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The Breaking

The room was too quiet, the tension too tight. Neither Mina nor Lucky knew why they had been called here, interrupting their long overdue vacation in Hawaii. They hadn’t even been given the time to change into clothing more suitable. Lucky still wore baggy kacky shorts and a red and white shirt with palm trees plastered all over it. Mina wore a matching shirt and kacky skirt…she still had Hawaiian beach sand in between her toes.

The door opened and a tall, lanky, balding man entered. Everyone in the room stood while a secret service agent shut the door. Lucky could have sworn that he’d heard the door being locked from the outside.

The President sat down and told the others to do the same. Mina noticed how different he looked this morning. The surface of his eyes was glassy, red and swollen; his eyelids looked like they would close and never reopen. His shoulders slumped and he leaned against the table as if his life depended on the extra support. Mina had never seen him look so bad; of course, she had never actually seen him in person before either.

Maybe now they would find out what this meeting was all about.

It started when Nathan was a child. His father would tell the stories of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and Merlin, the mysterious wizard, and Nathan would sit, quiet, uninterrupting, and fascinated by the tale. When high school came, and King Arthur was actually included in his history studies, and the mysterious working of Jesus. It was a fascination with magic that pushed Nathan through life. He wasn’t impressed by the slight-of-hand kind of magic that twentieth century performers liked to illusion spectators with. What captivated Nathan was actual the mind-over-matter kind of magic that was so rare throughout history.

By the time Nathan reached college, he had already made considerable advances toward his dreams. Dreams of using his mind to the ultimate. Humans use less than five percent of their brains and Nathan believed early on that it was these unused portions of the brain that allowed the stories of legends were based. Somehow, the people of history had been able to tap into the resources of the brain.

Nathan studied psychology, medicine, and herbology fiercely, learning everything he could about the brain and what various drugs and herbs could do to improve it. He already had a stellar IQ and it wasn’t long after his twentieth year of life that he turned off his television with his mind.

By the age of thirty, Nathan was a psychologist, specializing in and treating people with mild cases of mental retardation and disease. He made wondrous impacts in the lives of his patients, many of which, after several months of sessions and medicine, improved mentally with staggeringly surprising results.

By this time, Nathan could do things with his mind that only legends of history had done. With the power of his mind, he could bring fire from air, move the furniture in his house, and could even levitate himself off of the ground, though only a few inches. By the age of thirty-five, Nathan began learning at an incredible rate, unlocking doors in his mind that no human had unlocked in hundreds of years.

Nathan began searching, at the age of forty, for others he could teach. He investigated tabloids and newspapers for articles about people that were a little bit on the mysterious side.

On the West Coast, a woman lifts a wrecked vehicle off the victim trapped underneath. He’d heard of this before, and doctors and psychologists alike blame the miracle on adrenaline and the will to live, but Nathan knew better. The woman, unknowingly, had tapped into a part of the brain that allowed her to perform her feat.

He found another man, Eli, who displayed magnificent feats of telekinesis. Nathan started a secret school for the people he found, and taught them how to use their entire mind to do things only dreamed of.

Nathan stressed doing good things with what they learned. He bought a three story complex in Tennessee and started schooling still more people. It was a school of magic, the very thing he had always wanted to do. By the age of fifty, he had more than a hundred students, several of which were just as powerful as he.

Nathan never dreamed that one of his students would turn against him.

“Mr. President,” Morgan Lisp said, rising from his seat, “I’d like you to meet Lucky and Mina Williams. Both have master’s degrees in geology and vulcanology. NASA has used them as private consultants in the past and we think that if anybody can tell you what’s going to happen, these two can.”

Lucky and Mina both rose and walked to the table.

“I hope you don’t mind if I don’t stand up,” said the President, shaking their hands from his seat, “but I’ve had a long week and I’m too tired to do much of anything else.”

“That’s ok, sir. We can tell that all of you seem a little stressed.” Morgan pointed to a couple of empty chairs at the table and the Williams joined the others.

Morgan, still standing, introduced the others at the table. The only ones the William’s vaguely knew was the Secretary of Defense, General Owens and the Dean of Sciences at Harvard University, Professor Allen Travis.

The President spoke again, “I don’t have to remind each of you that what we discuss in this room today, doesn’t leave this room. Now, Mr. Lisp, would you please enlighten the Williams’ as to our situation?”

“Yes, sir.” Morgan stood up and moved to the door where he dimmed the lights. A projector hung suspended from the ceiling over the table and as the lights dimmed, it hummed to life. A large white square of light shone on the wall behind the President. He didn’t turn to watch the presentation. It was obvious that he’d already seen it.

“This…” Morgan said pushing the button on the hand remote and bringing up the first picture. “…is an image taken by the Hubble Telescope just over a month ago…”

“Wait a minute,” Lucky broke in. “Your not going to tell us that things on a collision course with Earth are you?”

“No sir, Mr. Williams. I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Morgan, go ahead and get to the nitty-gritty, would ya?” The President rubbed his eyes. “I don’t have the energy to listed to all your astro-babble again. If they need to know anything beyond the obvious, then they can ask you later.”

“Yes sir, Mr. President.” Morgan cleared his throat and continued. “Mr. Williams, the asteroid is not heading on a collision course with Earth. It’s going to strike the moon in a little over two months.”

“You’re kidding?” Mina asked.

“No ma’am, we’re not,” Morgan said. “This is only the half of it.”

“You mean it gets worse?” Lucky asked.

“We believe so, that’s why you’re here, to help us predict what’s going to happen after the asteroid strikes. There’s more to the story too.”

Lucky glanced around the table. Everyone present looked completely beat emotionally. The only one that looked alert was General Owens, and he was almost asleep himself. He looked back at Morgan Lisp, “Let’s hear the rest.”

“We’ve detected a tremendous magnetic field around it and have measured its gravity to be about ten times that of the moon. As asteroids go, it’s a slow mover, only traveling at 50,000 miles-per-hour.”

“You haven’t said how big it is yet,” Mina said.

Morgan glanced at the President, then at General Owens, as if he were waiting to get permission to continue. They didn’t so much as look at him. “It’s 4.2 times larger than the diameter of the moon.”

Eli Storm was by far the strongest and most talented student. He learned at a rate almost as fast as Nathan himself. It wasn’t long after Nathan had started his school when he finally had to admit that he needed help. That’s when Storm moved from the role of student to the role of teacher.

Eli had a different way of teaching than Nathan did. Nathan had always approached the use of his mind as a completely scientific ability. He described his power as unlocking the mind, turning the keys to the most secret, unused portions of the brain.

Eli had a flair for the dramatic and liked to compare their abilities to religion. He used the miracles of Jesus, often comparing himself to the legendary figure. Nathan though, as smart as he was, didn’t recognize the hidden undertones of Eli’s teaching method.

Nathan taught that the technologies of the twentieth century caused man to loose the ability to do things with their mind.

Eli taught that man lost their abilities because of the lack of faith. Faith in what, he would never quite say, but he slowly began turning Nathan’s students into believing that he, Eli, should receive all the glory for opening their minds.

“We do have one thing going in our favor…”

“What’s that?” Mina asked.

“The asteroid will strike the Earth at the back of Earth’s orbit.”

“What does that mean,” the President asked. He’d obviously missed this piece of news.

Morgan continued, “As the Earth travels around the sun,” he displayed another slide showing the earth and the moon in relation to each other throughout a months time, “it plays a sort of leap frog with the moon. During a month, as the moon circles the Earth, the moon is passing in front of the Earth’s orbit, and during the next half of the month, the moon is circling behind it. This is what causes the moon to have different phases as the sun shines it’s light on the moon. This is also what causes the tides of the oceans to recede.

“You see, the moon and the Earth’s gravitational forces are what pull and hold each other in orbit, along with the gravity of the sun. It’s all a perfect balance between gravitational forces that allows us to have the existence that we have. If something comes along and disrupts this balance…well, that’s what we’re here to try and determine.”

Professor Travis stood then and took out a thick file from his briefcase that sat on the floor beside his chair. “This is all the technical and physical data we’ve collected on the asteroid. There’s also extensive data on the Earth and moon, particularly the orbits and the numbers on the gravitational forces exerted by all the planets of the solar system.”

The President leaned forward and Travis sat back down. “What’s going to happen to us, Mr. Williams? Mrs. Williams? I’d like a detailed report by the end of the week, but going on what you know right now, tell me, with your best educated guess, what we’re going to have to endure a year from now.”

“It’s not going to be pleasant, Mr. President.” Mina stood and took the projection control from Morgan’s hand. She pushed the back button and brought up the Hubble photo. “Lucky and I study earthquakes, volcanoes, erosion, and other things that have to do with the natural violence of the Earth. Gravity is what pulls and pushed the tectonic plates of the Earth causing quakes and volcanoes. Everything that has to due with these events is directly related to the pressures of gravity.” She studied the projection as she spoke, tracing the lines of the asteroid with her hand. Her shadow fell on the projection like a black stain.

“Worse case scenario is that mountains will rise and fall, the fault lines will peel away from each other. Volcanic rifts will open in the ocean, boiling the water and disturbing the natural evaporation process that fuels the weather. Once that gravitational link is severed with the moon, and the ground starts to shake, it will probably keep on shaking for weeks. Everything we see know, all the natural landmarks we know and recognize will change right before our eyes.” She turned back to the table and fixed each man with her gaze. At last, her eyes fell on the President, who had turned in his chair so he could see her. “There’s no predicting this type of devastation. There’s no predicting how many people will die.”

Lucky stood up then, walked around the table, and put an arm around his wife. “That’s another thing to think about. More people will die than will be left alive. There will be no one to bury the dead. Plague and disease will run rampant. And that doesn’t include the amount of animals that will die. The rivers, lakes, and oceans will be putrid and sour with death and sulfur. The sky will be a cloud of ash and smog.”

Silence fell across the room like a suffocating cloak until finally, clearing his throat, the President said, “You sure paint a vivid picture.”

Lucky took a step forward and bent over in front of the President and looked him directly in the eye. “Mr. President, I don’t think we know the half of it. There’s no way to predict everything that could happen. The moon, with its gravity, holds the Earth in balance with the sun. Once that link is gone, the Earth may just spin off into space, just another dead rock…another wondering asteroid.”

“And we’ve only discussed the lack of the moon’s gravity. What will happen when the asteroid gets close enough to effect the Earth? Didn’t you say the gravity of the asteroid was ten times that of the moon? We’re looking at Hell on Earth, Mr. President…Hell on Earth…”

Ten million years ago and three galaxies away, a planet exploded in a fiery mass of energy and fire. Pieces of dirt and debris, some large, some small, floated away into space. The fragment that headed toward the Milky Way Galaxy was small, compared to the universe, of course, on the other hand, to the ants, the fragment was the universe, and it was coming down from heaven to crush them.

It lumbered past Pluto and Uranus, then past the gas giants. The behemoth punched a hole in the asteroid belt that flowed through space between Saturn and Mars. Next stop…Earth, and her lunar companion.

Nathan fell. To the students, it looked like an accident, but Eli knew better. He had set up the little incident in order to get Nathan out of the way. Nathan was supposed to have died in the fall, but somehow, Nathan had quickly put up a mental barrier that almost stopped his fall completely. Nathan’s brittle legs had snapped beneath him and only the magic of his mind kept him sane and from going into shock.

Eli put Nathan in the lower reaches of the keep, turning two rooms there into a type of infirmary so Nathan could recover. Of course, recovery was the farthest thing from Eli’s mind.

Within a week of Nathan’s accident, Eli Storm had unlocked the door to other people’s minds. He then began the long process of brainwashing his students. He made them all wear a common garment that consisted of a long, black, hooded cloak. The tables were turning in Eli’s favor. All his evil, twisted desires were coming to fulfillment.

New students flocked in by the hundreds and Eli took to caring for Nathan himself. Nobody was aloud on the bottom floor of the compound. It was here, during the night, that Eli tortured the older man into showing him everything that Nathan had learned.

Nathan’s legs had eventually healed, though it left him with an arthritic limp that pained him with every step. He put up a magic barrier against the pain and struggled to survive each day. He never quit conditioning his mind, even after he realized that he was now a prisoner.

Eli had learned to put us barriers of his own around the room in which Nathan was kept. He froze the door in its frame and created a block to keep others from opening it.

Eli’s leadership and influence grew by leaps and bounds. Nathan was soon forgotten.

Then the Earth started to shake…

Lucky and Mina Williams submitted their report to the President and his council. It listed all the possible disasters and the combinations of disasters that could occur, but in the end there was just no way of knowing what would happen until it happened. They opted to finish their Hawaiian vacation then settled in to watch the beginning of the end.

The soon destruction of the world was codenamed The Breaking, and the Williams chose the foothills just east of the San Andreas Fault in California to watch The Breaking. The President and General Owens swore them to secrecy with a penalty of death if word of this ever got out. The same went for all the others at the meeting. Lucky and Mina didn’t agree with the Presidents decision for secrecy, they thought that the public had the right to know that the end of the world could be just a few days away.

On the 13th day of October (which happened to fall on a Friday) the first effects of the asteroids gravitational forces were felt. The Earth began to shake. Earthquakes increased in intensity over the next few days and the Williams watched in horror as California slipped into the ocean.

Just as Lucky and Mina feared, the face of the Earth was forever changed. Cities fell. Mountains shrank into the ground while others rose from flat ground. The oceans boiled as magma seeped up from the bowels of the planet.

The asteroid struck the moon on November 1st, wiping out the night light that had captivated so many people for centuries past. The asteroid’s gravity pushed and pulled at the Earth until it seemed the planet would rip itself apart at the seams.

Billions died, millions of animals parished, and from the ashes rose those very few survivors…survivors that were forced to face a new day, a new dawn of existence. Among those was Eli Storm and a handful of his followers. He embraced The Breaking. The world was his now…no one would stand in his way.