The words Sentry System appeared at the top of the screen. Below them was a bright yellow circle. The third dot read Earth. She’d heard an old man in the laundry facility once talk about how there were more planets than theirs, perhaps as many as nine. But this diagram showed smaller objects among the planets. Three of them were flashing red and black, two small dots followed by a very big one. As she stared at the moving diagram, the flashing triad moved ever closer to Earth, crossing into its orbit. The three smaller dots collided with Earth. A series of numbers flashed across the screen: Fragment 1: 3.7 km. 0.00002 lunar distance. COLLISION CERTAIN. Torino Scale 9. Regional Damage. Fragment 2: 3.2 km. 0.00031 lunar distance. COLLISION CERTAIN. Torino Scale 8. Regional Damage. Fragment 3: 942 m. 0.00014 lunar distance. COLLISION CERTAIN. Torino Scale 8. Regional Damage.
The animation continued. The big dot missed the earth and continued its loop around the sun. It wheeled around, repeating its orbit. Once again it entered Earth’s trajectory, but this time they collided. A series of numbers read: Main asteroid: 9.2 km. 0.00011 lunar distance. COLLISION CERTAIN. Torino Scale 10. Global Climatic Catastrophe.
The diagram changed now, zooming in to the little dot that was Earth. As the detail increased, drawn outlines appeared on the earth, forming different shapes. She thought they might be the profiles of the lands. Then the animation showed exactly where the first two fragments would hit. A large portion of one of the landmasses bloomed red. Then she saw where the main object would strike on its next swing around the earth. As it struck the planet, a red circle bloomed out from the area of impact. It swept outward, covering the entire earth.
She looked at the dates on the collisions. The first fragment was due to hit in two months, the main asteroid the next time it swung around the sun. She brushed off a lump in the dust, finding a plastic oval with two buttons. A wire ran out from it, plugging into the upright metal box. She clicked on one of the buttons, and the diagram with the circles vanished. The beeping stopped at once. She stared at a black screen with a blue icon that read Previous Impact. When she moved the oval, an arrow moved on the screen. She clicked on the icon, and several small images appeared. She hovered over one of them, then clicked the button again. Something new filled the screen: a movie. It was just like the videos she could create on her personal recording device, but instead of emanating on a floating display as it did on her PRD, it appeared on the glass screen itself.
A woman was standing before a burning building, smoke billowing upward, the sky filled with black ash. The woman’s voice came from the beeping device: “Since the catastrophic disaster on the mining asteroid Free Enterprise was first reported, we have been dreading this day. As underfunded government space agencies raced unsuccessfully to prevent the impacts, this nightmare has become a reality. Several fragments of the asteroid have landed here in Chicago, destroying a huge part of the downtown area. Residents have evacuated as more debris is expected to fall. Critics blame the current administration for not granting NASA enough funding to track near-Earth objects.”
H124 could hear strange wailing noises in the background, mechanical and haunting. Flashing lights reflected off the building, and she could hear people screaming.
“More fragments fell north of this location, causing a factory to catch fire and burn down several city blocks.”
The movie finished.
She clicked the little button on the hand device, and the video played again. Now she clicked on a different image on the screen. Another movie opened. A man stood in front of more burning wreckage, the blackened shell of a building behind him. She heard his voice coming through and adjusted the small dial so it would be quieter. “The fourth of the huge fragments has devastated downtown Chicago,” he said. “These are just small parts of the asteroid that have broken off after the catastrophic disaster on Free Enterprise. Scientists at NASA are now saying that the asteroid and its remaining fragments, far larger than the ones that have crashed here, have been knocked into an unknown orbit. NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab will have to calculate their new trajectory before we know if these disastrous pieces of space rock will endanger our planet in the future. Though from what we’ve been told by our Washington, D.C. affiliate, while this has certainly been a devastating day for the city of Chicago, scientists have at least eighty years—possibly as long as two hundred and thirty-two—before the main asteroid and its larger fragments pass this close again.”
The movie stopped, and she watched it again. She didn’t understand a lot of the words the man and the woman had said. Chicago? Asteroid? NASA? Washington?
She clicked on the other image, and the animation opened again, showing the orbits of the planets and the flashing dots. She now knew what she was looking at. Those eighty years—or two hundred and thirty-two—had elapsed, and these things were coming fast.
She whipped out her personal recording device. The room’s technology was so old that she couldn’t find a way to pair her PRD with the screen itself, so she had to settle for just using her camera. She filmed the animation, then the two movies.
Plugged into the upright machine was a small metal-and-plastic device. It glowed along one side. She found several more in one of the drawers. On one end of each device was a shiny metal plug. She grabbed all of them and pulled the other one out of the machine. Something beeped when she did. In the drawers beneath the little devices was a small binder full of gleaming discs. She
