Yup. And we're past 90 pages now.
Ah, yes - Here's a "Frankenscene" containing what I think are the best parts of both the current shift scenes, for people's consideration...
The clock ticked over, and something happened.
The fog grew still, unnaturally so, as if the moisture in the air had turned to concrete. Inside the wall of mist, the few people still out on the streets could see strange lights playing inside. The lights flickered, twisted and then exploded outward, lighting up the nearby countryside for a few bare milliseconds.
For a few brief moments, it seemed as if the light was coming from everywhere at once. No shadow was cast on the ground beneath. It was an eerie instant of pan-luminescence. Dogs barked and howled madly, dashing in panicked circles, or straining at their leads to run away. Some people of an older generation dove to the ground, ducking down against nearby walls or inside doorways, covering themselves against the expected blast.
There was a distant rumbling sound, like thunder heard from far away ... then a terrible, dreadful stillness.
The fog started to melt away. Slowly at first, then picking up speed, the fog vanished, leaving behind new countryside merged together.
(High above the cloud deck, a lone weather balloon had the best seat in the house for the event. Recovered several days later, the audio recorder someone stuck on for ballast would pick up the roll of distant thunder, along with the sound of gigantic leathery wings flapping and what everybody who heard it would swear was the sound of snickering.)
A ferry pilot off Liberty Island looked up at the Statue in front of him, illuminated in the light. In place of the sword, he could’ve sworn he saw Lady Liberty holding a torch to the sky. He blinked and it was gone.
In Hawaii, phone and Internet connections broke off mid-word, leaving behind puzzled users. The vacationing President's dedicated satellite connection to the White House cut off without warning.
A mechanic at Boston’s Logan Airfield thought for a brief moment that he could hear an ear-splitting whine, as if someone was forcing air through dozens of turbines of some sort. The feeling passed, and all he could hear was the piston engines of the aircraft on the tarmac.
In Mexico, the land looked much as it always did, though the people of Villa Ocampo looked north at the new lights on the horizon and tried to figure out what this meant.
In Quebec, a Canadian engineer watched the load on his generators suddenly drop off.
An operator at the Midwest ISO control centre in St. Paul was startled to find that somehow, he’d lost all generation coming in from Manitoba. He raced to keep the grid from collapsing.
A group of homeless men, gathered together for warmth on Atwater Drive in Detroit, gazed in wonder as the fog cleared and revealed gleaming towers of steel and concrete on the river’s far side.
Off the New England shore, Sam Carsten watched the stars come out and wondered.
Far out in space, the duty officer at Benjamin Franklin Station blinked as the high-security line to the 21st Space Wing in Colorado dropped out.
And elsewhere in the Solar System....
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Ah, yes - Here's a "Frankenscene" containing what I think are the best parts of both the current shift scenes, for people's consideration...
The clock ticked over, and something happened.
The fog grew still, unnaturally so, as if the moisture in the air had turned to concrete. Inside the wall of mist, the few people still out on the streets could see strange lights playing inside. The lights flickered, twisted and then exploded outward, lighting up the nearby countryside for a few bare milliseconds.
For a few brief moments, it seemed as if the light was coming from everywhere at once. No shadow was cast on the ground beneath. It was an eerie instant of pan-luminescence. Dogs barked and howled madly, dashing in panicked circles, or straining at their leads to run away. Some people of an older generation dove to the ground, ducking down against nearby walls or inside doorways, covering themselves against the expected blast.
There was a distant rumbling sound, like thunder heard from far away ... then a terrible, dreadful stillness.
The fog started to melt away. Slowly at first, then picking up speed, the fog vanished, leaving behind new countryside merged together.
(High above the cloud deck, a lone weather balloon had the best seat in the house for the event. Recovered several days later, the audio recorder someone stuck on for ballast would pick up the roll of distant thunder, along with the sound of gigantic leathery wings flapping and what everybody who heard it would swear was the sound of snickering.)
A ferry pilot off Liberty Island looked up at the Statue in front of him, illuminated in the light. In place of the sword, he could’ve sworn he saw Lady Liberty holding a torch to the sky. He blinked and it was gone.
In Hawaii, phone and Internet connections broke off mid-word, leaving behind puzzled users. The vacationing President's dedicated satellite connection to the White House cut off without warning.
A mechanic at Boston’s Logan Airfield thought for a brief moment that he could hear an ear-splitting whine, as if someone was forcing air through dozens of turbines of some sort. The feeling passed, and all he could hear was the piston engines of the aircraft on the tarmac.
In Mexico, the land looked much as it always did, though the people of Villa Ocampo looked north at the new lights on the horizon and tried to figure out what this meant.
In Quebec, a Canadian engineer watched the load on his generators suddenly drop off.
An operator at the Midwest ISO control centre in St. Paul was startled to find that somehow, he’d lost all generation coming in from Manitoba. He raced to keep the grid from collapsing.
A group of homeless men, gathered together for warmth on Atwater Drive in Detroit, gazed in wonder as the fog cleared and revealed gleaming towers of steel and concrete on the river’s far side.
Off the New England shore, Sam Carsten watched the stars come out and wondered.
Far out in space, the duty officer at Benjamin Franklin Station blinked as the high-security line to the 21st Space Wing in Colorado dropped out.
And elsewhere in the Solar System....
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012