Roan Carratu
Frozen In Time
-Copyright 2002 Roan Carratu
Sample: First Chapter (Rated PG-13)
Wednesday Event Day 01
Ted Kinsy was running home when IT happened. He was 8 years old and late to get home from school, something his Mom would never put up with after her lecture that morning about coming 'straight home from school'. He expected to end up with several hours stuck in his room, sitting in the middle of the floor, punished by sheer boredom.
IT lasted only about 15 minutes, time enough for him to stop and stare at the weirdness. The sun, normal for a bright spring day, suddenly became a too bright steady glowing wide bar arcing from West to East without a flicker while the rest of the sky became a darker blue, and out in the distance, the ground flickered from green to brown to black to green again. A small tree right on the edge of his Father's farm just seemed to disappear, and a whole bunch of other trees appeared, big trees, all around that end of the Farm. The sun suddenly became normal again, but it was nearly overhead, not down close to the horizon like it had been. It was all so... puzzling! It was strange, but Ted didn't get scared. It was too strange to get scared about.
Ted walked home slower, staring at the trees in the distance, especially at the really huge trees, some with trunks seeming almost as big as a house, and at some kind of bird, a huge black bird, which flew towards him slowly, riding the thermals off the freshly plowed fields.
Mary Kinsy was looking for her too late son, although her other five children left her little time for it. Ted was the oldest, and then there was Kathy, 7 years old, Steven, 6, Pennie, 5, Glynda, 4, and Perry, 2, her last child. They were, of course, the smallest farm family, the town being 90% LDS and the newer generation of LDS having revived the old practice of having multitudes of babies.
She happened to be standing in their yard looking towards the town, her two youngest children Perry and Glynda hanging on her legs, when IT happened. The sun became a steady arch of light from horizon to horizon, from the eastern mountains to the western mountains, while stretching into a wide band north to south, so bright even squinting her eyes hurt. She felt nothing else, but looked with watering eyes around at the too bright light, the almost shadowless plants around her which looked strange in the weird light.
Then it was gone, and she looked around at a normal day again, except... the sun was not setting... it was overhead. It was just past noon, maybe around 1pm, according to the sun. She looked at her watch, then at the sun again. Her watch said 6pm, not 1pm... Something was very wrong, and she felt a shiver go up her spine... she was suddenly afraid, very afraid. Biblical passages from the old testament flashed through her mind, very frightening passages.
Jeff, Mary's husband, had just climbed off his tractor when IT happened. He almost stumbled as the light changed into the arch of sunlight and it's sudden end in the wrong place. He was near the Sphere's edge, and when it contracted 40,000 years before, the new edge was just behind his tractor. The plow he had towed had been in the green zone, and over the millennia, it had rusted away to nothing, so now only the hitch remained, ending at a profuse green tangle of weeds and high grasses that to his memory he had just plowed under.
A corner of his field was no longer plowed, not the rich brown earth he had turned up, but now lush grasses grew there that looked as natural and pristine as if they had never felt the plow before. About thirty feet beyond the grass, a stand of trees grew, with thick brown trunks at least two feet thick, a thick layer of dead leaves below them preventing the grasses from encroaching. The border between his field and the greenery stood out abrupt and obvious, an almost straight line raised slightly, with the roots of plants showing in profound complexity in the brown soil, looking like plants grown in an aquarium, where the glass stopped the roots and soil from escaping.
Jeff looked at the sun, then at his watch, then at the greenery, then at his plowed fields and the town beyond. Far off, he heard the sound of a great metallic roar, as if many cars were crashing together on the Interstate. It lasted a minute or two, then silence, incredible silence. It was almost as if the Interstate was closed, like during the heavy snows. He climbed back on the tractor and started it up, then drove slowly home.
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The cars and trucks on the heavily traveled freeway suddenly ran out of pavement. Going sixty to eighty miles an hour, they went from smooth paved road to rock and brush and trees almost instantly, and the resulting pileups went in both directions on all lanes, North and South. Twenty two cars and nine trucks managed to stop by sliding off the pavement to the side, rather than pile up in a heap of torn metal and torn bodies at two edges of the suddenly terminated Interstate.
Twelve cars and a truck speeding south piled into each other at the South end of the Interstate, and two cars and two trucks driving north at the North end. Luckily, none of the trucks had gasoline or deadly chemicals in them. Nine people were killed instantly, with twenty one injured. The rest of the cars and trucks either managed to stop in time or swerved to one side or another to stop.
Youngston's small twenty bed hospital contained a fully equipped ER, three operating rooms, and three ambulances. It was a tribute to the brave men and women of the ambulances and the fire rescue department that they arrived at the wrecks within ten minutes of the crashes despite the incredible changes around the town. Following procedures developed for mass terrorist attacks, the last wounded were extracted from the worse wreaks and on their way to the hospital within twenty minutes, and a small fire put out a half hour later.
A few minutes after the last car fire was out, the temporary Mayor and full time Fire Chief Jacob Hanes climbed on the fire truck and was told that the electricity and all communications were down but radio. He checked his cell phone, and then ran to his personal fire vehicle, needing to talk on the radio. What the hell had happened, he thought, opening the radio cover on the box located on the side of his vehicle.
Tall, thin, and sandy haired, the blue eyed 31 year old man pulled his heavy gloves off and wiped sweat off his forehead, staring at the radio in it's case on the side of his truck. Once a year they had tested the big radio set, but he had to think a moment to remember how to use it. He had been Fire Chief for nearly a decade, the youngest fire chief in the town's history, but recently the town council had appointed him temporary Mayor, and the two jobs had never conflicted before. The more energetic Youngston young people described the very quiet town as 'Rolling it's sidewalks up at dusk every night'.
He first radioed the police station at the courthouse, but found too much traffic, like every police car was calling in at once. So he called the radio stations, all five of them, knowing they had emergency radio sets, three AM, religious, Spanish, and Native American, and two FM, country and rock, expecting that they might have some info from their listeners... but, they informed him, the broadcast tower they once shared, on top of the nearest mountain to their East, seemed gone. It could usually be seen with binoculars, and they often checked on it that way after winter storms, but now they could see nothing. The tower was just gone!
Driving to the Interstate, Jacob had observed the traffic lights out, and assumed that the power was off. So the few emergency generators should be on, powering radios and other communication equipment. The radio station's emergency generators had gone on, they informed him, as they should, but they couldn't transmit. The one broadcast TV station in the town also used the same broadcast tower, and the cable downlink station couldn't find anything in orbit to link with.
For the first time in his life, Jacob could not talk to anyone he wanted or needed. Despite his firefighters running around him, searching through wreckage, Jacob felt more isolated than any time in his life. It shook him, forcing him to try to objectively analyze the absolutely strange situation. He walked to the grass and rock at the end of the Interstate, where it in explicatively just disappeared, he picked up some kind of dead creature, already dead when thoroughly smashed by the cars and trucks scattered all over the landscape. It bothered him that he could not identify it. It really looked like a giant mouse, a very large mouse... A way too large mouse. Maybe it was a rabbit, he thought, dismissing it. With a whole head of questions, he walked from one wreak to another, making sure all were now empty, and decided to ignore everything but the known responses, those procedures for emergencies he had memorized when he became Fire Chief and then Mayor. He quickly discarded the Fire department procedures... no help there!
He walked back to his truck, procedures bubbling through his consciousness. The town had a set of procedures for emergencies the Mayor was to follow. Not one of the situations listed was anything like this! The closest situation was a nuclear war scenario, where the town was cut off from the rest of the world by whatever danger and destruction had occurred. The procedure called for a town meeting, to give the people info on protecting themselves from radiation and to let them know the town's emergency services would be there for them. But this was not much like a nuclear war! Following that procedure, he opened the Homeland Security locker and quickly started up equipment, studying the results carefully.
After checking radiation and ultraviolet levels, Mayor Jacob determined there was no indication of immediate danger from Fallout, so he realized he had no choice but to call a town meeting, the first full town meeting since broadcast radio was introduced to Utah. As they drove the fire truck back into town, he used the truck radio to send the town's policemen and the other fire trucks running around the town, using their loudspeakers to inform the populace that a town meeting was called, so listen for the emergency signal on the town's siren. The Mayor also sent messengers to everyone he knew who might know something about what had just happened.
He stopped beside Chief Donaldson's car, asking for any info the old Chief of Police might have heard, but Donaldson was too busy on the radio to say much of anything. He seemed to think, from what Jacob overheard, that some terrorist group had caused a pileup on the Interstate.
Jacob had met Donaldson within a week of moving to Youngston, choosing the town because it was fairly small and close enough to his sister's family in Salt Lake City but far enough away to have a life of his own. He had just gotten back from Japan, from a Zen monastery he had lived and learned in for a year, and he was a little lost, still a little in culture shock. Donaldson had felt like a wise old man to Jacob, and they had had lunch together many days. Jacob had even gone to Donaldson's weekend barbecues at his apartment, where he had met the Town Council, which gave Jacob his job in the Fire Department and later led to the temporary Mayor appointment.
But it was obvious the old Chief had not a clue as to what was going on, so Jacob just shrugged and headed for the Courthouse. In his office, Jacob found a doctor from Youngston Hospital, Dr. James Korger, who asked to speak to the town first when the meeting was called. Jacob's secretary, Ruby, was so confused and afraid, she was almost hysterical, the first time Jacob had even seen the young woman rattled, much less thoroughly shaken!
Throughout the courthouse, despite it's backup power generators, everyone was running around in seeming confusion, following some emergency procedure or another... but they weren't all following the same procedure, which required Jacob to go from office to office shouting the procedure he wanted them to follow, an evaluation and resource inventory. He stopped to reassure many of the courthouse workers, considering that most of them were much older. After an uneventful life in Youngston, one of the quietest Mormon towns in Utah, most of them were almost hopelessly confused by the strangeness and sudden unusual requirements on them.
The small police force and the fire fighters both followed procedures pertaining to possible nuclear war, as well as announcing and setting up for a town meeting, a procedure not updated for nearly a hundred years. However, Jacob was confident they would adapt, and used the very old emergency radio in his office to follow their progress.
He spent his mind and energy attempting to find out what had happened, talking to various department heads and courthouse staff, but while he managed to write down what he should say at the Town Meeting, he could only hope he could read his own hurried handwriting when the time came.
An hour later, approximately two hours after the Event and just a confused noisy few minutes to Jacob, the siren went off three times in a row, three short blasts, and knowing what that meant, most people walked from their houses to the high school Gym while others drove from the surrounding farms, arriving to climb up into the bleachers behind the townspeople, more and more people arriving and squeezing into the building. Jacob hurried out to his car, hoping it would start, his heart beating intensely with nervousness and stage fear, feeling like a fool for ever taking this 'temporary' job as Mayor.
Never in it's recent history had everyone in the town gathered together anywhere. With the population of approximately 16,000 people, and the several thousand from surrounding farms, the Gym was no where near large enough to hold them all. When he arrived and realized this fact, Jacob felt like an idiot, and wondered why nobody had told him. Over the school speaker system, Mayor Jacob announced that the meeting would happen in the Football Stadium in one hour instead. He had one of the police stay at the high school and direct people to the new location as he headed to the Stadium, hoping a stage or something could be arranged there despite the crowds already flowing that direction.
It, afterwards called The Event, had scared or excited or humbled every man, woman, and child in the entire town, and they all came to find out what had happened. They brought their multitude of children, their parents, their babies and cousins and their cousin's babies... When the last few stragglers entered the stadium, they found the bleachers full, and the field was also full, with one small stage at one end for the Mayor, Chief of Police, heads of the town's civic departments, and eight religious officials, representing the LDS church, the Catholic church, one Synagogue, several smaller Christian churches, and the Native American Church.
Of course, all the religious denominations were tiny but two... the Mormon church, by far the largest, represented by Stake President Jake Smith, actual direct descendant of Joshep Smith, the great Mormon Leader. Bishop Simon Ortega represented the next largest religion, the Spanish Catholics, and there were ministers for the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches also. Grandfather Rose Sky represented the Native American church, a loose collection of members from many tribes and even some European American 'wannabes', derisively called 'red hippies' by others.
Very few department heads stood on the stage when Jacob arrived. They were likely busy doing the procedures tailored for their departments. Other officials and people from the college stood in a small crowd next to the stage, in case the Mayor called them. Jacob realized the dynamics of organization went beyond 'procedures' now... everyone was scared, and they organized spontaneously. It surprised the hell out of him!
The way the people he passed looked at him scared him also. An expression of stress showed on every face, and when they saw and recognized him, their expressions changed, as if he was the answer to their common problem. Some of them even smiled as they nodded in recognition, and the stress and confusion in their faces seemed to fade. It shook him a lot. He had never felt the 'weight' of being Mayor before... it had been almost honorary... now it was real!
"...I was talking to my friend in Tokyo about the... you know... the space alien thing? ...and suddenly the phone went dead!" Jacob overheard from a teen as he passed her.
"Me too!" Another girl responded, her voice just a squeak from stress. "I couldn't even call home..."
"...a blur in the sky, and now it's not 6pm anymore..." An older man said as Jacob passed him. "What was it?"
"Don't know yet." the policeman he spoke to replied. "Bet it was the... Pal-whatevers, the aliens! Some kind of attack." His voice was even more scared than the questioners.
Then Jacob reached the stadium bowl and could not hear anything after that. The noise from so many people, even in an open stadium, prevented hearing anything, not even from the podium. Jacob was amazed at the number of people, for the crowd filled the stadium completely, and luckily someone had thought to bring the carts of folding chairs over from the school, and the people themselves had set them up, filling almost the whole playing field also. No, he realized as he worked his way through the crowd, not just from the school, but from the churches and homes all over town. Such spontaneous organization startled and amazed him. But he suddenly realized he had seen it before, at mass celebrations and firework shows, but never really noticed it.
Looking at the huge crowd he was to not only address, but direct, their confusion, fear, anxiety, anger, puzzlement... and he hurried back into the access tunnel, heading for the men's room.
A few minutes later, Mayor Jacob climbed up the few steps and walked to the podium, his heart pounding and mouth dry with stage fright, and waited, and after about five minutes, the crowd quieted, as much as so many people could. He noticed several people get up behind him, obvious intending to speak to the crowd.
The Mayor stepped back and nodded, and one hurried forward wearing a white smock, Dr. James Korger, not actually stepping up to the microphone, but rather leaning into it from the side. He was pale and obviously nervous, enough that his voice sounded high pitched and shook slightly.
"May I have your attention?" He asked, and waited for the noise to calm down. "May I have your attention? ...There was a major accident on the Interstate, and our communications and phone lines are down, so would all medical personnel come to the Hospital immediately?" From his announcement, one would think everything was normal, that the accidents were just another day's sacrifice to the Gods of fast travel and bad design, but of all the people there, Jacob realized, the Doctor probably had a slightly better overview of the strangeness of the Event, of the wreaks and the human injuries that resulted. Jacob made a mental note to get with the scientists at the hospital and college as soon as possible.
As the Doctor's words faded under the crowd noises, another sound drew the attention of the crowd, which quieted down considerably, more than it had before. Overhead, a small plane circled the stadium, high up, then flew off towards the Interstate. The eyes of the crowd followed it, most reassured by the normalcy of the sight, the calming sound of something normal. A few, almost consumed by fear, saw in the plane a threat, perhaps a terrorist, and got up and tried to make their way to the exits, afraid of being in such a huge crowd, such a good target. Before Jacob could say anything, most gave up... leaving only a few hysterical men and women fighting through the crowd. Several police hurried to get to them, although what they could do was problematical. Reassure them, perhaps. It was too hard to move through all the sitting people, and most people around them seemed OK with the plane, so most subsided quickly.
The Mayor watched it fly over also, intensely curious, and a little afraid of what the pilot would report back to him. He had seen how the Interstate went from good pavement to grass covered soil, a sharp difference that seemed to divide one world from another. But now he had to tell the people all he knew, for nothing was more dangerous than ignorance.
"So, here's the situation as of now." Jacob said, using every ounce of his attention to pull himself together, stepping up to the microphone as the doctor stepped away. He hesitated, suddenly realizing he knew almost nothing. "We have no idea as yet of what has occurred. But we do have some things to tell you."
He paused, gathering his thought yet again, hearing a low buzz as people translated his words into Spanish, Mandarin, and several other languages for their non-English speaking relatives. Terrie Short moved her hands in the flow of sign on one corner of the stage, translating for the few deaf people in Youngston. "As of now, we have no electricity, phone, Internet, or radio contact with anyone else in the world. We can't even get AM channels from Salt Lake or Brigham City. We don't know why, but we are investigating. There is no damage within Youngston, and no apparent danger to us, so the problem is outside, perhaps in the lines from Salt Lake City." He had sent firemen and police out to check on six service junctions with the outside world, but none had reported back yet.
"We are using backup generators at the Hospital, three clinics, Courthouse, Airport, the LDS Nursing Home, and at the schools. If you need to, anyone can move to the schools to stay until we have sorted out the situation."
He paused, looking at the scribbled list in his hand, privately hoping he was not showing the nervousness he felt. He could barely read the list, his hand was shaking so bad from stage fright. "We are not sure of water yet either. The town's water tank is three quarters full and gravity drained, but the pump will not work to refill the tank from the town well until we get some power to it. So please restrict your water use to drinking and basic sanitation. Uh... All stores are closed until further notice. If you must have prescriptions filled or some specific foods, then ask a policeman... their car radios are working, and they will go with you and get what you need."
Damn it! Jacob thought, his mind racing but getting nowhere. He was a part time Mayor in a job nobody else really wanted! He had been Fire Chief for nearly seven years, and when old Mayor Hoskiss had died a few months ago, the Town Council had appointed him Mayor until the next election rather than have a new election, with all that would cost. Jacob had gone along with it because the Mayor's job only took about one day a week, and the rest of the time he could do his volunteer Church work and hang around his beloved Fire Trucks.
And where was the Town Council? He had expected them to show up at the courthouse when the power went out, then here at the stadium, but he saw no sign of the six men and one woman anywhere! Then he remembered a note Ruby had given him yesterday... they had gone to Salt Lake City for the day, to lobby the state legislators for some new police equipment. He swallowed hard, his nervousness growing by a huge leap. ...So it was up to him to keep it together. He had no choice.
"Whatever has happened, the people of Youngston can handle it together." Jacob said to the huge crowd, at a loss for any other words. "The LDS Church has long had as a policy that we be prepared for hard times and share what we have with our neighbors. We don't know for sure we are facing hard times, but if we are, we will work together to face whatever we have to... and we will prevail!"
There was a lot of applause, although a lot of people didn't applaud also. In recent years, political platitudes and other generalized sentiments no longer stirred people much, as many politicians and parties had realized. Although the strange event had scared everyone in the stadium, they would not respond much to words... only specifics, which he did not have for them.
"The people at the radio stations are working on setting up temporary antenna, so if you have solar or battery powered radios, we will get the facts out to you that way. The satellite telephones are not working, although we don't know why, but the old land phone system will work as soon as we get power to it. The Internet is intact within Youngston, but the servers have limited backup power supplies. As soon as we get power to you, so your computers will work, you will have access to the town's servers."
He paused again as the plane flew overhead, this time back towards the airport, having flown a circle around the town. He blessed the pilot, since the crowd again responded to the plane as some sign of normalcy. Many of the people in the crowd had relatives in Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden, and other cities and towns around the state, and they would soon be wondering about them and trying to find out if they were safe. Jacob also had relatives all over Utah and Wyoming, but he really hadn't had time to think about them. Soon, there would be an explosion of grief throughout the town. Something else to think about.
Someone shoved a paper into his hands. It had more scribbling on it, this time someone else's words. He managed to make out part of the first sentence, then looked out at the crowd, eager from stage terror to give up the focus of all those faces to almost anyone.
"I have a paper here explaining a theory written by Professor Gerald Fever from the community college, ...which explains what might have happened." Jacob's amplified voice said into the cough filled quietness, as he read the paper. "He teaches astrophysics under a NASA Astronaut Development Grant..." He looked again at the paper in his hand, then shook his head. "But I can't really read his handwriting, so could Professor Fever come up please and explain this?" He looked at the crowd, peering at the faces turned up to him, conscious of the fear, anger, tears, and confusion radiating from all those faces.
"Professor Fever?" Damn it, he thought, he couldn't have left already! Then he saw a small bald man in a suit hurrying through standing taller people at the side of the stage, and he waited patiently, hoping he had understood what the paper said and not misunderstood. He hated to think he was passing this huge crowd over to some kook! Professor Fever? Gawd, what a name!
When the Professor reached the stage, a policeman checked his ID and frisked him before allowing him up the steps, and the Mayor stepped back as the small blue eyed man hurried over to him, Jacob suddenly worried about passing out an explanation to the crowd that might be totally out to lunch. The Professor was more than a little nervous, Jacob realized, but he was fighting to keep his own nervousness quiet... Jacob had already lost his lunch, in the few minutes before climbing on stage, just at the sight of all the people. The noise level had gone up considerably as they waited, and the growing sound level was definitely adding to both their nervousness.
"Mayor... I... I can't..." Professor Fever started, in a low quaking voice, "it's just... just a theory... we haven't proven... we need time to check the equipment!"
"So tell them it's a theory!" Jacob said, urgently, almost shoving him towards the podium and microphone. "But tell them something!"
Professor Fever hesitated, looking up into the Mayor's face with a pleading look, then stepped up to the microphone and coughed, jumping slightly as the echoes came back from the far bleachers. The huge crowd had quieted almost instantly. The Professor opened his mouth, then discarded the first three things that popped into his mind to say, all of them personal and stupid... he had talked in front of crowds before, one even larger than this one.
"Three hours ago, something amazing happened." Professor Fever finally said, almost no nervousness in his voice but his eyes looked only at the blue sky above the back bleachers. "When it happened, we had a camera going on the roof of the College, a special high speed NASA digital camera designed to... well, I won't go into why it was on, other than to say it had something to do with atmospheric changes as revealed by optic indicators... anyway, it recorded the... the event... which lasted approximately fifteen minutes."
He paused, looking down at the paper which Mayor Jacob had shoved into his hands. He was afraid of what the crowd would do when he told them his preliminary theory, based on running through the tape several times... everything seemed to be happening far too fast...
"I just came from reviewing that recording, and watching it, I conceived a theory which is so amazing... well... it's very hard to believe, and I saw the recording... but my fellow astrophysicists concur, so..."
He paused, wiping sweat from his forehead, more than a little worried about what he was to explain. If he was wrong, he would likely lose everything... He was not a man to take risks, but this data... it was too important to keep back... but he hadn't realized he would be telling it to everyone... he had thought the Mayor should know it... but it wasn't proven... but what if it was true? Damn!
"The pictures, when slowed down considerably, showed the sun arcing over the sky at amazing speed..." He went on, feeling out of breath. "In fact... well... you see, this camera has been used to take pictures of bullets and rockets in mid-trajectory, freezing them in the image so details can be seen... but it wasn't fast enough to show a single day passing..."
The crowd went quiet, the quietest it had gotten the whole meeting so far, with only the sound of small children breaking the shocked silence.
"Who let this idiot up on stage?" someone near the stage yelled, his voice heard by almost everyone. There was a bunch of derisive laughter from the shout.
Realizing the need to act quickly, Jacob grabbed the microphone. "What time is it?" He yelled, his amplified voice twice as loud as the crowd's noise.
"Time to go home!" The heckler shouted back, producing more laughter.
"I mean it!" Jacob yelled. "What time is it? Look at your watches!"
There was a shocked silence as arms went up all over the crowd, people checking their watches.
"It's 10:35 by my watch!" Jacob shouted, then realized his voice was deafening in the silence. "Look at the Sun! What time is it by the Sun?" The faces went up, and many of the crowd were farmers, who usually used the Sun for timekeeping, ignoring their watches most of the time. "It couldn't be later than 6pm by the Sun!"
The shock on the faces of the crowd showed they too realized the strange scary difference between their watches and the Sun. People were comparing their watches to other's watches, hoping their own were wrong. But the difference was there, obvious.
"Where except in BIBICAL sources do you find the Sun suddenly changing position?" Jacob said quietly, his voice still echoing off the back bleachers.
He had made his point, Jacob realized. Even the heckler looked blank faced. Jacob didn't know him, but certainly he would not be a problem after this. He hooked the microphone back into the podium and nodded to the Professor to continue.
"Anyway," Professor Fever said, his voice sounding hoarse, "We think that a very long time passed outside the town in that fifteen minutes... in fact, we think that nearly 50 years passed in every second that we were experiencing the event... This is just a theory right now, but the evidence is pretty strong for it."
Most of the crowd was literate, with at least a high school diploma. Many of them were smart enough to add up what the Professor was saying, and a rustling whisper grew in volume as their conclusions were spoken softly from one to another throughout the huge crowd. 50 years per second... 900 seconds in fifteen minutes... 45,000 years? Few really believed it, the idea was so preposterous. There were a few catcalls, too muffled in the roar of the crowd to hear clearly, but the Sun was not in the right place, the light and shadows impossible to ignore, and the derision quickly died out, argued into silence by others in the crowd.
"That means we went through at least 45,000 years in that fifteen minutes, and God only knows what the world is like now... if our theory is right, of course." Professor Fever finished, in a soft amplified conclusion he didn't really want to say. "We will make sure you are updated as soon as we are sure our theory is correct or wrong." He turned away and walked off the stage despite the Mayor's attempt to attract his attention, but a policeman stopped him before he could get out of sight in the stadium, the Professor standing impatiently to see what the Mayor wanted, acutely aware of all the faces turned towards him, sweating from his desperate desire to go get a drink somewhere quiet.
The crowd was getting louder, more impatient and scared. The Mayor and the Professor both realized it, but the Mayor was frantically scribbling on a palmtop computer as other people whispered data at him, problems he was to solve.
"That's a theory only." The Mayor said into the microphone hurriedly, feeling a bit overwhelmed, "But it does fit all the data we now have. We all saw the sky when the... the event occurred. If that was the sun going over day after day, moving so fast it was a single band of light... then the theory is right and we are facing a real strange future world. But there might be other theories, and that theory might be wrong. It might have been an optical illusion, or something else. We just don't know right now. We must stay calm and proceed carefully. Keep track of your neighbors, at least enough to know they are alright. We must take care of each other. And don't believe rumors, because they will likely be wrong."
Pausing again, Jacob was surprised at the quietness of the crowd. It seemed pensive, brooding... mulling over his words, probably. ...and scared, very scared. He looked at his watch, then at the sun. "One other thing before we go home and figure out what we are going to do with our melting freezers... I proclaim it 5pm right.... everyone fix your watches..." The crowd seemed to change like a giant low resolution picture, as arms came up all over the crowd. Most of them had watches, of course. "... NOW!"
He set his watch, then looked out at the crowd again. "When we get a more accurate time, we will reset them. The Noon Siren will let rip tomorrow, as usual, hopefully to end exactly at noon. That will help." He noticed how many children were asleep all over the stadium, then realized it must be around 11pm by their biological clocks! "Thank you all for coming to this. I am only sorry we don't have more to tell you. We will have another town meeting tomorrow, and hopefully we will have a lot more to tell you. Thanks!"
He waved, and a few people in the crowd waved back, but mostly the noise level grew as people gathered up their children and headed for the exits. Jacob looked back at the gathered clerics, noticing their shock at him ending the meeting so abruptly.
He had planned to let them speak, but in the intense nervousness of the moment, he just forgot... in fact, he forgot all the messages and people he was planning to let speak. He shrugged... Oh, well!
"Jacob, I have a preliminary report." Mike Donaldson said, the Chief of Police wearing his dress uniform, for some strange reason.
At 72, Mike was the oldest man in town government, still strong and clear eyed when he wore his contacts. He had refused retirement, and like Jacob himself, the Town Council had decided to let him stay on, since he had done an excellent job for decades and his mind was still clear. Also, he was not LDS, and that prevented the ever present accusation of bias in the police department by the non-LDS townspeople and transients.
Now, he was sweating and the strain showed on his face. He had sat in his office for most of those decades, with occasional forays to the high school for Law and Society assemblies and to Salt Lake City for police conventions. When thrown a curve like this, he was long past the flexibility needed to adapt.
"So?" Jacob replied, smiling at the much older man. "What do you have for me?"
Mike shoved some photos at him, from a digital camera printed out on a printer, and as he took them, Jacob realized they were taken from an airplane, flying at various attitudes.
"These were faxed down from the plane by radio, Jacob. Carol is flying down to Salt Lake to find out what is there, following what should be the path of the Interstate. She can't go farther, nor stay there very long without refueling, so she is just going and coming right back."
"Carol Kennedy?" Jacob asked, trying to make the images become coherent to his sight. Suddenly it all snapped into perspective, and he turned the photo, orienting the small length of Interstate in the picture to the direction in the town. "My GOD!" he exclaimed, as he realized what he was looking at.
He could see the Interstate, a short curving stretch of modern well kept highway, the wreaks at both ends, still smoking, the interchange and off ramps, the gas stations and convenience stores, and behind them, on the left, the beginning of the Dawn Mountain Development with it's cul-de-sacs, and to the right, the Mall.
...and he could see a curved line where the pavement, grass, some of the parking area at the Mall, and trees growing beyond the town defined one environment from another.
The next photo showed farmland, plowed fields, with a curved line of wild forest beyond them, and the next showed another Development, with some of the yards cut off by the curve between grass and wilderness...
"Mike," Jacob said suddenly, turning to the older man. "I want the heads of all the departments at the college, as well as all the scientists we know of to meet me in the ECC in a half hour. Give these photos to one of your men, tell him to find a map and figure out where these photos are in relation to the map, asap. I'm going directly to the HSCC, so meet me there."
The Homeland Security Emergency Command Center was mandated by the Office of Homeland Security, and supplied by them. Every town over a certain size was eventually to have one, and Youngston had just gotten theirs, the pilot project for the Homeland Security Office. Jacob, when first appointed Mayor, had gotten a tour of the two floors of the facility, and suitably impressed, he had not returned. It could not be used for anything else, although it was staffed with a detachment of soldiers at all times.
Jacob wondered where the Officer in charge of the ECC was right now... he was a nice guy, Captain Stone, in charge of three lieutenants who commanded the twenty-odd men in their tiny unit. Even Jacob had no idea of all the equipment in the ECC, since much of it was top secret, and he had wondered more than once if they had offensive missiles as well as radar. The system was designed for larger towns, even cities, and he had thought the rumors of esoteric weapons were likely wrong, but he didn't know for sure, even as Mayor.
Time to find out!
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