The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner

Author:Jordan Mechner [Mechner, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vl-nfcompvg
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

An Uneasy Quiet

October 18, 1989

Ten minutes before three a.m. I woke up and lay in bed, foggy and apprehensive. Waiting for the shaking to start.

Then it shook – or rolled, or rumbled – and I lay there with my heart racing, not sure if I’d dreamt it. I got up and turned on the TV and waited for them to say something about an earthquake, and when they didn’t I went back to bed.

I couldn’t get back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, the next one hit. That one gave the building a good shake. Now I’m sitting out here in the living room in front of the TV, listening to the audio from KCBS and the calls coming in to confirm the times and magnitudes: 4.2 at 2:53, 5.0 at 3:14.

The weirdest thing is the way you feel them before they hit. It’s like when you’ve been on a boat all day, and you go to sleep that night and as you’re drifting off you feel the pitching and rolling just as if you were still on the water.

□ □ □

The big one hit yesterday, just after 5 pm. I was home, at my Mac. When the shaking started I got up and stood in the doorway until the CD I’d been listening to (¡Oye Listen! Compacto Caliente) started to skip. The power went out. The SPA Karateka plaque fell. The bookcases moved away from the wall. CDs cascaded onto the floor. Car alarms and other alarms started going off down in the street. I couldn’t believe it when I heard later on the radio that it had only lasted 15 seconds.

It stopped and I stood there dazed. The window opposite mine went up and the building manager’s face peered out. We looked at each other until he went away. There was smoke and sirens and people were pouring out into the streets. I felt an overwhelming urge to get outside. As I passed the hall table I stepped around Tomi’s huge mirror, lying shattered on the floor. I hadn’t heard it fall.

I took the stairs down. Huge cracks had appeared in all the walls, including over my doorway, and there was plaster on the carpet.

Downstairs, I met the manager and two girls I’d never seen before. The tall blond one (from 201) put her hand on my shoulder and said “Are you OK? You look terrible!” Soon there was a little group gathered in front of the building. In ten minutes I’d met more of my neighbors than in fifteen months of living here.

The blond girl had a Walkman and passed on information as it came in. We didn’t know how bad it was or when it had struck. For all we knew, LA had been leveled and we’d just felt the tail end of it. The numbers started coming in: 5.5, 5.6, 5.9. The baseball game was called. The traffic flow picked up – back to normal rush hour. The car alarms and smoke alarms stopped and everything was quiet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.