The Oberserver:
Ceres is the largest asteroid discovered, and was found on the first of January, 1801, by one Giuseppe Piazzi. Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, within the asteroid belt, with a period of 4.6 Earth years. The rotational period of Ceres (the Cereian day) is 9 hours and 4 minutes.
The people of Ceres must have endured bitterness and desperation for generations as they have an ice mantle covering their dwarf planet, freezing the water supply and making all manner of things difficult. From a vantage point of Ceres, their instruments scanning across the skies would have seen Mercury crossing the sun once a Cereian year, give or take, but in 1814 their attention would have been seized as a jewel of a planet crossed their view. Liquid seas and lands of all terrains and open skies showed a far younger planet, and the intelligences we could barely dream of hardened their hearts. To carry war onwards to the sun and escape the exhaustion of their planet is the only way out of the destruction that would have creeped in, generation by generation.
Before we may judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has caused, not only upon animals, such as the dodo and Tasmanian Tiger, but upon it's own elements. Entire civilisations, indeed even species, of humanity have been extinguished by their neighbours for nothing more wanting than a piece of something shiny. Are we such peacemakers of mercy and understanding that we could complain if the Cereians fought in that same spirit?
The Cereians seem to have calculated the invasion with amazing subtelty and patience, such that their mathematical and scientific learning has absolutely baffled our knowledge, and all the planning that must have been necessary must have been carried out with near perfect unanimity. The first few attempts may have been meant to fail, or it may have been accidental, but nevertheless Cereian ejecta peppered our planet until 1896 when it abruptly ceased.
A peculiar light was seen on the great disc of Mars in 1894 and it was written into the scientific journals but the public took little notice of it, or the great electrical storms that followed in 1903, I am inclined to believe this is when the great landing craft hit upon the Earth, or at least began to.
It is curious to note that in 2015, as I sat, eyes glued to a screen, a radiot set in front of me, surrounded by others, listening to scratchy, hours old static, the NASA probe 'Dawn' was approaching Ceres for exploration, that it recorded a signal we would only hear after the great events had passed.
After recieving the first images of Ceres at a closer range, though the orbit photos were yet to come, a great cheer went up, and we saw the icy grey world, and it disturbs me now how blind we were not to notice the formations on the planet that were visibly moving in the series of photographs.
I returned home that night, feeling elation that it appeared that Dawn would have reached the second dwarf-planet, Ceres. That night as I turned my eyes skyward, as was my habit, I percieved a shooting star.
On the 28th September 1969, at about 10:58 AM (local time), near the town of Murchison, Victoria, in Australia, a bright fireball was observed to seperate into three fragments before disappearing, leaving a cloud of smoke. About thirty seconds later, a tremor was heard. Many specimens were found over an area larger than 13 square kilometers, with individual masses up to 7 kilograms; one weighing 680 miligrams, broke through a roof and fell in hay. The total mass exceeds 100 kilograms.
The Vitim Event is believed to be an impact by a bolide or comet neucleus in the Vitim River basin. It occurred near the town of Bodaybo in the Mamsko-Chuisky district of Irtusk Oblast, Siberia, Russia on September 25th, 2002 at approximately 10:00 PM (local time). The event was also detected by a US military missile-defense satellite. Some attempts were made to define the magnitude of the explosion. US military analysts calculated it was between 0.2-0.5 kilotons, while Russian physicist Andrey Olkhovatov estimates it at 4-5 kilotons. Information about the event appeared in the mass media and among scientists after only a week. Initially no one was able to understand the magnitude of the explosion. A small expedition, sent by the Institute of Sun-Earth Physics, tried and failed to find the meteorite within about 10 kilometers from Bodaybo town (people told them - "it has fallen beyond the nearest mountain!)
On September 15th, 2007 the Carancas impact event occurred. A chondritic meteorite crashed near the village of Carancas in Peru, close to tthe Bolivian border and Lake Titicaca. The impact created a crate and scorched earth around it's location. A local official, Marco Limache, sat that "boiling water" started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby, "as fetid, noxious" gases spewed from the crater. After the impact, villagers who had approached the impact site grew sick from an unexplained illness, with a wide arrange of symptoms, over 200 people exhibited the illness.
Kaidun is a meteorite that fell on 3rd Decmeber 1980, on a Soviet military base near what is now Al-Khuraybah in Yemen. A fireball was observed travelling from the northwest to the southeast , and a single stone weighing about 2 kilograms was recovered from a small impact pit. It contains a uniquely wide variety of minerals, causing confusion as to its origin.
The Survivor:
I am Jason McIntosh and I lived in Murchison, Victoria. Population, 780 odd, vineyard area, and was half asleep as I drove back from work, fruit picking, when I noticed the Meteorite Park was having issues with their lights. Something compelled me to pull over, maybe it was the flickering power at the tourist attraction, or maybe I noticed the car was starting to misbehave, either way I did, and I regretted it.
As the engine began to cool, all the lights died, and my radio cut out, a little disconcerted I tried to start the car again - dead battery. I pulled out my mobile phone only to find it was dead as well. Confused I got out of my car, in time to feel all the hair on my body stand up with a static crackle and was blinded as a lightning bolt struck the park. I was blinking furiously, trying to get my eyesight back when I felt myself flung aside, and in my shell-shocked hearing I heard a whirring sound before a blast of pain that knocked me unconscious.
When I woke, I still didn't truly have my wits about me, and stumbled down the street to my house and flopped onto the couch and slept till the sirens woke me up. It was then that I saw the bloodstains I'd left on the couch, my blistered arms, and that my house showed itself worse for wear, cracks on the walls, the paint peeling, and outside I could hear what could only be evacuation preperations. Stumbling outside I saw what I hadn't last night - blackened and scorched houses, cars left in the middle of the road, cracks up and down the road gaping into darkness. A police officer spotted me and shouted, "Get a move on! There's nothing left here. Let's go!"
I followed his direction into a waiting truck, not comprehending, but at length as we pulled away I finally noticed the Meteorite Park, or rather the crater where it should have been, and my car lying upside down nearby it.
What on earth had happened?
The official report, I learned on arrival in Shepparton, was a freak storm that came out of nowhere, and managed to rupture and ignite several gas mains.
I spent most of the day in morbid solitude when I heard my name over a loudspeaker, asking me to report to the Major in charge. With a few questions I ended up in a khaki canvas tent, and a soldier starring me down. After a minute of this treatment he gestured me to a seat.
"Your vehicle was found at the first site to be struck by lightning. Can you explain what happened?"
I nodded and related my story, and the Major grimaced and sighed, and then he stood up and signalled me to follow. After walking through a maze of tents we entered a securely guarded shipping container, and behind a glass wall was a tiny sphere, of a yellow-green metal. The Major frowned, "Do you remember seeing an object like this in the town? Anywhere?"
I shook my head slightly, "No... Never. Did you find it at the crater?"
He smiled softly, "Can you describe the sound the heard? The whirr?"
I opened my mouth, but paused, as behind the glass I heard a dull sound and turned to it in surprise, "That's it!"
The Major winced, "Indeed. It's bloody loud too. It's encased in a foot and a half of soundproof glass and we can still hear it."
