For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
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Whether gathered around the campfire for a night of scary stories or trying to keep heavy eyes open as their mothers tucked them in, every child born or raised in the past thirty years has heard the same story over and over. Of all the re-tellings and re-imaginings that I heard throughout my childhood, I always liked my mother's version best:
The beginning of the end came on an auspicious morning. The Sun shone low and bright, breaking through the early morning fog. The horizon was cut in half by a shining silver shuttle marked with twelve-foot-high letters: Mayflower II. Several men gathered on a platform that was attached to the ship.
"This is terrifying," Lafayette muttered, his eyes trained downward through the grated flooring he stood upon and on the ground far below.
Several hundred feet in the air, Wilson smacked Lafayette hard on the back and laughed. "A pilot scared of heights. Whoever heard of that?"
Lafayette steadied himself under the Commander's friendly thump. "It's not the heights I'm afraid of," he said as he gazed down again. "It's the falling."
"But look," Commander Wilson took his hand from Lafayette's shoulder and waved at the crowd of people gathered in the distance below, "they'd catch you."
Lafayette's complexion regained some of its color as he gazed at the crowd. He could make out a sign that read Lafayette #1. A smile played across his lips.
Wilson nodded. "There you go."
***
Three men strapped into the cockpit with Wilson and Lafayette: Peterson, the biologist, a sandy-haired young man with olive skin; Trelevan, the geologist, a squirrelly-looking academic type with glasses too large for his face, and Black, the engineer, a stoic brute.
The men had spent some time together in training, but they had yet to come to know each other as brothers. That was for the journey ahead.
"Ready?" Wilson's said to the crew.
"These steel walls are all the comfort I need." Excitement was rising inside Lafayette. Despite his petty fears, he had the heart of an adventurer.
"They're titanium," muttered Black from between the two scientists.
"OK, here we go," Lafayette announced. The shuttle rumbled to life and a disembodied voice rang out around them, counting down their release from gravity's embrace.
***
"My God," whispered Lafayette. "It's beautiful."
Releasing the constraints around him, Trelevan pulled himself up next to Lafayette and Wilson at the panoramic window. Before them sat the magnificent blue and green globe, covered in swirling white clouds and surrounded by blackness.
