Oh, forgot something…
He opened up his journal and got a piece of paper out of his bag, along with a stick of glue. He placed the sticky-backed paper in the next blank page of his journal. Inspecting his work, he scanned the headline of the article.
Yep, Dad’ll find this interesting.
* * *
Sam got up early; he couldn’t sleep in because he was too excited about sharing his family’s vacation plans with Megan. Several months had passed since the comet and things seemed to be getting back to normal, or as normal as things could be given recent history. True to what his folks said at the park that day, they’d booked a vacation to visit family on the East Coast and both of them planned to take off over a month. A month! His dad said that they would not only visit family in Connecticut, but they would take a couple of weeks to go camping and canoeing in Maine. It was going to be so cool. He flew down the stairs in excitement about the holiday, eager to share his bit of news with his dad.
His parents were still in the kitchen eating breakfast, the air was heavy with the smells of brewing coffee and buttered toast. His dad was checking his news feed as always, before spending a long day in the clinic, and looked like he was about half a cup of coffee away from leaving for work. His mom, on the other hand, looked like she hadn’t been up long. She was in her PJs and her hair was still pulled back in a ponytail. Even still, she was beautiful…for a mom, anyway.
Okay, that was weird.
After helping himself to cereal and apple juice, Sam sat down next to his father. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, big guy. Did you sleep well?”
“I guess. Don’t remember much of my dreams. What’cha reading?”
“Hmm? Oh. Just medical papers for work.”
This is my chance to impress him with the medical stuff I was reading about, thought Sam.
“Hey, Dad? I read something on the newsfeed last night that I think you might find interesting.”
“Oh yeah, what is it?” he replied, still looking at his tablet.
“Well, I read that the slowdown in the rate of conception here in the U.S. over the last six months is actually worse than they thought.” He looked up at Sam. Oh yeah, he had his dad’s attention, and he looked impressed.
Gotta push to the finish line!
“And that there actually haven’t been any babies conceived in the last four months and they’re seeing it’s the same all over the planet. And they think it’s due to how some strange chemical in the comet broke down in our atmosphere.” His dad was looking at him intently, like he did when he was studying his medical books, but strangely, the color seemed to drain from his face.
And ladies and gentlemen, it looks like Sam ‘The Man’ hit a home run!
The clatter of his mom’s spoon in her cereal bowl made him jump. Sam looked over to her and saw a look of surprise on her face as she stared at her husband.
“Is this true, Paul?” she asked quietly.
His dad slowly leaned back in his chair, looked toward the ceiling, and rubbed his hands over his face, taking in a deep breath.
“Yes. The CDC and UN data indicates that the rates of conception worldwide began to plummet only weeks after the comet passed. And a couple of weeks later, after it was brought to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, our scientists hypothesized that it was linked to a mysterious compound traced back to the comet. It was later confirmed that the chemical was indeed from the comet. And we even recreated a spectral analysis that confirmed the suspected chemical agent was what made the falling debris glow purple as it entered the atmosphere. Just as you suspected back then, Janet. It’s now in all the water, food…and people, everywhere. Ironically, I guess the comet lived up to its name. As best as we can determine at this point, it looks to behave like a blocker to the protein receptors that enable the egg and sperm to find each other in primates and maybe other mammals.”
“Oh my God, Paul…You’ve known all this time? Can’t we just filter it out of the water? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“No. Not on a worldwide scale. The technology to filter out molecules four atoms long is very expensive and not a hundred percent. This molecule is so soluble in water it’s everywhere: the ocean, lakes, ground water, our bodies…and all plants and animals. The temperature required to break it down is way beyond anything we could expose ourselves or our food to. And to make matters worse, once it bonds to the egg’s membrane, it becomes completely inert, meaning we can’t get anything to react with it and pull it off. All of this research was classified, so we weren’t allowed to talk about it. I figured it would leak, but not so soon. It seems we were all wrong…” His dad looked down at his hands, helpless as his voice caught in his throat.
Without warning, the sobs of a grown man burst forth. “We were all wrong about…” He buried his face in his hands, slumping onto the table. Deep, soulful sobs ripped free, having been held back behind walls of fatherly duty. Tears soon leaked from between fingers and began to tap on the tablet in front of him.
Tap tap tap.
Never in his life had Sam seen a man cry like this, much less his dad! This was all very wrong and not how he’d planned it. Dads weren’t supposed to cry. They were supposed to be strong. Despite all that had happened with the coming and passing of the comet, none of that truly frightened him as much as this.
“Don’t cry, Dad! I’m sorry. I just wanted to impress you. Please…Dad…stop…”
His mom silently clasped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes washed a sick chill over him. He rushed over to his father to offer what little support he could, fighting back his own tears so that he could be the rock for his father.
“What is it, Dad? What were you wrong about?”
Dad collected himself and paused as he looked with reddened eyes at the faces of his family.
“Our hubris let us believe the end of our time on Earth could only be brought to an end by something enormous like a comet. But the reality is, a molecule no more than four atoms long will usher it in. Son, it means you’re the last generation on Earth.”
A Word from Terry R. Hill
Much of my writing to date has fallen well within the boundaries of dystopian fiction, and at times apocalyptic, but yet has been characterized by readers as ‘hopeful’, leaving them holding a small glint of light that the characters they’ve come to love, will make it to a new day. Admittedly, this has largely been unconscious on my part, but is likely a testament to my unconscious belief that there will always be a better tomorrow. So when I was invited to participate in The Doomsday Chronicles, I was honored to participate, but I also wanted to challenge myself to go against my hopeful nature and write a story different in that it truly embraced what a doomsday scenario, one without the possibility of hope.
In our day-to-day lives we get wrapped around the axels of grownup problems, which seem terribly important for us, but we often lose touch with how it impacts the young and often naïvely better parts of ourselves; the children. Largely they are along for the ride of the reality we’ve brought them into. My own children constantly remind me of the ways I have forgotten what it’s like to see the world through their eyes. They didn’t ask to be brought into this world, they generally can’t provide for themselves, they can’t protect themselves, and have little-to-no-control over their day-to-day lives. And yet, we charge forward creating drama, environmental crises, and war leaving the children to deal with the world, to clean up and endure.
In writing The Journal I wanted to explore what the end of the world might feel like to the hapless innocents of our world. Additionally, I wanted the adult reader to feel first hand the end of humanity but to also endure the heartbreak through the subtleness of having to explaining it to a child. Dealing with devastating news on a personal level is manageable for most of us, but bearing the responsibility to explain it to a child and wreck the minimal amount of emotional trauma on them, I find that to be a thousand fold more difficult. It was important for the reader to f
eel the helplessness in understanding their future had been suddenly ripped away through events completely outside of their control…just as children would.
Through taking these short, safe, voyeurs into possible futures, we come back with new appreciation for the wonderful gifts and opportunities that we have in our daily lives.
To read more of my work, which are more hopeful, please consider my titles available via all major on-line venues or via my website: www.terryrhill.net
Terry R. Hill is a Texas native with two degrees in aerospace engineering and has worked for NASA since 1997. He’s had a satisfying career as an engineer and project manager spanning programs from the International Space Station’s navigation software, to next generation space suit design, exploration mission planning, to mitigating the health effects of space on astronauts. While supporting the human spaceflight program has filled the business hours, writing of different worlds, alternate futures, and of the human condition has filled the rest of his life.
Power Outage
by Holly Heisey
A SPARK STREAKED DOWN from the afternoon sky, flaring orange before it disappeared behind the high-rises. At the crowded hoverbus stop, Lieve shifted her hold on her grocery bags and squinted at the blue after-image.
Her heart started to pound, but she shook her head. It had been forty years since humans first manifested powers—new classes of powers still showed up every now and then, and there were always variations within the classes. The person who was that spark could be manifesting something new. They didn’t have to be the Destroyer of Worlds.
The hoverbus sighed to a halt and began disgorging passengers. Lieve clutched her grocery bags, heavy with onions and celery and the jaco fruit that only came into season for two weeks out of the year. She had promised her wife she’d cook tonight. She’d promised she’d actually keep her promise this time.
Lieve dropped the bags and pressed her earpiece.
The answering bot chimed, “Central.”
“Tell Natan I’m going to investigate the incursion, it’s about five kilometers southwest of my current position.”
The comm channel clicked and Natan boomed, “Lieve, I’ve sent people to scout the area, I don’t want you anywhere near—”
Lieve tapped off her comm. Natan’s version of scouting usually involved shooting. She had to be sure this was what she feared. She couldn’t let an innocent go down.
Her hands briefly felt the guilty absence of the grocery bags, but her wife would understand. She always did. Lieve was a Warden; she had to keep the world safe for her family.
She crushed any lingering guilt and scanned the street around her. It didn’t matter that the Wardens had been around for a while, they still made normal people nervous. But the bus stop was mostly empty now, and her grocery bags were already gone, scooped up by someone else.
Lieve crouched and leaped into the air.
* * *
Lieve shifted the fields controlling her flight and dropped onto the pavement in the low-rent district. She threw up a physical protection field and sent her telepathic fields scanning ahead of her.
Every person put off power. For some, it manifested as luck, or passion, or confidence. For those who had reached their breaking point, it manifested into full classes of powers. The stronger the trauma, the stronger the manifester.
Lieve was one of the strongest.
Here in the slums, there were more than the usual degrees of personal hell. Power spiked and ebbed around her—none of these people were full manifesters yet, but they might be someday.
Lieve caught a scent of a darker thread of power, a steady pulling on her strength. She leaped again and landed a few blocks away.
Ahead of her, a man of average height and build walked the cracked sidewalk in a battered leather coat and jeans. Power flowed to him, but she could only see the halo of it, like the accretion disk of a black hole. On the buildings he passed, cheap holopaint graffiti—normally invisible in daylight—flickered blue and pink in a darkness that was all his own.
Her earpiece crackled. Oh hell, Natan had forced an override.
“Lieve? Dammit, Lieve, I know you’re there. Don’t do anything. I’m sending over the teleporters.”
Natan would hear her sharp breathing over the open comm. And Natan would know what that meant.
This was the Destroyer of Worlds. The accretion disk effect, his appearance, the falling streak of his arrival—all of it matched the reports sent from the Wardens of other worlds, in their urgent calls for help. He dropped down from the sky, pulled in power, and went off like a bomb. He flattened buildings, and then cities, and eventually broke up the world.
Then he moved on to the next one. He’d destroyed four worlds that they knew of.
“Lieve!” Natan shouted. “I know what you’re thinking, this guy’s not out of control, he’s out and out rogue. He’s worse than rogue. Don’t even try—”
Lieve ripped off her earpiece and shoved it into the pocket of her civilian pants. She wasn’t in Warden uniform, maybe that would be less threatening. And she’d never understood how a man could hate everyone so much that he would utterly destroy worlds.
She strengthened her physical and mental shields.
Teenagers on the street corners watched the Destroyer, pointing at his rough clothes or his lank hair and laughing.
The Destroyer stared down at the plastic cups and wrappers littering the sidewalk.
Lieve came up beside him. He turned sunken eyes on her, and she felt the siphoning of her power increase. She quickly looked anywhere but at his eyes.
“Have you come to help me?” he asked, in a voice that rasped like old paper. “Please, kill me.”
The hairs on Lieve’s arms rose. She opened her mouth.
Teleporters pop-pop-popped in around them. Lieve tore her gaze from the Destroyer just long enough to mark the identities of the teleporters and the weapons they carried. Natan’s most lethal strike force.
She started to yell, “Don’t shoot!” But when she looked back to the Destroyer, he was gone.
* * *
“Shit,” Natan said. “Oh, shit.” It had been his mantra since Lieve had arrived back at Central with the teleporters. Natan paced the operations island in the center of the circular control room. Earthy dust trailed from his fingertips, matching the gray of his Warden uniform; he was not quite in control of his powers. But then, none of them were. Lieve had the bubble of a defense field wrapped tightly around herself, and she couldn’t drop it if she wanted to.
Natan ran a hand through thinning hair and turned to the gathered Wardens. “All right, suggestions?”
“Kill him,” was the general consensus.
“He’s a victim,” Lieve said.
Natan pointed toward the city where they’d found the Destroyer. “That thing knows exactly what he’s doing. We have five, maybe six days before he gathers enough power and—” Dirt puffed out from his hands and clattered to the floor. “No more planet.”
Lieve’s stomach tightened. Her wife was at home with their two-year-old daughter. Moira would be making dinner now, slamming dishes onto the counter and cursing Lieve for breaking her promise. Again.
They had five days until the world ended.
“I have to talk to him again,” she said.
“You’re not on this mission,” Natan said. “Not in the field—”
“But I was there, I’m the one who talked to him—”
“Yes,” Natan said, “and we all know what happens when you do too much talking and not enough following orders.”
There was a short silence. A sharp scent of ozone filled the air as one of the weather-changing Wardens released nervous energy. No one looked at Lieve, because yes, that last manifester she’d tried to talk down had almost killed three Wardens and even more civilians with his jets of fiery rage. That manifester had been one of the classes immune to tranq darts. Lieve had screamed at the Wardens not to take him down before she tried to talk to him
, but he’d been too far gone. Lieve had nearly killed herself stretching her limits to shield the bystanders.
But she hadn’t been wrong to try.
“Fine,” she said.
“Fine?” Natan echoed. “Because that needs to mean, ‘Yes, Natan.’ I don’t want you going vigilante on me.”
“Fine means fine.”
* * *
It was past three in the morning when Lieve woke to her comm buzzing on the bedside table. Beside her, Moira groaned and pressed a pillow over her head, muttering that Lieve should go the hell back to sleep.
Lieve fitted her earpiece and waited until she was in the living room to answer. “Yes? This is Lieve.”
For a brief moment, silence. Then breathing.
Lieve tensed. “Who is this? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
“Lieve.”
Ice ran down her spine. It was the Destroyer. She pressed the comm to her ear, the edges digging in. “How did you get my comm code?”
“From your conversation with Natan,” he said.
Could he read comm waves? No, more likely he was telepathic, pulling thoughts with the same ease that he pulled on powers. Oh, that opened up a whole new realm of horrible possibilities.
“Where are you?” she asked.
All that day in Central, she’d watched the Wardens track him across the continent, and he’d always teleported away just before they caught him. He’d left a trail of flattened and burning buildings behind him. He’d left a trail of destroyed people. She wasn’t so sure of her victim theory now.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice, which had been flat before, broke. Static filled the channel. Had he cut the connection?
She looked back to the bedroom where Moira still slept, and her daughter Ina in the next room.
The static cleared. “—didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help it, I can’t contain it all, it comes out in bursts, just little bursts. I tried to get as far from the city as I could, I always at least try when it gets bad—”
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 34