Age of Power 1: Legacy (3 page)

Someone
said, “Vaughn? Vaughn Hagen? Is that you?”

Surprised,
I whipped around and saw vague shadow moving towards me. Out of
reflex
I moved back, and before I could stop myself, my foot
caught on the hard snow. I yelled out as I began to trip. And just as suddenly,
something grabbed my jacket, and I
was settled
back on
to my feet.

I
calmed down as I realized what—or who—that 'something' was. “Alex Shaw?
What the hell are you doing here?”

Wearing
a deep black trench coat, Alex Shaw let go and stepped back. He was taller than
I was by a couple of inches. I could see his face from the dim lights of my
house. I looked him over. Dark as it was, I could still see that he’d been
through hell. His trench coat looked shredded on the bottom edges. His face
looked bad, with bruises and small nicks showing.

Staring
at him, I said, “Whoa! What hit you, a Mack truck?”

Alex
said, “No, I was walking on a patch of ice when the meteors hit. The quake sent
me for a spin. What are you doing? Looking for damage?”

Good
thought, go with that. I said, “Yeah, that’s it. Hey, what do you think happened
with the super sized one? Do you think it hit somewhere?”

He
said, “Okay, 
a question out of nowhere…are
 you
okay? You look a bit wide-eyed. Are you in shock?”

He
was right. I was in shock and amazingly exhausted. My arms and hands ached, and
a glance down at my coat made me wince. There were small tears across the front
and arms of the jacket. I shrugged it off. “I slipped. Maybe I should get
home.”

Alex
looked at me with those dark eyes of his. In the daylight, his deep brown eyes
seemed to have an endless depth to them. Right now, the darkness made them
frightening to look at, almost as if I looked into a void. That was Alex Shaw
for you. He was always scary looking. He constantly wore black and kept his
dark hair shaved down to the scalp. With his black goatee and dark eyes, he put
off a sinister cast to people dealing with him. He liked it that way. I know he
did, because he once told me so. He said it kept people from bothering him
while he read comics, and studied science. And he studied all types of science.

If
he were a sociopath, that knowledge, mixed with the look, would have had him
starring in the FBI’s top ten most wanted list. He and I mainly read and talked
about comics. And reading comics was fun yeah. But then, he would go into
such 
high level
 talk of science that I’d be
lost. I never got frustrated about it. That was just his way. He’d sit there,
reading comics and then he’d begin talking about the real physics behind what
he was reading. Because I barely had a clue about science, I would just smile
and nod. But, it was because of his love of knowledge—including astronomy—that
I had felt guilty and lied about what I had been doing.

I
had started to tell him what I was doing with Brand tonight, but then I
realized it might hurt his feelings. I know he would love stargazing on the
church roof, but it’s something Brand and I did. I considered it a good way to
separate the two of them in my life. After all, Brand wasn’t the type to hang
around and talk comics or science. But talking with Alex wasn’t enough to get
me to stop worrying about Mom. Certainly, she had to know that I was gone by
now.

As
though he was reading my mind, Alex said, “Go see if your Mom is okay. She
probably is worried about you. Though, uh…here, take this.”

He
reached in his coat, pulled out a pack of gum, and handed me a piece. He said,
“I don’t think she needs to smell the beer, do you?”

My
jaw dropped. 
Busted.
 Fortunately, Alex
always kept some gum on him for the times after he smoked a cigar. That
was good, since I smoked cigars too. Occasionally, I’d grab one of his smokes
from a box he kept in his bedroom. As I said, he was smart, scary smart, and he
noticed things.

I
took the offered gum and thanked him. With a nod, he started going back towards
the street. I watched him walk into the darkness for a moment longer before
turning toward home. Mom would be worrying about me by this point. The thought
of her puzzled expression when she saw I wasn’t in bed made me chuckle for a
moment. I stopped myself. I was punch-drunk from everything that had happened.
I really needed sleep. But I had to get past Mom first. Taking a deep breath,
throwing the gum in my mouth, I went in to face the music.

CHAPTER TWO

If there was ever a chance for people to
say, ‘I told you so,’ this was it. Across the world, people crowed about how
close to the truth the prophecy came to be. For a short while, they enjoyed
their moment in the sun. But it was for a moment only. The asteroid
 
didn’t
 
crash to the planet’s surface.

Once the point
was made
, people politely told doomsayers to relax and be
glad they were only partly right. Tweeters and bloggers were not so polite. As
usual, that began the newest war on the Internet. By the next day, however, the
rest of the public managed to agree that the world wasn’t going to end.

Karla was
ecstatic about it. Her view was that the ‘Lord saved them from the Apocalypse’
at the last moment of course, for dramatic purposes—Brand’s words, not mine. He
told me about her religious view of it all through texts. Unfortunately,
texting was all I’d have with Brand for a while. The gum didn’t cover the smell
of beer on my breath. Mom smelled it, and grounded me for the entire time I
would be out of school. Actually, she grounded me until after the holidays. I
had to ask which holiday she meant. She said that if I were good, she’d
consider letting me out around Independence Day. Ha, Mom was kidding of course.

Or, so I hoped.

But as the day
fell onto evening, I found the idea of staying home to be much more enjoyable
than going out and dealing with the incessant talk about the damage in the
town. If I wanted that sort of thing, I could get it from the news
and YouTube. I have to admit that seeing what was on the video blogs
bothered me. After all, I had the camera, a nice looking digital still and
video recorder Dad gave me for my birthday.

And all I had
were nice pictures of Christmas decorations and the single meteor streak across
the sky. Others caught a fair bit more, such as the entire thing. They also
caught images of people rioting in the streets. YouTube
 
had some rather embarrassing
videos that would take a long time for some to get over. I’m sure the people in
the videos laughed over it—or they would, after a few decades.

Still, for all
the panic, things hadn’t turned out to be as bad as they had looked. While
there was property damage, the meteor crashing east of Riverlite had killed no
one. A few empty farms were history from fires caused by the meteor shower. One
of the airport runways would be down, until they cleared the debris and laid
out new asphalt. And the first meteor’s impact had left a great deal of debris
spread out across farmland.

But Riverlite
remained relatively undamaged. Though, from what I’d seen on the way home, that
included many broken windows, cracked walls, smashed vehicles, and decorations.
I had a feeling that some insurance companies were going to be using that ‘Act
of God’ excuse to get out of paying up. That it primarily came from the shock
wave from the meteor’s impact and the passage of the asteroid gave them a good
reason to play it out that way.

Cleanup would
take a long time, but the people of Riverlite insisted on celebrating Christmas
just the same. The local radio station announced that the less-damaged stores
would stay open until Christmas Eve, to allow last-minute shoppers the chance
to get presents or replace broken items. Kerrington Hardware, the main supplier
for windows had a sale. And if people couldn’t afford replacement windows, then
Sherrick Lumber would be very happy to help. Merry Christmas

Beyond the town
and region, people were celebrating Christmas with an intensity unseen since
just after World War Two. Church attendance swelled, scientists became enamored
over the asteroid, and government leaders did their best to assure people that
it wouldn’t happen again. The big cities took advantage of it for tourist
money, at least in my point of view.

New York City
was the first to announce a weeklong party that they were going to hold in
Times Square. After that, other cities followed with changes of their own. From
Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, people celebrated the idea of simply being
alive. For the most part, they were actual parties and it brought out thousands
of people onto the streets.

Locally,
however, Riverlite, and other towns along the path of the asteroid, had more
spiritual sorts of celebrations on Christmas Day. Nobody argued the point, we
lucked out, and we knew it. Actually, from things
being said
by the scientists on television, we were luckier than we deserved. I felt
properly thankful and then I switched channels to watch a
 
Home Alone
 
marathon.

Life goes on,
though, and once we cleaned around the house and yard, Mom and I celebrated
Christmas. I got new books, Dad sent a check for a hundred dollars, and Aunt
Cassie sent me a history DVD about the Celts. That would be the old British
Isles tribe of thousands of years ago, not the basketball team. She’s a tad
different, my aunt. I sent her and Dad a couple online gift certificates. For
Mom, I bought a clock that I’d seen in Latimer’s Antiques store on Fifth
Avenue, near downtown. A square box type from the 1940s, it had glass walls
inside the deeply lacquered wood frame. Mom liked that sort of thing. It wasn’t
cheap, but I had it on layaway with the owner while I paid for it over the last
year.

Brand got a
ViaSoft Phad. He sent me pictures he took with his cell phone. The thing was a
two-sectioned unit pulled apart with a paper-thin screen that unrolled from one
side. He showed me how all the touch sensitive buttons on the screen worked,
and before he signed off, Brand sent me one last picture of him watching a new
movie.

Jealous,
me?
 
Never!

Bastard…okay,
maybe I was a little jealous. Of course, he wasn’t playing the game I’d bought
him, but I was sure he would…eventually.

With presents
opened, and family calls made, I watched the news while Mom started cooking
dinner. Although it would be just the two of us, Mom liked to cook. And because
I loved the chocolate chunk and coconut cookies she always made this time of
year for the desserts, I got out of her way and stayed in the living room.

Watching
television, I channel surfed the cable news networks. Any other time, it
would’ve been boring. That wasn’t the case right now, as the pictures of the
asteroid and those who reacted to its appearance
was
more fun than a science fiction movie. And the Christmas theme lent an air of
cheeriness to all the scenes of panic.

Continuing to
surf, I found an update about what happened to the asteroid on the night it
passed over us. From what the NASA experts could tell, the asteroid had
aerobraked across the upper atmosphere of the Midwest until it left the
atmosphere above Lake Michigan near Chicago. Meteorologists were in a controlled
panic about that part of the event. They were having trouble trying to figure
out how this would affect the weather over time.

While that news
segment was playing, I glanced outside, saw the sunny weather, and shrugged.
With the crazy weather from global warming, I wasn’t going to worry too much,
yet. Bored, I switched channels to a documentary about who won prizes for this
year’s showiest decorations. I noticed there were
a lot of
meteor themes for some strange reason.

Because it was
between elections, the politicians stayed quiet on how they would handle the
emergencies developing from this near hit. Up until the interviews started,
only the President had gone on national television to help calm people.
Congressmen and Senators, however, waited until they were on Sunday news shows
to answer critics about why the budget to find dangerous asteroids was so
limited. Blustering, the politicians promised to increase the NASA budget to
make sure we had better warning in the future. Even the interviewers looked
openly critical about those claims.

I only watched
moments of an interview about how much the asteroid slowed after the
aerobraking it did through our atmosphere. Not only had it slowed down, it was
now in a permanent orbit around the planet and moon. But while people were
still celebrating, others just didn’t feel comfortable explaining as to
why it had slowed down so much. One scientist's claim was that the atmospheric
drag simply hadn't been enough to slow it down to such a low speed. I didn’t understand
the numbers he was using to get his point across, but the man was acting almost
insulted by his own results. For a moment, I wondered why it was bothering him
so much,
then
I just shrugged it off, and
shut off the TV.

Still wanting
something to do, I went back to texting Brand to bug him about his new toy.
Christmas dinner was great, Mom is a fantastic cook, and with that finishing
off the day, I finally started pushing the asteroid news to the back of my
mind.

The world
couldn’t do that so readily. And because Mom was serious about grounding me, I
ended up watching more television. The big news, one morning, was that while
the IAU had originally cataloged the asteroid with a string of numbers and
letters, the asteroid was quickly renamed Yama by the public and the media.
After some debate, the International Astronomical Union let that stand because
they agreed with the argument that it almost killed us. Yama was the Hindu God
of Death. India didn’t argue about anyone using the name of one of 
their
religious deities. Given its size and the density,
Yama would have devastated the planet, including them.

However, despite
the panic, some good news did come with Yama. Tests on the meteor fragments
showed several unusual heavy metals not normally found in meteorites.
It wasn’t the nickel-iron type of space rock that Earth normally
gets from space.
The various heavy metals discovered were enticing
enough to get Planetary Resources Incorporated to consider going out to it.
Their interest grew when NASA announced that studies of Yama through
spectroscopy, as well as from tests done on the meteor put its elemental worth
at around nine-hundred trillion dollars. I wasn’t even sure how anyone could
even imagine that level of money. But after hearing about the study results,
there were even more industries wanted to mine it.

Mom made a joke
about how Iowa should make a grab for mining rights since it had flown over the
state. In spite of
being grounded
, life began to feel
good. Everyone seemed to feel good about things. After all, we escaped near
death, on a planetary scale.

We should have
hunkered down.

It turned out
that the two hundred and forty square miles of asteroid wasn’t going into any
sort of orbit after all. Somehow, it sped up and changed in its trajectory. So instead
of going around the Moon to enter into a stable orbit, it would now come around
to smack into the planet. The scientists looked pole-axed by the change in the
asteroids behavior. One-tenth of a degree away or towards the moon, and Yama
would have stayed harmless. But some unknown factor had changed the trajectory
of Yama’s original course into a perfect killing shot. On the second day of the
new year
, we all found out that Yama was going to hit
just north of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada.

Moments after
the announcement, YouTube had the simulations. People in the government got
very tense when that bit of news came out. I don’t think they much appreciated
the scientists for passing on the message. The desk reporters harshly demanded
answers to their questions. The first question being was how they could have
missed seeing this possibility in the first place. The astrophysicists sounded
confused. They just couldn’t explain the odd increase in the asteroid’s speed,
and even argued openly about its changed orbit. As for the rest of the kids on
the planet, well, all seven billion promptly lost their minds.

No, people
didn’t react well to hearing that, finally, Doomsday was coming. Time was
up, life was done, and don’t bother turning out the lights. The asteroid would
do it for us. Oh, and school was canceled.
Yay!

Overnight,
people began to fight for food, water, and gas. They fought over everything
they could get their hands on in some effort to find a path to safety. To my
shock, even Brand disappeared. The day after the apocalyptic announcement, I
called him and no one picked up. My texts went unanswered, and he never
appeared on the messenger service we used regularly. So, early the next
morning, while Mom was asleep, I walked to his house.

The Housemans were
gone. Looking through a window, I saw papers, blankets, and a broken suitcase
on the living-room floor. It wasn’t hard to figure out that they had abandoned
the house after they heard about the change in Yama’s trajectory. I walked home
to give Mom the bad news. We hugged, we talked, and it helped. But it didn’t
stop the sense of hurt and surprise about their absence.

I knew these
people since I was a kid. Karla and Mom had been friends since high school.
That they did this showed me how frightened people could—and would—get. I
thought that Mom and I wouldn’t be alone when the world ended. I thought we
were that close as families went. Now I knew we weren’t.
My
mistake.
But Mom and I’d already talked about leaving. Mom decided not
to try. She knew what would happen when Yama hit Earth. And her decision was
the right one. And that was because, in the end, Dad came home.