the water in violent blasts of explosive steam.
In less than an hour, all the oceans had all been reduced to vapor, shrouding the glowing core of the planet in a thick blanket of churning white and gray. It started to resemble a miniature version of Jupiter, with its swirling strata of multicolored clouds.
And yet, that one chunk of the Midwest continued to hover there, relatively undisturbed. And there were other continental fragments still floating miles above the strata, backlit by that ominous orange glow shining through the turbulence. He thought he saw a portion of California, and something that looked like the northern half of Brazil, judging the coastlines by the green expanse of forest and jungle. The cast of shells of land seemed inexplicably intact, despite the fact that they had been hurled into space. How was that possible? It was surreal, seeing them float above the turbulent storms, as peaceful as leaves on the surface of a lake. The haze of blue around the reformed planet extended further than it had before, as if its atmosphere had just quadrupled in volume.
Had anyone down there survived? His parents back in Iowa - his girlfriend in Florida? The thought of them seized his heart, twisted his guts once more. All dead. Probably. Every one he’d ever known, probably dead.
He had no way of communicating with his fellow astronauts down on the moon. No way to coordinate for pick up. They would die alone. Who was he kidding, he was going to die alone. Truly alone, in this tin can out in the middle of nothing.
Strange how the coast of Lake Erie looked unchanged. He studied it in the viewfinder, in all of its familiar curves. Surely that meant that the surface hadn’t been utterly demolished.
Lake Erie. More like an inland sea. There were no oceans for a splash down landing, but a lake would do in a pinch. Only he’d have to adjust his orbit significantly to end up landing in the Midwest instead of the south pacific. And if he got the maneuver wrong, he’d either burn up in the atmosphere or miss the continent completely to splash down in magma instead. Frying pan or fire. Plus he’d have to do all the calculations without NASA and the navigation computer. Too bad they’d never thought to run this particular scenario in the simulator.
Harrison took a breath, and set his jaw. Then he grabbed a clipboard and started running the numbers. He was an Apollo astronaut, God damn it. He just needed a reference point for telemetry, and the rest was just Newtonian physics. Sure. With a margin of error so thin you could shave with it.
Harrison drew a shaky circle on the paper, and traced his orbit. Had to start somewhere. If there were survivors down there, he’d make it back to them. His photos might help them understand what happened to Earth. He had to make it back.
Only thing in his way was some calculus. If his high school math teacher, Mr. Plank, only knew. Maybe Vance would have paid more attention.
Head injuries tended to bleed. A lot.
This one wasn’t so bad; at least Jaidyn didn’t think she’d come close to a concussion. The big quadwalker’s drunken, rolling movement made it difficult to separate her own dizziness from the undulation of the vehicle.
“Holy shit, are you okay?” Someone with green hair offered a hand.
Jaidyn refused the gesture. She probably wasn’t stable enough to stand. She tried to wipe the blood from her eyes, but the stuff kept flowing from somewhere above her brow. Little flecks of color danced across her vision, and a formless blob obscured most of her left eye. That probably had nothing to do with banging her head. Where was her cane?
Jaidyn looked about, blinking through the blood and the rain that swept in through the open doors of the quadwalker. She grabbed her cane with shaking hands before it tumbled off the platform to the street, and clutched the polished shaft to her chest like a lifeline. Her purse was nearby too, some of its contents spilled but nothing stolen. The precious parcel bundled in butcher paper still lay on top of her various junk and prescriptions. Good.
“Hey someone tell the driver to go to the hospital!” Green hair called.
“No!” Jaidyn cried. “No, don’t bother. I’m fine. Fall all the time.”
Green hair looked back, either skeptical or angry, Jaidyn’s vision was too blurry to tell for certain.
“We should get you to Henry Ford,” A blond guy with a tragically hawkish nose knelt down beside her. “You should see a doctor.”
“I am a doctor.” Jaidyn found a tissue and began to sop away blood from her face. “Seriously, I’m fine. What street are we on?”
“Just passed Meter Street.” Green hair said.
“Damn. That’s my stop.” Jaidyn pushed up to her feet, cane propped against the rolling motion of the quadwalker. She waved through to the driver, and the massive contraption lurched to a stop.
Hook nose and green hair both reached out as Jaidyn’s balance wavered a second time. Impaired judgment. Sign of concussion. Damn.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Jaidyn brushed them off, and stepped off the quadwalker platform to the uneven sidewalk. Rain hammered her, but her gym clothes were already soaked.
“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Green hair asked.
“This is just another Tuesday,” Jaidyn said. Wait. Was it Wednesday?
The quadwalker’s hydraulics hissed as the platform lifted back up and the contraption continued its steady tromp down Linwood Road. Smaller two seat walkers darted around the lumbering machine, kicking up big splashes of water in the pocked and broken avenue.
Jaidyn took it slow, shuffling along as she planted her cane firmly with each step. This wasn’t another flare up. She’d just taken a fall. Anyone could have fallen on that damned quadwalker, the forward driver leg had serious alignment issues. IF it hadn’t been rush hour she could have probably gotten a seat, and avoided the whole fiasco.
People gave her strange looks as she shuffled past. They were probably having a hard time understanding why a 20-something-year-old needed a cane. Oh. Or the blood. Yeah, they were probably starting at the blood. That was a bit more unusual, even for her.
Her alley had become a miniature version of Lake Erie. She doubted the roads here had ever been fixed since the Shattering, so every pot hole eventually grew to epic proportions. Especially in this rain, which had been going for nearly two months straight. God help them if it didn’t let up.
Jaidyn paused outside her door. The letter might be waiting for her inside. No, she shouldn’t look right away. Had to check herself for a concussion. Ought to eat something.
Her cat Maria started meowing from beyond the door. Jaidyn took a breath and entered.
The cat purred while she snaked between Jaidyn’s legs, heedless of the wet. Jaidyn tried not to trip over the affection and pushed through to the kitchen counter.
“Alright, Maria, I’ve got a treat for you tonight,” Jaidyn said as she pulled out the tiny paper parcel. “Norther Hogsucker. I kid you not, that’s its name.” Jaidyn removed the fish and waggled it in front of her cat. The cat swatted at the fish, whiskers twitching.
Jaidyn cast a glance over at the pneumatic tube. A rolled copy of the paper. And a letter.
It felt as if someone reached in and closed an icy hand around hear heart. Jaidyn drew a knife and began cleaning the fish, and deposited the guts on a small plate for Maria.
She lowered it down to the floor, resisting the urge to pet her cat as she ate. Maria always got growly if you tried to pet her while she was eating. The cat’s ribs had started to show through her gray fur – but the cat wasn’t the only one going hungry in Detroit these days. With the cost of food skyrocketing, Jaidyn could barely afford to feed herself. When she started needing to eat the guts herself – well – hopefully it would never come to that.
Jaidyn looked for a pot, then realized that all of them had been employed throughout the apartment. Everything capable of catching water had been positioned under the numerous leaks the roof had to offer. Several vessels had overflowed their bounds and soaked the floor. Heavy rain combined with a twelve hour shift.
She found a pot, and dumped the murky rain water before filling it again from the sink. The rest of the fish and a handful of mushrooms went in. Next she pulled out her small vial of everheat, and dropped a single bead into the water. In a couple moments the pot came to a feeble simmer. Damn, her everheat was getting depleted. Just like everything else in her life. She put in another few drops until the water hit a full boil. Pretty boring soup. Peter would complain that…
Jaidyn slammed the lid on the pot and walked into the living area. She stripped off her sodden clothes, then turned up the gas light so she could get a better view of herself in the mirror. No other bruises or scrapes from her fall, that she could see at least. So the only real loss was her blood stained gym clothes. Not that she’d be needing those anymore, since she’d been kicked out of her kickboxing class. Ha ha.
Her forehead looked a little bruised once she’d wiped away the blood. Something had nicked to top of her forehead, probably a bolt on the railing. A quick check on her pupils showed proper dilation. Good, no concussion then. At least not a full concussion.
Jaidyn grabbed a sweater, one she hung against the chimney. The wool was warm and felt amazing.
Dry, and with nothing to do but wait for the soup to simmer, Jaidyn turned to the pneumatic tube. She removed its contents and spread them out over the rickety dining table.
Unfortunately, the cushion on her usual chair had gotten soaked, so Jaidyn reluctantly unlocked her wheelchair and pushed it over. The cursed thing was still new. She ignored the lump under the cushion.
The daily pneumatic tube included a flier from the Society of Visitors, proclaiming the Return of the Cincinnati Sixteen, heralding a new chapter in the alien’s quest for blah blah blah. Fanatical nutjobs. It was understandable how both the Shattering and the arrival of new planets in the solar system might spawn a new religion or two. But even so, the society’s ideas just sounded wacky, assigning farfetched explanations to what had obviously been a roll of the cosmic dice. She wadded the print and chucked it.
A copy of the Detroit Free Press. The front page showed one of President Harrison’s iconic photos of the Earth’s shattering, with the headline: “40th anniversary of President Harrison’s successful landing in Lake Erie”. At least there was something to celebrate.
Below that lay a picture of Kyle Ransom leading a group of shadowed figures towards an armored quadwalker. It read, “Ransom roots out another nest of changed Deviants.” Jaidyn held the image up to catch more light. Gasper morphology, by the look. She wondered if she’d be seeing any of the less fortunate Deviants in her morgue tomorrow. Where Ransom trod, Deviants died. And Jaidyn autopsied.
Jaidyn realized what she was doing. She was putting it off.
She took a steadying breath, set aside the newspaper, and stared at the letter.
The Center for Neurological Disorders, Indianapolis. Damn. This was it.
She ripped the letter open with shaking hands. She flattened the trifold onto the table and scanned the words. The patter of water into various cups and bowls made a dissonant chorus in the background, punctuated by the grinding rolls of thunder.
The paper crunched as Jaidyn’s fingers tightened. Her head dropped as her whole body started shaking.
Jaidyn stood and hurled the thing across the room, letting out an animal scream of rage. It boiled up from deep within, ripping vocal cords as she bellowed. The sound echoed down the alleyway.
A knock came at the door. Jaidyn hesitated. Had they heard her scream? A worried neighbor, perhaps?
Jaidyn wiped at her eyes and made her way to the door.
Pulling aside the curtain she saw a man in a hood standing out in the rain. A flash of lightning silhouetted his paunchy, five-foot something physique.
She cracked the door and stared at him. “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.”
“Not selling anything,” he said with a low and mucusy voice, like he had one hell of a cold. “And what I’m offering can’t be bought.”
“God, you’re not one of those Society of Visitors missionaries, are you?” He certainly wasn’t wearing their typical gray-robed uniform. “Not interested.” She shut the door.
He spoke loud enough to be heard through the door. “Someone in your position ought to listen to what I have to say.”
Jaidyn felt like ignoring him, but something niggled her curiosity.
“What position is that, exactly?” she said.
“Alone. Slowly dying from Multiple Sclerosis.”
Jaidyn’s heart kicked up a few beats per minute. She pushed the door back open. “How do you know that?”
“I come offering a unique opportunity, a chance to turn your life around. May I come in?” She could barely see his eyes in the shadow of his hood. He certainly didn’t seem any kind of physical threat. Unless he had a gun in his pocket, of course. The creep factor was pretty high. How had he known about her MS?
Jaidyn slowly released a breath and pushed the door wider.
“Two minutes. What the hell.” Jaidyn kept her eyes on him as she stepped back and he entered.
“Mind if we sit?” he asked, indicating the table.
“Yes,” Jaidyn said as she shut the door. “Two minutes. Tick tock.”
“As you wish. Those I represent would like to employ your services. In return, we are willing to provide a cure for your MS.”
Jaidyn let out a snort. Not what she’d expected. “Seriously? Just, like that? Cure MS? You’ve got this cure, right now, do you?”
The man shrugged. “Not yet. But we could develop one in a matter of weeks, given your cooperation.”
The blackness of Jaidyn’s mood kept her from laughing outright. “Okay. I get it. You think I’m some desperate mark you can con out of her inheritance, for some experimental therapy. If you seriously think I’m worth your time, take a look around.” She gestured to the row of cups and pots laid out to collect dripping rainwater. “Read the fucking room. God, people like you make me sick.”
The man reached up and pulled his hood back. What Jaidyn had assumed was hair was actually skull – the man’s head was swollen behind his ears, adding another 30% to its volume. A changed Deviant. Craniac.
Damn.
Jaidyn glanced over to where the wheelchair sat, and the pistol under its pillow. Could she get to it in time? Or would pulling the thing only make matters worse? “Get out,” she whispered. She slowly started to circle away from him, across the table, closer to her gun.
“I’ll say again, I’m not here for your money. And I’m telling you the truth about a cure. Consider this. If we have the ability to rewrite human biology on the most fundamental level, what’s to stop us from curing a disease such as yours?”
“You’re telling me…you’re telling me that you caused these mutations? That sounds like Society bullshit.”
“I don’t represent the Society of Visitors,” he repeated. “And I’m not going to hurt you, I want to help you. You can leave the gun where it is.”
Jaidyn jolted. Her hand was halfway down to retrieve the weapon, but it froze in place. “I know what your kind does to people,” Jaidyn said. “I see it every day.”
“You see what Kyle Ransom wants you to see.” A touch of iron entered the man’s voice. “And I have to say, that man’s view point is a bit skewed.”
Jaidyn’s mind spun over the possibilities. She couldn’t determine if this man was for real, couldn’t determine what he could gain by deceiving her. But if the reports on Craniacs were correct, she was in incredible danger. She’d never seen one before, they were the rarest morphology. She could shoot him, but she’d have to hit him in all three of his hearts to truly stop him. Supposedly, even his brain could take a couple hits.
Deviant or not, she didn’t want to have to kill him. That wasn’t who she was. She saved people, she didn’t gun them down.
Could he be telling the truth? She resisted the thought. He was wrapping lies around the promise of a cure, so she’d swallow it all whole. What did he really want?
“If I can’t appeal to your own sense of self preservation,” he said, “Perhaps I can appeal to your sense of community. This world is dying. How many humans can truly say they’ve made a real difference in the world? You would serve a key role in saving it.”
“Save the world?” Jaidyn couldn’t believe this guy. “Save it from what?” she asked.
“Look around you. Rain for two months? That’s just the start. Your planet has been reformatted, Jaidyn. It’s no longer suited for you. It has been adapted for the race of creatures that broke it. And none of your race even knows about their existence. You will change all of that.”
“Enough,” Jaidyn reached down and took the gun from its hiding place. She raised it and said. “Get out of my house.”
“Your house?” He let out a derisive short. “You don’t own this place – your landlord doesn’t even own it. You could barely afford it on the income of two, how are you going to afford it now? How are you going to keep your Residency as your symptoms get worse? What happens when you can’t walk anymore? I know that gun isn’t just for unwanted guests.” He leaned forward across the table, face just inches away from the barrel of her pistol. “Think about it, Jaidyn. Just use your brain while you still can and think about it. Sure, maybe I’m lying to you. Maybe I can’t cure your disease, maybe you can’t help us save the world. But what if I’m telling the truth?”
He straightened and smiled. “Do the math. What does life, as it is, have left to offer you?” He walked to the door and pulled it open.
“Wait.”
The man turned, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.