Chapter One Draft: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Working Title

"It is time." The figure announced as he gazed upon the land before him, a slight grimace of disappointment, or maybe even satisfaction, flashed across his face. I couldn't really imagine what was being processed through the dark depths of his brain, I barely had a grip on my own thoughts and emotions, my reality being wrenched away, such as it was. The figure turned from the transparent wall and with the miles of rolling hills, new growth trees, cubist patches of blooming fields and sporadic clusters of houses framing its background, it could have been a surreal landscape painting, it lifted its head meeting our eyes and simply told us, "We must go. Now."

The figure paced away from the glass wall, though I truly doubt that was what it was made of. Maybe some sort of crystal or translucent metal, if there is such a thing, but not glass. Something overtook us, the instinct to be home one last time, the raw emotion of losing everything you loved, or the grotesque allure of not being able to turn your head from a train wreck, several of us found ourselves drawn, stepping cautiously, hesitantly, to the enormous window, the sight of our world spread before us. "Moths to a flame," someone whispered quietly behind me. We did not feel the massive prism we were captive in move. There was no trembling, no grinding of gears as the machinery winced into motion, no screams or groans from a previously silent giant engine prodded into indentured servitude. The only indication the prism was in motion at all was from the view that beheld us so captively. Our home, our land, our lives, falling away from us, slowly, tortuously, decreasing in size as we gained distance. Miles and miles of traitorous air levitated between us and our families.

I stood there, a stillness I had never experienced before imprisoning me. I wanted, needed, one last look- needed to remember. I heard the soft sobs and sniffles of a man a few meters away, but my eyes were unable to track the sound, welded as they were to the view that had once been in front of me. A view that had altered its angle in our increasing distance and now had settled to rest at a 45 degree angle below us. The miles of houses, forests, fields, streams, people who were out and about going on with their lives, were all about the size of an ant farm when it happened. The figure must have known we had reached a safe distance, as the prism carrying us slowed to a stop. I could feel the change in tension in the room, bodies stiffened, becoming rigid, short, violent gasps of breath being gulped in- held. We watched.

The Great Fireball came on swiftly, blazing across the land, engulfing the ant farm world below us. In macabre irony, its heat energy, its fire, rivaled that of- or maybe even derived from, our sun. We felt the intensity of its flames, for even within the safety of the prism, miles above the ground, we felt the ambient temperature rise a several degrees. But our sweat was cold. The blazing sphere left nothing, in the seconds that it took to cross over miles of land, it melted- not burned- melted everything. We were able to see the process. It melted, then vaporized. In the wake of the Great Fireball, a vast desert of sand and dust settled, with sporadic puddles bubbling- sandy hot springs forming the beginnings of a glassy substance. As my body broke free of its own restraint and my hand fell upon the transparent wall in front of me, the fluttering question of just what material it was made of, briefly breached my thoughts. Where exactly had it come from? I shuddered.

My distraction was only momentary, as my eye caught the rapid movement below. In the Fireball wake there was nothing, an eerie tranquility, but in the land that lay before it there was a flurry of panicked motion. Ant-sized people sprinting away in the direction opposite the hungry inferno. Gut-wrenching to watch, the celestial view made it painfully evident how slow their fastest strides really were in comparison to the momentum of the sphere. Sanctuary they looked for but would not find. Those who were deluded enough to opt for their vehicles, rather than go by foot, were worse off. Or maybe better off, since it was all going to end in the same way, regardless of the method of escape, at least their fatalities came to them faster. The people in cars, trucks, SUVs, scrambling for their keys, wrestled with the ignition only to find the heat prevented the engine from turning over. The doors of the car, in the moments they had lost trying to get it to start, either became too hot to touch, or had expanded from the temperature, altering and damaging the framed and preventing the doors themselves from being able to be opened. The people were trapped, and as the heat intensified on the Fireball's approach, their vehicles converted into their own personal EZ-Bake ovens.

I tried not to watch as the skin began to melt, sliding down their faces and dripping from their arms in a red-pinkish bloody, gooey mess. Their faces twisted in panic- I could see them. I could see the forms of screams taking shape, altering and reshaping their features. But I heard nothing. None of us did. So far above them, in a virtually sound-proof prism, we were impervious. No echoes of violence, no screams defying annihilation reached us. We stood surrounded by peaceful serenity and stillness. As the Great Fireball disappeared over the crest of the Earth's horizon, presumably moving on to another hemisphere leaving only a soft orange glow of light and patches of steam and glass rising from the vast desert that had once held our homes and our loved ones, the woman standing a few feet from me shifted. I tore my stare from Earth to look at her. She caught my eye, a sad half smile tugging up at the corner of her mouth, her eyes heavy though not tearful as she whispered the easiest thing most of us could attach to at the time, "And so ends the world, with roaring silence." 



© 2010 Ami Lovelace.  All rights reserved.

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Content Copyright 2010. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.