Orbs

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Sophie knew nothing short of a massive solar storm, nuclear war, or asteroid impact would have the power to knock out the emergency communication line. It had to be a test. It had to be part of the mission.

  She shook her head. The past few days had been awful. Her mind was running on overdrive, and her brain was low on fuel. If she was right, then losing the chickens wasn’t that bad. Neither was being unable to connect with the outside. The problem would be convincing her team that things were okay.

  She bent down and grabbed another dead chicken. The bird’s bloody eyes stared back at her. If NTC was willing to put her team through a test as sick as this one, she couldn’t help but wonder what else they had in store for her.

  CHAPTER 6

  LOCATION: NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS

  YEAR: 2055

  A RED haze lingered in the sky, creeping slowly across the horizon. It was beautiful in an almost divine way. Ten years had passed since she’d seen the green flicker of the aurora borealis dancing across the sky. Never in her wildest dreams had Sophie thought she would see the lights so pronounced, so different.

  NASA had issued a memo to President Sandra Bolton months before, informing her that the Earth was scheduled to have its most severe solar barbeque since the Carrington Event of 1859, when solar storms fried the telegraph lines across the United States. But Bolton’s administration didn’t exactly get out the sunscreen. In fact, it had kept the memo secret until the sky started changing colors. When scientists around the world caught the drift of what was happening, it was already too late. The massive storm had the same effect on satellites as frying oil did on ice cream.

  Sophie and Emanuel had been hired by NASA a month after the sunspots were discovered. With her expertise in solar weather and Emanuel’s experience studying the effect of storms on animals, they were an obvious choice. And it had more than likely saved their lives.

  They were flown out to Houston and assigned to a research facility at Johnson Space Center, where they worked in an EMP-resistant bunker, the perfect place to ride out the most violent solar storm in recorded history.

  But as Sophie and Emanuel stood on the roof of the observatory with the rest of the staff, they didn’t exactly feel safe. The sky was getting more active, the crimson more vibrant and profound. It took on an eerie glow.

  Early reports streaming out of computers around the world indicated the storms were more powerful than originally thought. The magnetic readings were off the charts, unlike anything the scientific community had seen. And the storm was lasting longer than predicted. Something was feeding it, giving it more juice.

  Sophie had noticed an anomaly early on, spikes of radiation coming from Mars, but she hadn’t had a chance to research what it meant, if anything, before the storms hit. Now, she wondered whether her anomaly had something to do with it—whether Mars could have been the source of the storm after all.

  The world had been caught off guard, and just when President Bolton decided to finally hold a press conference to discuss the rare event, the solar flares were accompanied by the largest coronal mass ejection the Earth had ever experienced, bringing with it a dose of cosmic radiation stronger than all of the world’s nuclear weapons combined. The solar wind carried the ejection straight through Earth’s upper atmosphere, cutting it like a scalpel. It made landfall outside Chicago before evacuations could even be ordered.

  Most scientists had argued this could never happen, but like many scientists before them, they were wrong.

  Sophie had had a front-row seat to the destruction. With Emanuel by her side, she had watched in horror as the swirling red flares licked the sky.

  By the time the emergency broadcast system began issuing alerts, it was too late for those living in the Midwest dead zone; transformers and power lines in every major city west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains were lighting up like bottle rockets. The result was massive fires raging out of control. They were too much for fire departments to handle. Within hours, entire cities were burning.

  Emanuel had grabbed Sophie’s hand when the first transformer exploded, sending a spire of flame into the air somewhere in the middle of South Houston. Another pop followed a few seconds later, and before long the entire city sounded like it was having a massive Fourth of July celebration.

  When the air raid sirens went off, Emanuel clenched her hand even tighter. The sirens made an odd sound—an archaic sound, one that seemed as if it should be reserved for a twentieth-century action movie with nuclear missiles raining down from the sky. As Sophie surveyed the horizon, she realized something much worse than nuclear-tipped missiles was raining down on them. This was hell itself.

  Dr. Tsui, an elderly astrophysicist and the leader of their project, started herding their team back into the building. “Stay calm, don’t rush, we have plenty of time,” he said, his tiny arms flailing about. With his lab coat, pocket protector, and large, black-rimmed glasses, he looked more like a pediatrician who refused to retire than the head of one of NASA’s most well-funded programs.

  But Sophie didn’t want to leave. The view was captivating. A million trails of smoke rose into the sky, and a red haze danced across the horizon—it was the most beautiful and frightening thing she had ever seen. It took Emanuel’s strong grip to pull her away from the sight.

  “My wife, my kids—they’re out there! I have to leave!” shouted one of the research assistants. Sophie knew him only as Henry; she hadn’t bothered to learn his last name. He was young, not more than thirty years old. Just a kid in a field dominated by fossils like Dr. Tsui.

  “It’s not safe. Chances are they’re hunkered down and waiting out the storms like everyone else,” Emanuel said, trying to reassure the man.

  “No. I told them to go to my in-laws if things hit the fan. They’re probably trying to evacuate the city. I have to find them!” he yelled, his voice getting more frantic.

  Dr. Tsui stopped in the middle of the stairway leading to the basement. “No one goes anywhere. You stay here and work until the storm passes.”

  “That’s my family out there, Dr. Tsui! What if I can’t find them after the storm passes?”

  “We all have families. But we also have work. What if all the police officers and firefighters abandon their posts?” said a heavyset woman who worked in programming. She was one of the newer scientists whom Sophie hadn’t yet met. “Society will collapse if the most important people fail to do their duty,” she continued, her double chin bobbing up and down as she spoke.

  Sophie brushed a strand of sweaty hair out of her eyes. “She’s right. We need to ride out the storm and do our jobs. Leaving isn’t going to do any good, anyways; it’s too dangerous.”

  The young scientist started to reply but hesitated, opting to refrain from further argument. He continued down the narrow stairway, his head lowered in defeat.

  The stairway led to a command center in the bowels of the basement. It was unbearably hot. A state-of-the-art air-conditioning unit was built to cool the room, but the engineer who had designed it failed to take into account the juice the computers would need when working at full capacity. Dr. Tsui was forced to reroute power from the cooling unit to the computers, which were sucking the backup generators dry. By midnight the temperature in the bunker was nearly ninety degrees.

  The heat didn’t seem to bother Tsui. He nursed a cup of coffee in the corner, staring intently at the dozens of monitors attached to the concrete wall. He was sucking the information in like a leech, analyzing it every second.

  Sophie watched from the cot she was sharing with Emanuel, trying to drown out the sound of the crying, the hushed voices, and the prayers from the dozen other scientists throughout the room. She laid her head down on the tiny pillow, turning to face him. His lips parted and revealed his perfectly aligned teeth. A chill crept down Sophie’s spine, making its way to her toes. She returned hi
s smile and gripped his hands underneath the covers. As the lights faded and darkness carpeted the room, she slowly slipped out of her pants. He bent in to kiss her, pulling her chin toward his with his index finger.

  Sophie hesitated, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching. But the darkness shrouded them. With a silent sigh she pulled him closer until she could feel his warm breath on her neck.

  Another chill raced down her legs. This time is didn’t make its way to her toes, but stopped just below her abdominals, lingering. She kissed him deeper, her hands running through his mop of dark, unkempt hair.

  There was something about the world going to shit that made her want him even more, as if it were the last time she would ever feel intimacy. When she was in high school, she had had a conversation with a friend about things they would do if the world was ending. “I’d have sex with the cutest boy I could find,” her friend had said.

  Sophie, on the other hand, had said she would spend the night staring at the stars—and yet, with the real possibility of the world ending, the thought of stargazing no longer appealed to her. Tonight she didn’t want to be a scientist; she wanted nothing more than to feel Emanuel, to wrap her legs around him. If the world was going to end, she wanted to share it with him.

  * * *

  The next morning Tsui woke them. “The storms have passed!” he yelled, flailing his arms in the air.

  Emanuel reached for his glasses, while Sophie struggled to find her pants. Seconds later they were crowded around the monitors, watching the data stream in from stations around the world. He was right; the storm was over, but the damage to the Midwestern states was severe. Radiation levels were extraordinary. Those who had perished in the fires were the lucky ones; any survivors would die horribly painful and prolonged deaths from radiation poisoning.

  “My parents,” Emanuel whispered.

  A sudden chill ran down Sophie’s back. Emanuel’s family lived in Chicago, and by the looks of it the Windy City was dead center of the damage.

  “Millions will die,” Tsui whispered, taking a long sip of his coffee.

  Emanuel scowled, suddenly ripe with anger. “Bolton’s administration never took this storm seriously!”

  “The damage is done. We need to continue to analyze the storm’s data and send it to the Department of Defense,” Tsui replied.

  Sophie took a seat at her terminal, logging in with a swipe of her index finger. The stream of data was constant; new statistics were feeding into their system by the second from locations around the world. The dead zone appeared to run from the edge of the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi. Houston was on the border of the destruction, and while the city was busy being burned to the ground, the radiation levels appeared to be minimal.

  A muffled voice rang out across the room. Sophie turned to see a middle-aged man with a mop of gray hair staring out at them from a screen hanging in the corner of the room. She recognized him instantly as General John McKern, a Department of Defense official and advisor on NTC’s payroll.

  “Good morning, Dr. Tsui and staff; glad to see you all weathered the storm safely. It appears you just missed the worst of it.”

  “Good morning, sir. How did Washington fare?”

  McKern shrugged. “We were better prepared than most. The military has been hardening facilities, communications, and vehicles for decades.” He lit a cigar and blew a puff of smoke at the monitor. “As you know, it’s the Midwest that took the brunt of it. Which is why I am contacting you. My superiors want a module showing radioactivity patterns. Which cities are lost causes, which ones may be salvageable. You know the drill,” he said, taking another drag of his cigar.

  “No problem, sir. We’ll upload the data within the hour,” Tsui said, motioning Emanuel and another scientist to a pair of computers against the far wall.

  “Very good. I’ll check back later,” McKern said, his image quickly fading.

  Henry, the young scientist who had panicked the previous evening, hesitantly motioned Dr. Tsui over to his monitors. “Sir, there’s something I think you should see.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you remember how the storms seemed to be lasting longer than our initial models predicted?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “So you recall that it seemed as if something was feeding the storms?”

  Tsui nodded. “What’s your point, Henry?”

  “I think I’ve found out what was feeding them. Take a look at this. It’s from the past few days.”

  The group gathered around Henry’s terminal. A row of numbers hovered over the console.

  Sophie recognized the data immediately. It was hers.

  “That’s impossible,” Henry said under his breath, before telling the team what Sophie already knew. “The disruption is coming from . . . Mars.”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE clanking of Timothy and Saafi’s footsteps followed Emanuel across the metal platform above the garden biome. Several days had passed since the death of the chickens, and they were beginning to settle back into a routine. With the loss of one of their major sources of protein, Sophie had conscripted Saafi and Timothy to help Emanuel with Biome 1, leaving Alexia in charge of their jobs. They had spent the entire day planting seeds deep into the dark brown dirt.

  “I can’t get the dirt stains off my hands, man, and I’ve spread it all over my monitors in the command center,” Timothy said, rubbing his hands ferociously on his pants.

  “It’s the chemicals. This dirt isn’t your typical topsoil. It’s hybrid soil, meant to germinate seeds as fast as possible,” Emanuel responded, hardly sparing the man a glance.

  “How long until the seeds sprout and we get veggies to eat?” Saafi asked.

  Emanuel shrugged. “Could be as little as a few days for some of the seeds, and as long as a month for others.”

  “What about the sweet corn? I love sweet corn,” Saafi said, revealing a mouthful of large, white teeth.

  “I don’t think sweet corn is on the menu,” Emanuel laughed.

  “I’m not going to lie. I was very pleased when I heard the diet would be mostly vegetarian,” Saafi continued. “I grew up eating very little meat.”

  Timothy rolled his eyes. “Remind us where you’re from again?”

  “You know where I’m from.”

  “Africa?”

  Saafi snorted. “Somalia,” he said proudly.

  “Never been there,” Timothy quipped.

  Emanuel paused at the edge of the platform and looked at the field, attempting to change the subject. “You’re looking at the last row. Once we’re done it’s back to the mess hall for lunch, so let’s make this quick.”

  The trio jumped off the platform, landed softly in the dirt, and began trekking through the field.

  “Finally, we’re in agreement about something,” Timothy replied with his mischievous grin. He brushed a long strand of curly hair out of his eyes and reached into his pocket, pulling out a handful of seeds.

  “A little here, a little there,” he said under his breath, sprinkling the seeds onto the ground. The job was a change of pace from sitting at a terminal, typing in code and monitoring the biomes. And truthfully, he was beginning to enjoy it. Besides the fact that his hands were stained shit brown, he liked feeling like he was contributing to the mission.

  Overhead, the click of one of the monstrous air-conditioning units startled him. Timothy cocked his head to survey the dome, and for the first time he realized how massive it really was. He’d spent most of his youth holed up in his room, playing video games and hacking into websites just to piss off greedy corporations. There were moments when he felt like he might have missed out on the rest of the world by spending so much time living in a virtual one, but this mission made up for all of that. And while he might have only traded his small computer lab for a much bigger one, the
Biosphere was still the most advanced and aesthetically beautiful building he had ever seen, let alone worked in.

  The AC unit clicked off, and the fans quieted. As Timothy reached in his pocket for another handful of seeds, there was another click, a deeper one. Emanuel and Saafi heard it too. The trio stopped dead in their tracks, scanning the walls for the source of the noise.

  “All hands to Biome 3,” Alexia said through the speaker system. A pair of emergency lights above the entrance doors glowed to life, their red lights blinking intermittently.

  “What the hell is this?” Timothy yelled.

  Emanuel dropped his bag of seeds and took off running for the door. “What are you waiting for?”

  Saafi ran after Emanuel, his long, lean legs catching up with the biologist quickly.

  “What the fuck?” Timothy said. He didn’t want to be left behind, so he dropped his bag and began a fast-paced jog. He didn’t even make it to the platform before he had to stop and catch his breath. He blamed his labored breathing on a youth spent smoking in a room the size of an ancient phone booth.

  He followed the sound of footsteps down the hallway until he rounded a corner and reached Biome 3. From the entrance he could see the others were already there, surrounding Alexia’s blue holographic image. But when he took a closer look, he could tell it wasn’t her image they were staring at. It was the goats. They were screeching in terror, as if a predator were chasing them. Two of them were cowering in the corner, shaking in fear, while the other three were bashing their heads into the biome’s exterior wall.

  That wasn’t the only odd thing. The pigs were lying in their own filth; their tongues hanging loosely out of their mouths, blood streaming from their cracked skulls.

  “What the fuck is going on!” Timothy shouted over the deafening noise.

  The goats continued to shriek, their voices like human babies crying in pain. It was one of the most awful noises he’d ever heard, one he recalled hearing at the Iowa State Fair years ago, when a farmer sheared his goat in front of a crowd of patrons. Timothy clawed at his ears to muffle the sound.