I laughed even harder.
“DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD head back?” Garrett asked.
“Probably. Thanks for coming out here with me. I had fun.”
Garrett’s eyes twinkled. “It’s no problem. Thank you for showing me your secret critters.”
“Skitters,” I said, and winked. He laughed again.
On the journey back to our huts, we walked close together. Our shoulders occasionally bumped and the other would shy away. Laughing and blushing, we walked home in euphoria. When we arrived, we saw the crowd of people huddled around the TV crew’s camp.
“What’s going on?” Garrett asked as he started to push through the crowd.
Everyone turned to look at us, almost tearful. No one said a word. My heart dropped without even knowing what was going on. They looked at us in pity, as though we were innocent now, but would soon be scarred.
Pushing through the people to see what the big deal was, I noticed a TV monitor positioned at the forefront of the crowd. The TV crew had accomplished receiving Earth’s international news here on Circadia. The headlines that flew across the screen over and over were horrifying.
“Nuclear War Fallout”
“World War Three”
“Millions Dead After Nuclear Blast”
Broadcasts came in and out as we tempted the limits of distance with our technology. A newscaster spoke, “As you can see, two nuclear blasts have been detected near New York and Moscow. At this moment, it is not known where the bombs have come from, but we are waiting on further intel. It is unclear how far the blasts have reached, and what is being done. Wait—we are getting new information now: there has been another nuclear bomb just outside of L.A.” The words cut like glass. Deep and quick. Screams from the newsroom could be heard as the massacre unfolded. We repeatedly watched video streams of the devastation that marked its path. Clips of the bombs blasting. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.
The plume of smoke rose high into the air. That’s what we saw on the news, but what they saw down there must have looked a lot different. Choking images of ash clouding the air flooded my mind. The thought of the stench of burned buildings, of burned flesh. The thought that the whole world was at war and there were people down there in the middle of it, were the most gut-wrenching images that had ever crossed my mind.
The mushroom cloud could be seen for thousands of miles around each target. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, all covered in ash and some badly burned, poured into surrounding countries. What seemed like such a huge world before suddenly became a lot smaller.
Had we not turned on the TV that night, we would never have known. Everything seemed so distant, but so personal. My initial reaction was one of no emotion. Almost as if it was a cruel joke. I looked around at all of the people surrounding me. No one flinched, just sobbed quietly. It took a good two minutes to realize that I wasn’t in a nightmare, and I hadn’t died and gone to hell. This was real. It was hell on Earth, and we weren’t there.
Not a soul moved from the television screen that night. Everyone was either staring at the monitor or crying into their hands. I looked behind me, into the sky, toward Earth. The enormous globe loomed, as always, but this time it was different.
We had been so consumed with making Circadia work that all of us had forgotten to look up into the sky, toward home. The debris trapped in the ozone was obvious, creating a cloudy overcast over most of Earth. Our planet was falling to pieces, and we were worlds apart. I felt the tears stream from my eyes, but I didn’t make a sound. Instead, I stared for hours at the smoldering planet we had left behind.
THE DAYS DRAGGED ON after that night. Everyone continued to watch the television in between their necessary chores, but not a whole lot was done. More information trickled in slowly, but it was never enough. There were always holes in the info, since we had no previous knowledge of what led to this or even who had done it, and our signal was frequently lost.
The nuclear blasts had hit at night while no one was expecting it. Unlike the bombs used in WWII, these were megaton bombs. They killed everyone within a three-mile radius of the blast instantly, gave severe burns to anyone within an eight-mile radius, and temporarily blinded anyone within a thirteen-mile radius. The site of the bomb blast was estimated to reach five hundred and forty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Heat instantly destroyed large cities. Long-range photographs were taken that showed an enormous cloud of smoke in the shape of a mushroom. The visual was enough to make me want to puke.
Since five large cities were hit by the all-out war, frantic instructional videos played over and over warning people of the dangers of nuclear fallout and what to do to prevent poisoning. We watched on repeat, in shock, but couldn’t feel the full effect since we weren’t there.
Newscasters reported that the ash covered a couple thousand miles, and there was no body count because the numbers were too high. The whole Earth went archaic as technology was disrupted or outright failed. Anarchy rose and fell, as governments and civilians battled. Over what? No one had any idea. It was chaos.
The Earth spun downward, careening into oblivion. When there wasn’t talk of the uprising and rallies on the news, they were talking about the nuclear winter that was forming. The nuclear debris was trapped in the Earth’s stratosphere, blocking out the sun. What crops remained unharmed by the war would soon die off as a result of the temperatures dropping by at least ten degrees across the globe.
Panic about where their next meal would come from and what was being done to fix it erupted among the masses. Looting became more prevalent and the
