MarieDavisRPs
Real Life Streaker
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2021
- Posts
- 91
Take me to your leader
PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
I am going to open this to 1-4 writers at some point in time.
That time, however, is not now.
Please do not post here without invitation.
I thank you so very much, really.
PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
I am going to open this to 1-4 writers at some point in time.
That time, however, is not now.
Please do not post here without invitation.
I thank you so very much, really.
Harrisburg, Oregon, USA
15 January 2027, Friday
3:47am local time (11:47 GMT)
Olivia Boone had been doing chores in the barn on the family farm since before sundown. It was an odd time of night to be scooping poop, spreading fresh straw, and immunizing recently birthed Boer kids. But Liv, as most called her, wasn't out here almost 11 hours after sunset and another 4 hours before sunrise solely to retain her deserved reputation as a hard working farm girl.
The cell phone in the back pocket of her tight fitting but stretchable jeans vibrated, making her smile. Setting the pitchfork aside and silencing the alarm, she checked her path for tripping hazards, flipped off the barn's lights, and headed outside into the pitch black of night. There, she looked up into the night sky, thankful to find it clear. After a few minutes, a bit north of northwest, the reflection of sunlight off the hull of the International Space Station appeared as a relatively quick moving point of white light.
"Hi mom," she said aloud, waving to the satellite from 252 miles below it. "Hi, dad."
She watched the ISS cross the sky until it disappeared behind the property's tallest oak tree, then headed for the house, eager to get a few hours of sleep. The ranch's three winter season hands would be showing up in just over an hour to start the day's work without her. She always felt guilty about not being out here with them on these days when she stayed up to spot her parents' flyby, but the two women and one man all understood that these nights when Liv's astronaut parents passed overhead were special to her.
Olivia Boone had the very unique distinction of being the only person ever to have both of her (or his, if it had been applicable) biological parents off the planet at the same time, in this case as part of the ISS's Expedition 99. Her father, who had been a career Air Force pilot was the Commander of the current mission and had gone up on a Space X vessel last November; her mother was a Microbiologist who specialized in the study of pollution-eating microorganisms, and she'd gone followed her husband skyward just two weeks ago on Bigelow Aerospace's first manned rocket to the ISS.
She was, of course, very proud of both of them. At the same time, she missed them terribly and wished they'd just fucking come home. The farm had been in Liv's maternal grandmother's family since the late 1800s, and when Granny Glenda passed away last summer, Liv -- who'd been living here all her life -- was the only family member around to care for it, its meat goat herd, and its 66 acres of sustenance farm crop lands.
Scanning the buildings only barely illuminated by the light of the moon and stars, Liv contemplated that very little ever changed here. She was about to learn, though, that that wasn't true. She ascended the porch steps, dropped into an old wooden chair that was older than her own self, and began shedding her dirty rubber boots when something caught her eye. Looking up over the peak of the bar she'd just left, Liv stared in confusion for the longest time at a light that was not only crossing the sky but was growing inexplicably larger at the same time.
She refastened her boots again and headed out into the yard for a better look as she began losing the object behind the barn. Liv found herself baffled at what the thing could be: it wasn't a jet airplane or a helicopter or a blimp or anything she could explain. It didn't seem to be in the atmosphere as either of those three would be either, and yet Liv knew it couldn't be above the atmosphere either because that would have made it unbelievably huge.
The white appearance of it, which she'd known was from reflecting the sun which was still below the eastern horizon, began to slowly redden. Soon, it appeared a bright reddish-orange, and after that Liv realized that it was burning. Whatever it was, it was entering the Earth's atmosphere, glowing as the resistance of the air passed around it at anywhere between 10-20,000 mph.
If she hadn't just seen it pass overhead on the expected flight path without error, Liv might have thought that what she was seeing was the ISS. This UFO was too big to be anything else of which Liv knew to be in the sky. It wasn't a natural object, a meteor or comet, that she knew from the way it had been reflecting light before it began burning up. It has to be a satellite, she told herself. It can't be anything else. Martians maybe.
Liv laughed about that last thought as the object continued to glow across the sky and disappear behind the same big Oak in which she'd lost her parents' craft. She just stood there for the longest moment, contemplating the sight. Then, scaring the piss out of her, a massive explosion sounded from the general direction of where she'd first seen the object. Sonic boom? It was followed by a low rumbling sound that lasted about as long as the thing had been crossing the sky. It was an odd sound, something Liv couldn't identify.
She continued to just stand there for the longest time, uncertain about what she'd seen or about whether or not she should take some sort of action regarding it. But what? She turned away for the house again when her phone, which was supposed to be on vibrate, began emitting a tone that Liv didn't immediately recognize. By the time she got it out of her pocket and checked the screen, she realized that it was the Emergency Broadcast System tone.
As she read the message, her eyes and mouth opened in shock. The populace was being warned without any explanation at all to take shelter and remain indoors until further notice. People with basements or fallout shelters were asked to go to them; those who didn't have either but lived near buildings that did were told to reach them in haste; everyone else was simply told to find a place to safely hide.
Liv's grandfather had built a storm shelter on the property twenty years ago, so that was where she headed. She kept it stocked with food, water, and other supplies because Oregon had been suffering some pretty damaging and scary storms as global warming worsened. She plugged her phone into a charger also kept there, opened the App for NPR Radio, and waited for news.
It came quickly, with a live Washington DC-based broadcast interrupting the recorded BBC News that played this time each weeknight. Liv listened to what was little more than more detailed reports of what she'd seen for quite a while, complete with witness interviews and some off the record government and military responses from people who didn't want to share their name.
The news continued to get more detailed and stranger as the hours passed. One of the hands, Linda, showed up an hour early for her work shift, her young daughter in tow as she expressed concern for her boss being here all alone. They continued listening to rampant speculation for another hour or more...
Then finally, to their shock, it was announced that the President of the United States would be making a national broadcast. Before that began, though, that rampant speculation had been narrowed by details and facts from an array of informed but mostly anonymous sources, and neither Liv nor Linda could believe it:
An alien spacecraft had entered and passed through Earth's atmosphere, blazing a trail across the sky from over the Western United States to Central Russia before again heading back out into space.
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