Maelstrom by Peter Cawdron

Author:Peter Cawdron [Cawdron, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-05-20T06:00:00+00:00

Book Three: Maelstrom

Welcome

The heat is stifling. Sand gets everywhere—in my hair, in the corners of my eyes, behind my ears, even in the tiny gaps between my teeth. I hate it. I hate being here. Who’s idea was this anyway? Oh, yeah… mine. Sweat drips from my forehead.

“Water?” Mark asks, handing me a plastic bottle.

“Thanks,” I say, unscrewing the cap. The water is hot. I’m tempted to add instant coffee rather than pretend it’s somehow refreshing.

Officer Mark Janos sits on a wooden crate beside me, only he’s not in uniform anymore, being dressed in cargo pants and a white shirt. Even without his NYPD uniform, his vest and police utility belt, he carries himself with a sense of purpose that speaks of authority.

The shade provided by the tent is immaterial. The heat from the sun seems to be magnified by the canvas, not reduced. It’s as though we’re sitting inside a fan-forced oven.

It’s been just over a week since Mark and I escaped the rupture in New York City. Occasionally, creatures still stray through the breach, but we were the last of the survivors to come through. At first, the National Guard would shoot the megafauna with their 50 cal rifles. Now, they’re taking them down with tranquilizer darts. Our scientists want to study them, I guess. Personally, I never want to see megatherium again. I heard they caught one, but there’s been no pictures, and I can understand why. The idea of one of those animals getting out and running amok isn’t exactly going to appease an already skittery public.

As it is, the world is in shock. We’ve been drawn away from our petty, selfish infighting to recognize the universe is far larger, far stranger, far more hostile, and far more of an immediate threat to our survival than anyone dared imagine. It’s kinda trippy to think there are potentially an infinite number of Earths out there. Even astrophysicists are struggling to grasp the implications. They tell us, infinite is an oversimplification. The current estimate is there’s 10^47 possible alternatives—that’s ten followed by forty seven zeros… although, apparently even that’s conservative, as there’s at least 10^24 stars in the visible universe, and until the mechanism by which worlds branch out is understood, each of those could have 10^47 alternatives. Then there’s something about gravity leaking between dimensions, but that’s where my head explodes. All I know is the universe went from absurdly large to absurdly larger.

A helicopter flies low overhead. The downdraft threatens to topple the tent, kicking up sand.

“How long do you think they’re going to keep us in limbo?” Mark asks as the chopper lands on the barren plain behind us. I shrug my shoulders. I don’t mean to ignore him, but I am trying to ignore yet another pointless, annoying military flight.

Low dunes lead down to the cliff face and darken entrance to the cavern. The Chinese military has established an exclusion zone with the off-worlders, as they’ve become known. Sandbags line the ridge, with soldiers somehow enduring the heat outside.

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