Chapter 13

On what the media called, ‘The Day,’ we were glued to the television, safe inside the cave, with Zeke, his daughter Elena Rogers, who asked us to call her, Laney, along with the girlfriends of two of our ranch hands, Gloria and Crystal. Gloria had dated Charles for over a year, and Jeff and Crystal were an item when he came to work for me. We had prepared for Zeke and both hands to be with us underground, even though the four men steadfastly refused to consider hiding underground. As the Asteroid impact neared I was hoping Zeke would change his mind and stay with us.

About one hour before the expected collision, Zeke kissed his daughter, shook my hand, touched Angela on the shoulder, and said, “Tommy. You took a chance on me when nobody, and I mean NOBODY would give me the right time. I couldn’t be prouder than I am to call you my boss and my friend.

“Thanks for keeping Laney safe for me. I need to be up there taking care of the farm. It’s my home, not just yours. Those are good men you got up there, but they’re gonna need a steady hand if things get ... strange ... after this thing hits...” He would have said more, but Laney hugged him and begged him to stay at least until after impact.

Instead of dragging things out, I said, “I really do want you down here with us. If you simply must go above, please promise me that you will come down if everything goes haywire. Please...” I could see that he wasn’t going to change his mind. We hugged then, and I repeated my request. Zeke simply thanked me, again, and took his leave.

The five of us watched what unfolded with equal parts fear, skepticism and a shiver of excitement. Being somewhere we thought was safe, watching what could possibly the end of the world, transfixed us to the point that we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the screens.

We had hooked up five televisions so they could broadcast simultaneously while receiving signals from five different satellites. It took a little creative action, but we got it done. To those five sets we added five computers monitoring over fifty different live cameras set up to capture the action.

When the Asteroid became visible to Skylab, we all drew a deep breath and prayed. As the rock closed in on earth Angela hugged me and cried into my shoulder. My mind was wandering over the landscape of my many lives when it hit me.

“Angela come with me,” and I took her into my bedroom where both televisions were showing the same images as the others. “Don’t you see? We’re perfectly safe. The universe brought us into these bodies, and then pushed until we found each other for this. We’re going to be fine, no matter what happens!” I wasn’t one-hundred percent positive about that last statement, but I was sure that we would survive, or else the universe wouldn’t have bothered.

When she realized what she’d just heard, Angela chose to believe. “We are, aren’t we?” One of other girls in the big room screamed right then, and we ran back to see what spooked them.

Laney was standing, pointing at the screen. “That thing ... They said that thing might just brush the moon. And if it does, it should divert it enough to miss us.”

I turned up the volume just as the NASA briefer spoke once more. “It appears that the Asteroid will experience a very slight impact with the moon. Our team has run thousands of what-if scenarios covering virtually every possible outcome, and they tell me that as long as the impact is what you could describe as ‘minor,’ the resulting alteration of trajectory will certainly decrease the angle of approach.

“Any alteration of trajectory takes the U.S.A. out of the path impact. The alteration could cause entry to be delayed – meaning the Asteroid slows due to its brush with the moon. A slower entry into our atmosphere means significantly more heat against all surfaces of the Asteroid, which means far more burn and far less mass striking the earth.”

The briefer went quiet but soon the few moments of silence were followed another update. “We are seeing our projections firming up and our best minds tell us that the Moon will sustain a glancing blow from the Asteroid in about seven minutes, and striking the obstacle will change the path slightly, but will not slow the descent enough to alter the mass significantly before impact.

“Our new projected pathway has placed the preponderance of evidence for an impact somewhere west pf Europe, and possibly as far east as the middle-east, Russia, or even as far as eastern China. Obviously we have a floor full of scientists crunching data and a building full of computers pushing out potential outcomes. We will be updating continually from now until after impact.”

Angela hugged me as hard as I’ve ever been hugged. Gloria and Crystal hugged each other, and Laney looked lost and scared. I held out my free arm to her, and she scrambled into my side, hugging me just as fiercely as Angela hugged on my other side.

The farm phone rang and I saw that Zeke finally had got around to calling me back. “Hey,” I said, excitedly. “It looks like the big rock is going to miss us entirely and hit China, or Russia. You might want to come up and watch it, but you better hurry because it will be over in about four minutes.” That was all he needed to hear. The next sound was his voice shouting the news to our hands.

We waited to see what the Asteroid would do before even considering moving back into the house. Zeke and the hands arrived just as NASA confirmed that the Asteroid had in fact struck the moon. Everyone waited anxiously to find out how hard and what that did to the trajectory.

We didn’t have to wait long. “Our satellite feeds have confirmed that the Asteroid has, what we are going to call it, glanced off of our moon. The path of the object has become quite unstable, and we do not – I will repeat that – We Do Not have any current projected path. The object is still spinning from the sideswiping collision with our moon, and until we have clearer images and radar tracking, we can’t give you dependable information.”