things again.
I don’t know how long I was standing there, mourning. Eventually, Rational Irene pushed her way through the grief. Grieve later, deal with this situation first. After all, I was standing in what was essentially a crime scene.
Eric had died here, yes, but he had also lived under a false identity and stored hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen scientific equipment here. Who knows where it all ended? It wouldn’t be long before the night security would finally stumble across the theft from my lab. I had to decide, here and now, what to do, before the police came to me or, possibly worse, found me here.
Was I that heartless that I could think about that right now? Apparently I was. Wiping at the tears with one hand, I pulled out my smartphone with the other. It was only 12:04 am. No more than four minutes had passed since Eric’s final experiment. I couldn’t even fathom it. I assuaged my scientific curiosity by promising to figure it out later and unlocked the phone.
I had a message. The time stamp was 12:03 am. It was from Eric.
Much to my embarrassment, I have to confess I almost fainted from the shock. My much-lauded ability to withstand the sudden swerves of life was overwhelmed. It was only stubborn pride, I think, that kept me standing. I could catalog all the stress reactions my body was starting to show as my trembling thumb tapped on the screen to open the message. My rational mind was screaming at the impossibility of this, while my emotional mind was twisted in knots of anger, grief, and relief.
Sorry I left you there. Your vitals were quite strong and I need to adjust to changes. No idea how long I will be gone. I will explain, trust me.
I wanted to slap him again. No, I wanted to punch him. Hard. Across the jaw. The moment this had started, I was already sick of this notion of ‘trust me’. How could I trust a man who had lied and used me for how many months for some insane experiment? God particles and altering reality? Really?
Something had happened though, I could feel it in the air. Crazy or not, Eric’s experiment did something other than burn out my prototype and make an artistic burn mark in a wooden chair. Whatever it was, the strange feeling in the pit of of my stomach was something more than nerves and I didn't like it one bit.
Was there some scientific truth to what Eric had been trying to explain to me? Was I too stubborn to have given it a chance? Even so, what right did he have to do this, especially with so much deception? I warred internally with the ideas of jotting off a relieved reply, smashing my phone into a million bits, or just trying to blot out the whole thing from my mind.
Through this internal argument, my actual ears picked up on the constant beep of news alerts on my phone. With numb fingers, I brought up the Associated Press news site.
BREAKING NEWS! BIZARRE ‘WHITEOUT’ COVERS WORLD!
I can’t remember precisely how I made it back to our, no, my apartment, only that I did so without splattering me or my bike on the Atlanta streets. I do dimly recall passing several cars pulled off to the roadside and stunned motorists chattering on phones or dialing through radios. The AP bulletin didn’t have much information, it had only been a few minutes since the Whiteout after all, but what it did say was startling.
At precisely midnight Eastern Standard Time, seemingly every inch of the Earth was lit up by an instantaneous blinding white light. The origin wasn’t known yet and no reports from various space agencies had come in to confirm or deny an extraterrestrial origin. So far no ill effects from the flash had been reported, but there were indications that the momentary blindness may have led to accidents and casualties. Whatever Eric’s experiment had done (I was sure his experiment caused this), it was global.
I found myself sitting in front of my
I don’t know how long I was standing there, mourning. Eventually, Rational Irene pushed her way through the grief. Grieve later, deal with this situation first. After all, I was standing in what was essentially a crime scene.
Eric had died here, yes, but he had also lived under a false identity and stored hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen scientific equipment here. Who knows where it all ended? It wouldn’t be long before the night security would finally stumble across the theft from my lab. I had to decide, here and now, what to do, before the police came to me or, possibly worse, found me here.
Was I that heartless that I could think about that right now? Apparently I was. Wiping at the tears with one hand, I pulled out my smartphone with the other. It was only 12:04 am. No more than four minutes had passed since Eric’s final experiment. I couldn’t even fathom it. I assuaged my scientific curiosity by promising to figure it out later and unlocked the phone.
I had a message. The time stamp was 12:03 am. It was from Eric.
Much to my embarrassment, I have to confess I almost fainted from the shock. My much-lauded ability to withstand the sudden swerves of life was overwhelmed. It was only stubborn pride, I think, that kept me standing. I could catalog all the stress reactions my body was starting to show as my trembling thumb tapped on the screen to open the message. My rational mind was screaming at the impossibility of this, while my emotional mind was twisted in knots of anger, grief, and relief.
Sorry I left you there. Your vitals were quite strong and I need to adjust to changes. No idea how long I will be gone. I will explain, trust me.
I wanted to slap him again. No, I wanted to punch him. Hard. Across the jaw. The moment this had started, I was already sick of this notion of ‘trust me’. How could I trust a man who had lied and used me for how many months for some insane experiment? God particles and altering reality? Really?
Something had happened though, I could feel it in the air. Crazy or not, Eric’s experiment did something other than burn out my prototype and make an artistic burn mark in a wooden chair. Whatever it was, the strange feeling in the pit of of my stomach was something more than nerves and I didn't like it one bit.
Was there some scientific truth to what Eric had been trying to explain to me? Was I too stubborn to have given it a chance? Even so, what right did he have to do this, especially with so much deception? I warred internally with the ideas of jotting off a relieved reply, smashing my phone into a million bits, or just trying to blot out the whole thing from my mind.
Through this internal argument, my actual ears picked up on the constant beep of news alerts on my phone. With numb fingers, I brought up the Associated Press news site.
BREAKING NEWS! BIZARRE ‘WHITEOUT’ COVERS WORLD!
I can’t remember precisely how I made it back to our, no, my apartment, only that I did so without splattering me or my bike on the Atlanta streets. I do dimly recall passing several cars pulled off to the roadside and stunned motorists chattering on phones or dialing through radios. The AP bulletin didn’t have much information, it had only been a few minutes since the Whiteout after all, but what it did say was startling.
At precisely midnight Eastern Standard Time, seemingly every inch of the Earth was lit up by an instantaneous blinding white light. The origin wasn’t known yet and no reports from various space agencies had come in to confirm or deny an extraterrestrial origin. So far no ill effects from the flash had been reported, but there were indications that the momentary blindness may have led to accidents and casualties. Whatever Eric’s experiment had done (I was sure his experiment caused this), it was global.
I found myself sitting in front of my
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