Collateral by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Culain Press
Published: 2022-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

-Robert Heinlein

They were too busy sandbagging and securing the place for me to do any sort of real inventory. It looked as though my workshop and tools had made it safely to Rocky Top, just waiting to be used. I wondered if I’d ever get back to the point where I could take survival for granted and have the luxury to spend time on art again.

It was a busy week, getting Bertha sandbagged, but by Sunday, she seemed to be about as secure as we could make her.

I attended services Sunday morning on October 14. Since the alternative was going immediately off to work, most everyone decided to attend. There was a big open air Baptist service, but Mary and I elected to visit the Orthodox chapel, since we hadn’t ever been to an Orthodox Christian service before. The priest, Father Cyril, shared the Parable of the Sower from the Gospel according to Saint Luke. The seed of the Gospel had fallen into good soil on Rocky Top, he assured us in his sermon, from where it would grow and bring forth fruit a hundredfold. The grandeur of the liturgy transcended the run-down but packed to overflowing old chapel.

At Sunday dinner, Colonel Monroe shared the news that a Chinese rocket launch had been spotted. Official sources kept insisting the probability of impact was low, but Monroe and the Regents were confident that the 73% probability figure announced by Jian Zhou, who was working with the Palladium Aerospace people in Libya, was more credible.

Of course, everyone knows what happened next. We heard the news of the detonation just over a week later on Monday, October 22, 2046. There was a sense of cautious optimism. Some were convinced Mammon had been pulverized and was no longer a threat. Others cautioned that there were probably plenty of large fragments that could pack a wallop. Still others were skeptical it meant anything at all. The debris cloud could have been blown off the surface leaving the bulk of Mammon intact and a deadly threat.

The last week before M-Day was busier than ever. The outdoor work crews were fewer in number. More and more people transitioned to living and working down in the shelters. I joined the rail crew the evening before M-Day making sure Bertha’s boiler was topped off and the sand was damp. Similar crews hosed down buildings, secured reflective tarps and made other final preparations. The last of the livestock were led underground into shelter.

We were ready the morning of M-Day, Monday October 29, 2046. Other than a few spotters in the Admin Tower and around the plateau everyone was under cover. We watched the news reports come in and slowly realized the skeptics were wrong, and the initial reports from China that Mammon had broken up were correct. We’d been spared the worst-case scenario we’d feared.

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