“I know. But it’s not. It can’t be.”
Lane closed the binder. “How did you end up getting involved with this?”
“I actually friend requested Julius by accident. It was one of those ‘people you may know’ things, and I saw the mutual acquaintances and clicked, I realized after I clicked, I wasn’t accepting a request, I was making one.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember that because he immediately sent me a message asking if he knew me. And I said it was by accident, but we had mutual friends. That sort of thing. Anyhow that was a while ago, like three years. Some post popped up about space junk.”
“Space junk?” Lane asked.
“Actually, space debris. Lane, seriously, that’s real and that’s scary. You would not believe how much is floating above us. One thing led to another. It was a natural progression because I found things, he said really interesting stuff.”
“I remember when you joined the group. You told me about it.”
I nodded. “It was weird because he had been consulted for the Jupiter project and it scared him.”
“There’s a lot of stuff here, Jana, but do you think this guy is for real? His name? I mean, the deep dark, secret section of NASA? What if he’s just like some guy in a basement, a weather aficionado who happened to figure this out.”
“That’s a long time to be predicting weather,” I replied. “No one can predict a year in advance, and he’s been saying this was going to happen after they launched. Not so soon. I wish the phones weren’t down or the internet.”
“Hello!” a woman’s voice called from outside the RV.
I slid from the table and walked to the open door. “Hello.”
Liza from the diner had come in the garage, she stood by the door of the office looking in. “Thought you were in here.”
“What’s up?” I asked. “Did Martin get back?”
“Not yet,” she replied. “Hey, we have the generator running. We’re gonna cook up some stuff from the fridge. Thought maybe the kids would be hungry, and we’re gonna hook up an antenna box for the TV, hope to pick something up. Just wanted to let you know.”
“Thank you. That’s very nice.”
She gave a nod in a ‘no problem’ way and turned.
I backed stepped into the RV. “You heard?”
“I heard.” Lane stood from the table. “Let’s take the kids over. I’m sure they’re hungry. Maybe they’ll get something on the television.”
“You really think so?” I asked. “I mean we are in the middle of nowhere.”
“Who knows? If the so called Jupiter project can screw up the weather by messing with the atmosphere, maybe it can screw it up enough to bounce some signals.”
I stifled a laugh, not wanting to come across as ridiculing his suggestion. It was hard to tell at the moment if Lane was being serious or facetious.
At the very least, news or not, getting something to eat would be a way to pass the time while waiting on Martin.
A hint of coffee smell seeped through the aroma of hamburger and bacon scent filling the diner. I suppose they didn’t need a generator for the grill, the coffee maker was a different story.
They didn’t run the air conditioning though, it was too much of a pull, and it was getting warm and stuffy.
When we returned the windows were open, but there wasn’t a breeze.
There were a dozen people inside the cafe, including Liza and Skip.
They sat at a table, looking as lost as I felt.
A man stood on a chair, holding a box with a wire flowing to the television. He was fiddling with the set which was perched in the corner near the end of the counter.
When we were teenagers, my father decided we wouldn’t need cable and could get by with an antenna.
Elise used to call it squiggle vision.
It was the first time since the storms struck, I had thought of Elise. I didn’t think she was in any danger, but I wondered if she worried about her children.
The television was a small flat screen so there was no banging on it like my father did to get a picture, I watched the word ‘scan’ on the bottom of the screen as the television went through various shades of static.
“You kids want some ice cream first?” Liz asked. “Although Cook is frying up some French fries.”
Carlie wasn’t a big sweets person. “I’ll wait for the fries.”
“I’ll have ice cream,” Reese said. “I love ice cream.”
“Milk shake or sundae?” Liz asked.
“Oh, Milk shake please, thank you,” Reese replied. “Chocolate.”
“I got something.” Television man said. He stayed standing on the chair, waiting, in case he had to fiddle with the antenna box again.
Everyone went on pause, drew quiet and tried to watch and listen to the man on television.
Obviously, it was a newscaster. The reception caused breaks in his voice and static rushed the screen in between the jumpy video.
“West of here,” he said. “Again, we are urging all Phoenix residents to stay inside with means to get below.”
“Phoenix?” someone asked. “We’re picking up Phoenix?”
That comment caused me to immediately look at Lane and think of the comment he had made about the Jupiter project.
A few people hushed him.
“Unfortunately.” The newscaster said. “The windstorm that hit Avondale and Friendship Park are just the tip of the iceberg. We have Stan Liam with the Ace-Forecast. Stan, what do we have?”
“Nothing like I’ve ever seen.” Stan stood before a map of the US, a deep purple cloud covered the western portion of the United States. This looks like four, yes, I said four category five hurricanes, at least category five, forming off the coast of California. But Bill, I’ll tell you these look larger. They are huge. The West Coast has already been hit, and this is just going to be the icing on the cake.”
“Do we know why this is happening?” Bill the newscaster asked.
“No. It came out of nowhere,”
