One Minute to Midnight (39 page)

"You're bringing that up again? That
was an accident." Tammy replied. She rolled her eyes.
"What happened, Dad?" Timmy asked.
"Your grandfather and I were out hunting deer about three years
ago. We got split up while tracking a buck, and when I turned
around he was about fifty yards from me. I'm standing dead still,
when all of a sudden the buck walks right out in front of me. Well,
your grandfather decides to take the shot, and hits me in the
shoulder!"

"That was a flesh wound, you didn't
even need stitches." Tammy said.

"He shot a deer while I was behind
it!"
Tammy shrugged her shoulders and put a fork-full of meatloaf in her
mouth. They had talked about this before, and it always ended the
same way. She defended her father and accused Josh of
overreacting.
"Let's finish up dinner, I want to go see what the telescope found
upstairs!" Josh said. He wolfed down the rest of his food and then
patiently waited for Tammy and Timmy to finish their meal so that
he could do the dishes.

After dinner was over, they all went
upstairs to see the telescope, and to Josh's surprise, some data
had been captured on his screen.

"Check that out! Weird." Josh said.
The message on his screen was in binary code and he would need a
translator to decipher the meaning, but it read:

01001110 01101111 00101100
00100000 01100100 01100001 01110101 01100111 01101000 01110100
01100101 01110010 00101110 00100000 01000001 01110100 01101100
01100001 01101110 01110100 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110111
01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100
01110101 01110010 01101110 00101110 00100000 01000001 01101110
01110100 01100001 01110010 01100011 01110100 01101001 01100011
01100001 00101110

"Any idea what that means? Where's
that thing pointed?" Tammy asked. Josh looked out the window and
saw that his telescope was aimed at the setting sun.
"No idea what that means, and it's pointed at the sun." He
shrugged. "That's cool! Now, to figure out what it's telling us."
Josh brought out his laptop and found a binary-to-text translator,
and then he plugged in the numbers.

"
No. Atlantis will return. Antarctica.
Anunnaki?
" Josh said. "That's all it
says."

"That's spooky. I'm officially creeped
out. I'm going back downstairs." Tammy said.

Josh sat at his telescope
for another hour, pointing it around the sky as night fell, but
there were no more messages. Before he quit for the night, he
pointed the telescope at the ground and forgot to turn it off. As
he clicked the light off, more zeros and ones flashed across the
screen. The next morning, when Josh went into the telescope room,
he was astonished to see that his computer had been busy collecting
data overnight.
"Excellent!" He said to himself. Josh transferred the series of
zeros and ones over to his laptop and his jaw dropped.
"
To heal, I need peace! Quiet!
Renewal!
"
Josh's pulse was racing as he turned off the computer. Who could he
tell about this? Who would believe him? Then he remembered that
they would be meeting up with Bill and Trudy that weekend on the
lake. He told no one, not even his wife, about the message he had
received. The temperature outside at 8 a.m. was ninety-eight
degrees. Josh flipped on the TV to see a well-dressed reporter
standing outside on the beach. He was speaking to another anchor at
the news station.

"Todd. Today is expected to be one of
the hottest summer days on record, and summer is only three days
away from ending. We expect to see record highs in the low one
hundreds in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and much higher to the
south! I'm talking about the South Pole. This heat wave appears to
be global, and arctic ice is melting at such an alarming rate that
it's causing ocean levels to rise all over the world."
"Michael, have you noticed any difference in the water levels at
Myrtle Beach today?" Todd asked.
"Well, I'm standing twenty feet up the beach from where high tide
usually rises and I'm up to my ankles in water. It's now eight in
the morning and the pier is half submerged. Local authorities are
not calling this a state of emergency yet, but people from the area
are definitely getting nervous." Michael replied.
Josh turned off the television and began to put the pieces of a
very strange puzzle together.

"Honey, are you still planning on
going with us to the lake this weekend? Trudy wants to know." Tammy
had a phone to her ear and had startled him as she came around the
corner.

"Yeah sure, but tell Trudy I'm coming
over to talk to Bill tonight. I'll be right there."

Tammy nodded and disappeared around
the corner, agreeing with something Trudy was saying on the other
end. It was Thursday, and Josh had taken a couple of his personal
days to hang around the house and kick back. He had never
anticipated his side project heralding a massive global change in
weather, but Bill worked for the National Weather Service, and he
might understand what Josh had seen. Josh emailed his results to
Bill and ran down the steps, headed for their front
door.

"Where you going, dad? Can I
come?"

"Just over to Bill and Trudy's place
for a few minutes. I gotta' chat with Bill about something. You
stay here and protect your mom. I'll be right back." Josh tussled
his son's hair and jogged to his car. He was excited. In five
minutes he was pulling into Bill and Trudy's driveway and running
up to the front door. Bill saw him coming and opened it.

"What's up? Tammy told Trudy you were
coming over." Bill stood about five foot three and had a stout
beard that hung down to his chest. It was a thing of beauty that he
had worked on for the better part of two years.

"Did you see my email?" Josh
asked.

"Yeah, some zeros and ones or
something. I was trying to figure out the joke."

"That's what my radio
telescope picked up when I had it pointed at the sun the first
time, and then I left it pointed at the ground all night." Josh
said. It took him about half an hour to convince Bill that he was
neither making up the story, nor having him on. He also explained
the news reports of rising temperatures and water levels, and his
growing theory on how it all correlated.
"So, I know you work for the weather service, and I was kind of
wondering if you might be able to help me, or
us
, charter a ship to
Antarctica?"

"Now I know you're smoking something.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to charter a yacht to the
arctic?" Bill asked.

"I figure at least a few thousand
dollars a person, right?"
"Ha! Try half a million dollars, my friend. Even if I was up for
some sort of mission to the end of the world, we can’t afford it,
man."

Josh's face fell with disappointment.
"Oh, I had no idea. Crap. That would have been a great adventure
though, right?"

"Possibly. Look, I wish I could help,
but I don't know anyone working for the weather service heading
that direction that would let you tag along for free" Bill
said.

"Alright, good night then. I'll see
you this weekend on the lake?" Josh asked.

"Wouldn't miss it. I'm making Mai
Tai's, so we'll get smashed and make the women drive us home." Bill
put out his fist and Josh bumped it with his own.
"Be seeing you, then. Have a good one." Josh said. He returned home
with a pit in his stomach. What were those messages, and why had he
seen them? He put the whole thing out of his mind and left the
telescope alone.

"That telescope's a bad penny. Leave
it alone, man." Josh said to himself.

On Saturday afternoon,
both families met at the lake and boarded the
Slippery When Wet
, Bill’s boat, and
they sailed out for the center to do some swimming. The day was
sunny, and extraordinarily warm, so the water felt like heaven when
they all jumped in. Floating around on seat cushions from the boat,
they all kept a watchful eye on Timmy, who was wearing arm floaties
and an orange life vest. He bobbed around in the water like a human
buoy. Bill swam a small distance away from the women and motioned
for Josh to follow him, which the other man did.

"I did some checking with a few
friends who work in high government positions, and it appears that
your message from the radio telescope might have some merit." Bill
whispered.

"Oh yeah? Why are you
whispering?"

"Because Antarctica is
melting and satellite imagery shows there's something under the
ice. Something large, and it's emerging. A research crew is heading
down in two days on a yacht called
The
Legend
, and in less than a week they'll be
at the South Pole."
"Does anyone have an idea what it is? How long will it be until it
hits the surface?" Josh asked. He felt his stomach tighten with
excitement.

"They think maybe six or seven weeks,
but the worst part is most of the eastern seaboard is going to be
under water. We're moving to Denver in two days, because it's high
enough that the water shouldn't reach us in a worst-case scenario.
You and your family are welcome to come with us." Bill said. Josh
was trying to absorb Bill's information and weigh it against the
safety of his family.

"I want to go Antarctica. I have to
see what this is. Can you get me on that vessel? Can my family come
with me?" Josh asked.

Bill thought about it for a moment.
"Yeah, I probably can. I already asked if they would mind a few
passengers going along for the ride, and they said it'd be fine. I
think my buddy Peter Long, the expedition leader, thought I was
referring to myself and my family as the potential passengers, so
we'll have to allow him to assume away until you show up and ask
permission to come aboard."

"I'll have to talk to the captain of
the ship though and if he doesn't have my name..."

"No worries, I'll give it to him. The
captain's name is Donald Ricks, and we go way back. Don't sweat it,
you'll get on the boat if that's what you want, but with that
continent melting daily, the shit is about to hit the fan, my
friend. The President of the United States is announcing a state of
emergency for all US coastal cities tonight. California may be gone
in a few weeks." Bill said.

"My god. This is crazy." Josh
said.

"Well, I didn't sleep much last night
thinking about it. You get any more readings from that telescope of
yours?"

"Nothing. I turned it off after our
chat the other night. I figured I was overreacting and maybe it was
some kind of hack on the system software." Josh said. Bill shrugged
in the water and the two made their way back over to the
wives.

After relaxing on the lake, they
grilled burgers on the boat, and Josh informed Tammy of his plans
for them and the danger they were in. After she recovered from a
crying jag with the realization that their house may be under water
soon, she lamented. Bill and Trudy were there with them to talk
over what their next steps would be.

"I've got a brother in Denver who
we'll be staying with, and I'll give you the address. If you want
to join us, you need to leave no later than tomorrow morning.
Airports are going to be overcrowded once the news breaks about
Antarctica melting. We're heading there tonight just to get ahead
of the panic."
"I think we'll go with Josh. I don't want our family split up.
Josh, are you absolutely sure about this trip?" Tammy
asked.

"No, but I think we have to be there
for this, especially since my telescope picked it up. I think we're
about to see something humans lost a long time ago. Atlantis, a
civilization covered in ice during a major continental shift." Josh
replied.

"With the rising water levels you'll
at least be on a ship that's well stocked with food. You might be
in the safest place on earth in few days." Bill said. He chuckled a
little, but all four of them looked on with heavy hearts, watching
Timmy innocently playing in the water.

"Look, we're going to go through a
rough patch here, but humanity has survived disasters before, and
we'll get through this one. Take your boy and head to Norfolk Naval
Station. I've got the paperwork you’ll need to get through the
gates and onto the research vessel. Good luck." Bill
said.

When the two were alone, Bill turned
to Josh and clapped him on the shoulder. "I kind of envy you for
doing this, you've got brass balls, heading into the eye of the
storm like this."

"Yeah, it's a surreal experience. I
just hope going with them is the right thing to do. Timmy’s so
young, but what’s the alternative? There is no guaranteed safe
haven, if what you just told me is true." The two nodded and drank
a beer in silence as the moonlight danced on the water. It was
their last shared moment in the familiarity of a world they both
knew, because tomorrow everything would change. They all said their
goodbyes, and Josh promised to find them when they
returned.

Josh and Tammy went home that night
and packed what they needed for the trip. Once ready, the three of
them drove to Norfolk Virginia, from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Along the way they could see water creeping into the low land
areas. Once dry forestland now resembled bogs as the moon shone off
of the water like a mirror.