Earth: January 22nd, 2320, Lunar Park observatory, Los Angeles, Ca.
He sat there for a considerable amount of time before he decided that perhaps his facts needed to be reexamined, he began to paw at the folders that lay scattered across the top of his desk searching almost frantically for the one marked “Collision 2320-1” he dropped his round spectacle eyeglasses, and in the haste of trying to pick them up, knocked over a perfectly good cup of black coffee, soaking every paper that lay spread out across the counter top adjacent to his own work space. He stopped, abruptly running his fingers through his jet black hair, his dark eyes darting nervously across the desk top, He could feel a sudden rush of panic that began to slowly sweep over him where had he put that cursed folder?
“Winston!” he shouted. His high-pitched squeaky voice loudly echoed down the empty hallway into the next room. A small framed young man appeared through in the doorway, his hands clasped in front of him, a quizzical look flashed across his thin almost pale face.
“Yes Noah?” he asked.
Noah Kramer was trying to soak up the contents of the coffee cup with a roll of paper towels, and without looking back, he began to interrogate the nervous young man as to the whereabouts of the folder in question.
Winston Harper was leaning forward slightly, his hands still clasped tightly together in front of him, his own bright blue eyes darted, trying to see everything at once, finally resting on Noah Kramer, who had now turned to face him.
“The collision 2320-1 folder, where is it? do you know?”
“Yes sir, I put it in the drawer right below your monitor, so it wouldn’t get-”
“Damaged by my Clumsiness?” Noah Kramer Interrupted.
“I-I wasn’t going to say that, sir!” he stammered.
Never raising his eyes to even glance in the nervous young man's direction.“it’s alright Winston.” he smiled, “I said it for you.”
He reached down and opened the drawer, his hands carefully reaching in for the folder, he nervously spread its contents across the surface of his desk, he carefully read through each numerical equation twice, before he would call his superiors to confess the error, he sat down and wrote a note to the director of operations, pausing momentarily to reflect on what he would write before he concluded that a note simply would not do, he should be told face to face. He closed the folder and stood up to gather his new notes and stuffed them into the folder with the others. It was one year ago, to the day, when Noah Kramer saw the strange anomaly in deep space as it silently made its way towards earth, it wasn’t a meteor, it wasn’t an asteroid, and it certainly wasn’t a comet, the only thing that he was certain of, was that whatever it was that it would eventually turn out to be, it was on a direct path to the earth. The team that was assembled to observe the anomaly determined that it would be a full two years before it was close enough to do any damage to the planet itself, but here in that very same observatory, Noah Kramer discovered a flaw in their mathematics. And the earth wouldn’t have another year before the strange object reached its atmosphere, it had one month.
The director sat and listened silently with other members of the assembly, as Noah Kramer cautiously explained the entire situation to them. He could feel the skeptical stare’s as they almost seemed to pierce through his very skin, and the silence after he had finished with his presentation of the grim news was deafening. The director removed his eyeglasses and began to rub the bridge of his nose. Other members of the panel muttered to themselves, others turned towards their colleagues and cursed softly. He patiently answered their questions, no, the object actually wasn’t simply one object, but rather a large cluster of small ones, almost like a meteor shower, no they could not be certain of what effect that an impact would have on human life on Earth, all that he really knew was that an impact was indeed coming, and it was coming very soon. Despite the warning’s of Noah Kramer, it was decided that the particles contained in the anomaly would burn up and turn to dust once inside the Earth’s atmosphere and there really was no cause for alarm.
And when the large cloak of dust rained down on the planet one month later and turned the entire sky to gray for three days and nights, the whole world held its collective breath for humanity and waited for the sun's return. On the fourth day after impact, the whole world breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the sun had indeed returned and brightened the beautiful blue skies of Earth once again. It appeared as though the cosmic dust storm would have absolutely no effect on life on Earth at all. But unknown to human kind, it only SEEMED that way, for just beneath the surface of normalcy, evolution was stirring. The dust storm hadn’t changed life on earth for the HUMAN race. But the animals. The animals were another story…
~Scratch. A.B.T. copyright © 2009~
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