Act II, Scene 2 of 2100 CE
The familiar feeling of sand and cold ocean air was as comforting here as it was haunting back home. Her eyes closed against the blast; the long-accustomed routine of a lifetime spent on the beach. She waited and when the wind died, she opened her eyes once more and looked out across the Atlantic.
Gone was the gaping void in her stomach which opened each time she looked across the Chesapeake. Here the experience was like something from another lifetime. The clouds which characterized the last two years of life on the coast had today given way to clear blue skies and its accompanying frigid air.
She pulled the blanket draped over her closer and smiled. She was sheltered against the worst of the wind by the remnants of walls which had once belonged to a beachfront mansion. Abandoned by owners tired of dealing with the shrinking coastline, the dunes quickly reclaimed their place, while those closest to the beach disappeared altogether. There were still places where people lived, further south in the direction of Kitty Hawk, but this far north there were only vacationers camping on the beach.
Out among the waves some hundred yards from where she sat, a small knot of people was trying their collective hand at surfing. The laughter and shouting which floated up to her, however, made her think they were more interested in playing with one another than with the waves.
Lying on a towel next to her, dressed in boardshorts and a t-shirt, Ted suddenly sat bolt upright. He shaded his eyes against the sun, glaring at the would-be surfers. “Those idiots are going to break the board.”
Julia watched as one of the boards rocketed into the air, the people below squealing with delight as the board smacked back into the water. “Should we say something?”
Ted shrugged. “It’s their money. Now, if they were using my board…” He shook a fist in the air.
She smiled.
Ted laughed. “But seriously, I would probably just kill them. No big deal.” He grinned at her, cheeky. “But really, I don’t get how these surf camps work. They don’t know what they’re doing. They give them all of two hours of lessons at oh-dark-thirty, never teach them to stand on their own two feet, and then tell them they can borrow the board the rest of the day. That’s not a camp.”
“It makes money,” she said, sinking down in her chair. “They keep people coming back for lessons. If you don’t teach them anything the first time, they have to come back for more. Let them borrow the board and they’re going to get frustrated, and they assume that means they need more lessons.”
“They break the board, charge them for a new one, but buy a used one to replace,” Ted added. He tapped thoughtfully at his chin, making humming sounds.
Julia giggled.
“You know,” he said, a broad grin spreading across his face, “that’s not a bad business model. Hell, throw in some cheap alcohol deals and you’re sure to have broken boards!”
She laughed. “Broken bones, too!”
“Then it’s a win-win!” he exclaimed, waving his hands. “They signed a waiver, and we’re vaguely medical people. I’ll drive them, you treat them. We can make bank! They’ll be so impressed they’ll have to come back next season!”
She was laughing along.
“We’ll open a surf shop/bar/clinic,” he said in that goofy tone of his. “We’ll call it Ted and Julia’s Great Surfing Adventure!”
“Ted and Julia?”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said in mock deference. “Julia and Ted’s Great Surfing Adventure. We could even offer IV cocktails—for when drinking just isn’t enough.”
She was laughing so hard that tears were streaming from her eyes. “Oh my God, you’re so stupid!”
“I prefer the term, awesomely brilliant.”
They laughed for a while together, starting and stopping in fits as one would accidentally provoke the other again. They laughed until her cheeks hurt, and she had to gasp for breath. It was like being a kid again, just shooting the breeze and having fun. She could not recall the last time she had laughed so much.
When Emile was here.
The intrusive thought was as sobering as the flash of blue-and-red lights in a rearview mirror, leaching what little cheer remained into the Atlantic air and replacing it with guilt. She gasped as the void opened in her stomach, drawing from her small whimper.
“What the…”
“It’s nothing,” she said, raising a hand against his concern. She looked down at the sand and fought the urge to cry. “I just—”
A sound like one from a jet engine passing too close shook the walls and the very air in her chest, a resonant boom over which she had no hope of speaking.
“Christ Almighty…” Ted said as the sound subsided.
Julia looked up to see what he was talking about. Following his sightline, she saw the object which had come to transfix his attention.
High among the white streaks of cirrus clouds, a black object descended slowly across the sky. It trailed a long line of fire and black smoke which traced its course from far off to their right.
It was falling.
“Another asteroid?”
Out on the water, the “surfers” were screaming, running out of the water toward the perceived safety of land.
Ted flung open his backpack, emptying the contents on his towel before pulling a pair of binoculars from the tangle. “God knows why my mom got me these,” he said as he blew sand off them before bringing them to his eyes.
If it’s another asteroid…
The one that had hit southern California had devested the surrounding countryside, vaporizing hundreds of millions, while the ensuing tidal waves it sent across the Pacific had all but washed over most of the Pacific atolls, wiping out population centers from Hawai’i to Japan, the southern coastline of China, all of Vietnam, Indonesia, and the eastern coast of Australia. Singapore, Fiji, and most of Micronesia literally disappeared beneath the waves. If the separatists had managed another drop, there would be nowhere they could run in time…
“Christ, it’s a ship!”
Julia stood as a second wave of sonic booms shook the air around them.
“It doesn’t look like one of ours,” Ted said, watching the action through the binoculars. “Not one I’ve ever seen.”
More sonic booms, but this time from the horizon, and only belatedly did she realize there were specks of white streaking up towards the descending object.
Ted thrust the binoculars in her hands. “See what you make of it.”
Through the digitally magnified view, she recognized the gray fighter jets as belonging to the Navy—the same as the ones she routinely saw flying over Norfolk. They were taking runs at the ship in pairs, each unleashing a missile with each run before strafing the side of the thing with their machineguns. Like some sort of intricate dance, they banked and circled, repeating the maneuver from the object’s fiery tail to its blackened nose.
The offender was not entirely defenseless, however. Long arcs of automatic cannon fire burst forth from mobile turrets that looked like blisters on the ship’s hull. They traversed their fire just seconds behind the attacking fighters. On either of its sides, triangular wing-flaps attempted to adjust the lumbering ship’s course, before both were blown off by another round of missiles, nearly sending the ship into an uncontrolled spin. Whoever was at the controls was a good pilot.
As she watched the magnified view in silence, she saw a hatch on the dorsal side of the ship burst open, a cloud of white smoke sending the hatch turning end-over-end wildly in the ship’s wake. And then someone poked their head out—
It wasn’t a person.
She blinked at what she saw. It certainly looked like a person, but it was far too big—it was at least the size of one of the fighters, if not larger and much bulkier. The blue robotic body was topped by a head more reminiscent of a diver than a person, and a single glowing cyclops eye at its center. The eye flashed gold as the humanoid figure drew a massive arm from inside the hatch, revealing a long tube carried over its shoulder. It was a gun, she realized belatedly as the figure took aim, only one the size of the guns on the battleship Wisconsin!
But then the ship exploded, a massive ball of light brighter than the sun. She dropped the binoculars in surprise, squeezing her eyes shut against the blinding light—and then the blast came, louder than the ones before, screaming in her ears. The air that came with it was superheated, like standing took close to an open oven.
And as quickly as it had begun, it was all over. Through the spots glimmering still before her eyes, she saw the ship was done, its place in the sky exchanged for a cloud of smoke from which trails of burning debris fell to the ocean below. The fighters circled the flaming debris a few times, scanning the surface of the ocean before breaking off to assume a looping halo formation over the spot.
“Jesus,” Ted breathed, picking up the binoculars from where she had dropped them. “Jesus. The sent down a ship.”
Julia continued to blink against the spots in her vision. “I saw something weird, right before it blew up.”
Ted gave her a sideways look.
“It was like—like a giant, blue robot,” she said, trying to think of a way to describe it. “A giant, blue humanoid robot, with a head and arms, shoulders, hands, fingers… And a glowing yellow eye.”
Ted frowned. “What?”
She pointed to the binoculars. “Right before it blew up, a door opened on the top and it started to get out. It was big, way too big to just be somebody in a spacesuit. It was trying to get out to shoot the fighters.”
Ted raised the binoculars to scan the horizon. “A giant humanoid robot?”
“Yeah,” she said. The brightest of the spots in her vision were at last beginning to dissipate. “I know it sounds weird…”
Ted did not respond, at least not immediately. He continued scanning the horizon for a time, before finally saying, “We should go. There’s no telling what sorts of chemicals were on that thing, and we don’t want to inhale them.”
One of the people who had been down on the beach came running up. “Fuck,” he gasped, “what the hell was that?”
Ted knew him. He was one of the people they were splitting the campsite with. Ted regarded the other with a strange look before responding, “Not sure. Maybe some space debris.” He started gathering his things. Julia took Ted’s cue, shrugging at the questioning look shot her way and beginning to gather her things.
“Space debris,” the guy—what was his name? Scott?—repeated, disbelieving. He looked out towards where the ship had exploded. “So not an asteroid?”
“No,” Ted responded, zipping up his backpack and helping Julia with her chair. “Definitely not an asteroid.”
Overhead the fighters continued to circle, booming roared past overhead. Amid the din of sonic booms, Ted set off, clearly intent on avoiding any more questions. Julia followed, but not before stealing one last glance over her shoulder at the ocean and its marred skies.
Continues with Stripes.
Part of 2100 CE.
