Chapter 01: Meteor Shower

 

1991, Earth

The day was October 29^th 1991. The Soviet Union was crumbling and a war is about to set in the Gulf

Asia is in a great development period. Kings had fallen and taking its place are autocrats, dictators and strongman

The world is in a great state of change.

At the same time when all of this is happening, the United States of America is sending something to space.

It was such a small news that many people do not even know.

Compared to what is happening all over the world, this act of sending something to space is not that spread out among the people of the world

Nonetheless, it is not something that is a secret. It is not some special mission to space. It’s just something that is uninteresting to normal people.

Galileo.

That is what it sends to space.

Galileo is an American robotic space probe that is intended to study the planet Jupiter and its moons as well as the asteroids Gaspra and Ida

The spacecraft is called Galileo named after Galileo Galilei. It was one of the most sophisticated space probe at the time.

As the space probe is doing a flyby near the asteroid Gaspra, something passes it by. Something fast.

Something foreign

Something……alien

And that something is something that would change the world.

But this thing that passes the space probe is something that could not be traced by any of the surveillance technology of the space probe.

Those in the control room even thought it was a calculation error or some errors from the space probe itself

But once, they are sure that it was not an error, report goes to the highest people in charge.

And then they found something even more shocking. They might not be able to trace what that thing that passes their space probe.

But they found something else.

A large group of things from space.

They look harder and what they found causes everyone in the control room to take a deep breath

There on their surveillance radar, they could that there is a large meteor.

A meteor that is heading straight toward Earth.

And that day, is destined to be a day that no one on Earth would forget.

It is the day of the meteor shower.

>>> 

Hatchinson, Kansas

There is a small town in Kansas called Hatchinson, a small town with a population of around forty-three thousand people.

It is a small town but it has its own charm.

Today is a day full of joy for most of the people in the town. Their football team had just won the State Championship a few days prior and there is a state fair in the town

People from all over the town went to the state fair.

Some brought their families, some come with friends, some with lovers and some people just came to enjoy the scenery and bask in the environment

There is a lot of traffic, lots of people

It was the middle of the day when suddenly a siren warning sounded all over the town. But by then it was already too late.

BOOOOM!

A sound of explosion that echoes all over the center of the town is like a precursor of things that is about to happen.

The sound of screams fills the square and panic seize the hearts of the people. They felt the blast of the shockwave, and saw a fire that soar toward the sky.

There is a meteor strike that strike down a building to ashes. And the impact of that crash created a blast of shockwave that obliterated a large area of land.

They saw in the distance a corn field on fire.

At least that was in the corn field. That is the thought of people who saw the scene using the satellites in space

And it is the same thought of people of Hatchinson who saw it from the state fair. The blast that erupted shattered all the glass in the town center.

They saw a fire, and felt the blast and the tremor that came afterwards. And for a moment, there is only stunned expression on their face

And then a second a later, as the reality of it hits, they all show an expression of fear. The corn field that was the first point of impact in Hatchinson is a corn field that have no people.

There are only a few barns and since most of the resident of the town is in the town center, luckily enough no one was near the site of that first crash.

But a meteor shower did not mean there is only one meteor.

There is a whole rain of them in the sky. Some are big, some are small but each of them seems dangerous

And it strikes the town like it is Judgment day. And not before long the entire town is burning. Panic sets in.

Screams could be heard as pandemonium of fear seems to erupt.

Some who saw the initial explosion and found out something is wrong quickly tries to leave the town

No one could have expected this event

It was something unprecedented and unpredictable.

The United States department that was responsible in monitoring the stars and the Heaven above could not explain why there was suddenly a meteor shower that seems to appear out of nowhere.

The towns people who were trying to run away from the town look up in the sky and saw fire. Flames that devours the clouds and clouded the sun

Flames that is about to come down on them. It was like the Heavens wanted to purify all beings with fire.

Some unlucky ones were struck on the road.

The meteor falls down and basically nuked the road, bringing a chunk of the road jettisoning to the sky.

Some hits a bridge, collapsing the bridge almost in an instant

Some people tries to go the other way but even that place is hit by the meteor or ravaged by fire or filled with panicked people trying to run, whether on foot or on vehicles.

That day, the entire town was hit by a meteor shower that rained down upon them like some kind of punishment.

The whole United States was shocked.

Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, United States seems to be lucky in that the meteor showers only seems to target one town.

One small town in Kansas instead of hitting New York or the capital city or any of the large cities.

One could only imagine if such catastrophe to befall in high density metropolitan area

The casualties would be enormous.

Hours passed since the initial blast and helps come pouring in from every states and federal department. All of them converged on that small town

Every prime time television is airing the news.

The National Guard, the army, name every enforcement agency you could and they are now all converging there for what is to be the most tragic casualties of meteor shower in the world

Meteorites usually don’t survive the fall through the Earth atmosphere but for that day, all predictions seem to fail.

The meteor hits and the town center was obliterated.

Nobody could understand why no one could have predicted such a movement from the Heavens.

There is a reason why it even before the day ended, that all television station called it the greatest tragedy of meteor shower in the entire world.

Because United States of America isn’t the only country that was hit by the meteor shower that day.

There was a large meteor that falls down in China, wiping an entire city, taking the lives of millions.

The blast itself created a dust plume that spread out even more and created dust storms that seems to enveloped the entirety of Northern China

The entire country is wrecked by instability all of a sudden. Beijing was hit and the entire command system of China seems to be in chaos.

One of the meteors fall into the sea and created high tsunami that swept most of the seashores in the entire Asian continent.

Aceh, a city in Indonesia was swept away by a thirteen feet high tsunami wave

The casualties are in the tens of thousands and it keeps rising by the second. The Southern part of India also suffers great calamity, as one of the meteors falls down thee onto two cities adjacent with each other.

In just one hour, the only thing that is left in that place, is fire, blood and large craters. There is no life at all.

Millions died in juts a span of a few hours.

All over the world…. reported the same thing.

The same tragedy.

Whole city swept by the sea. Storms rages all over the world brining unprecedented lightning storms.

Rains of flames coming down from the sky.

Craters the size of a city.

Then there are meteors that falls in the Middle East, some fall in Europe and some fall in Africa…...each one bringing about millions of lives…. lost

Almost every continent was hit by a piece of a meteor. Some fall in small area and only affect a town or a city.

Some falls in major cities and capital cities

Some that falls in the ground created large craters and flattened an entire nearby forest. Some wiped out an entire province or an entire state.

The news itself was overwhelming. A world united by grief.

It was a day of mourning all over the world.

The world is in chaos and there is fire everywhere. It was like the whole world was attacked by the force of Heaven