Day 7

D7

Bill Daniels and his growing family are getting installed in the nice house in the hills overlooking Perth Australia.  The town is ten miles away, but the lights are visible at night so you have a nice mix of country and urban reality.

          “And we’re 2,000 feet above sea level,” Bill notes to Sylvia.  She kisses him in a gesture of married appreciation.  Bill can’t remember his last erection, but, “it’s not like that any more.”  The family is most important to him and he dreads seeing the kids approach separation ages.

          “What do you think will happen?” says Sylvia on the morning of the 13^th.

          “Well, remember it won’t happen until midnight here as we’re half a day ahead being half way around the world.  That was the idea,” he reminds her.  Sylvia is not the sharpest knife in the block, but then this has all been a great challenge for her from the beginning.  She has done very well.

          Filly and Charlotte are settling in with the routine at the South Pole Science Station.  They are made staff members with regular duties and tasks so they barely have time to think of the reality of their situation.  The staff has been told they are here on a reporting mission and Dr. Fogsten would only do it if his wife could be with him as he was going to be there for at least three months and maybe six.  Charlotte really gets into it as she has long admired “science stuff” and they have an excellent library on base.

          Layton Panola has made getting the time traveler back to his time “Project Number One” and keep pressure on the Colonel to load the helium 3 the little man needs to fuel his flying saucer.  With little more than a day to go the craft is prepared and the tiny man has run all the tests.

          “It is time,” he projects to Layton and the Colonel who is directing the crew tending to the craft.  They dolly it outside on the night of April six, 2029.  The little man pauses before he enters the craft and offers his hand to the Colonel projecting to him, “Thank you for everything, sir,” and the Colonel nods.  He then turns to Layton with the same gesture and thought expression.  He turns, walks to the craft, enters and shuts the hatch.  Layton and the Colonel walk away and when they turn back the craft has vanished.

          “Hope he makes it,” says the Colonel.

          “He may not?”

          “That’s what he told us.  Says they lose them frequently.  Like the two in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.”

          “You mean that was real?”

          “Sure.”

          “Why the Hell were we not told?”

          “Sir, with all due respect. You guys come and go.  We get a different flavor every four years, eight years for sure.  Something has to be constant in this country, sir.”

          “My God, I never thought of it that way.”

          “Course not, you are in the elected ruling class.”

          “I’m not elected.”

          “Well, you know what I mean.  You are part of it.”

          “God, I never thought of it that way.”

          “Well, it is that way, sir,” and the two men went back underground.

          Meanwhile in space Aphophis is accelerating to 40 miles per second in the pull of Earth’s gravity as the clockwork mechanism of a turning Earth and an accelerating ten mile diameter planetoid prepare for a date “that will live in infamy,” but few will be left to record it.  Everything that man has built will be gone and the few surviving will scavenge for whatever life they can eke from the aftermath.

          The news wires are burning with the New York Times headline and leaked stories followed by denials.  Then the rock is seen by millions as a star in broad daylight!  The various governments have no explanation and people begin to gather at religious shrines, but the people are remarkably calm and fatalistic.  The TV cynics say, “Well there is something to be said for secularism.  We don’t believe in anything.”

          Preachers are ringing bells and playing electronic carillons.  Every city is filled with bells calling the people to worship.  Work grinds to a halt.  People walk away from jobs.  Garbage is not collected.  Mail is not delivered. Offices are empty and millions stand in the streets gazing at this bright dot in the sky.

          “It’s getting bigger!” is heard.

          Amateur astronomers are on the radio explaining what it is and that it has long been expected to fly by Earth, but hosts ask, “Well then isn’t our government saying that?  And, what about the professional astronomers who have vanished or been killed?  There are no answers.

          Suicides are widely reported and one man manages to jump from the Empire State Building in spite of the claimed “suicide proof” installations.  It takes a crew with shovels an hour to get his remains off the pavement and put them in a large pizza box.  

          As the first traces of atmosphere strike Apophis the rock begins to glow.  Then it leaves a trail of smoke.  At 192 times the speed of sound it is generating a shock wave that is harder than tool steel moving at over 200,000 feet per second.  It will smash everything to dust and circle the earth in less than six seconds.  It contains so much energy it ignites the atmosphere burning oxygen into the five oxides of nitrogen, all of which are poisonous to animal life.  One, nitrous oxide is intoxicating so some lucky people will literally “die laughing,” while terrified.

          The only survivors will be those underground with enough air to last for the week it will take for the sun to decay the oxides of nitrogen. The process will be inhibited by the dust created at the impact crater and by the shock wave crushing everything to dust.

          Millions of people see the rock pass overhead passing from horizon to horizon in one second.  The impact happens so quickly the people have no perception of it.  Here now and gone in less than one heartbeat. It is that quick for everyone within 200 miles of ground zero.

          For the area from 200 miles to 1,000 miles a roaring, ear-
splitting, painful explosion is heard and the shock wave hits soon after, crushing everything.

          Huge tidal waves are formed in both the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean as the energy of impact translates into the oceans on either side of Mexico.  They are two miles tall and moving at 1,000 miles per hour. Every ship at sea will be tossed like a toothpick in a flushed toilet and vanish.

          At distances greater than 1,000 miles people feel the earth move then they hear a deafeningly loud explosion followed by the shock wave that flattens everything standing, but does not kill them outright as it is dissipating.  Then the sky turns orange as the fire burning nitrogen with oxygen is seen and overwhelms those left standing for a distance of 8,000 miles.

          Tsunami kill 80% of the people on the planet as they live within 50 miles of the world’s oceans and major rivers.  Rivers are drained as tsunami approach and then refill with a mile tall wave.  The waves crush everything within hundreds of miles of the shores traveling up river channels at 500 miles per hour with mile tall wall of water.

          When the carnage is over Earth is quiet; the sound of death is no sound at all.

          Meanwhile, a few hundred thousand people who were under-ground return to the surface to find a world of rubble.  Many will die of untreated injuries, infectious disease or starvation, but we know the human race will survive the apocalypse asteroid.