In

a heavily fortified compound just outside Nanyuki, Kenya. A small antiseptic apartment with the air conditioner humming and heavy drapes mostly shielding the bright white work lights outside not quite wide enough for the window creates two thin beams of light tracing across the carpet and up the far wall.

Outside of the beams but washed in the sickly soft glow a man sleeps heavily on the top of a still made queen size bed.

The hypnotic humming of the air conditioner is interrupted by a buzzing vibration and ring.

“Dr. Mehta?”

The phone hadn’t rung for half a second before it was pulled from under the pillow and pressed to the young doctor’s ear.

“Yes. Speaking?”

“We have connected. Your presence is required at the site. Level 2. His Excellency is waiting.”

“Very good. I’ll be right up.”

After many hours of delays the doctor retired here for a much needed rest. Besides, he wished to be alone when it happend. But now it was done and more work was to be done. Much more work. Getting out of bed turning once to look at the picture on the opposite pillow. The picture gave him hope and saddened him at the same time. The room a pasty blue from the illumination of the thin beams. The doctor stands.

Pressing number 2 on the auto dial he puts the phone back to his head.

A short ring. “Dr. Mehta please.”

“Speaking.”

“Yes my brother, we have a connection. Please make the arrangements.”

“Congratulations. Will do.”

A pause lasting only a few seconds that seem like hours tears begin to form in both brothers eyes. Much is not said. And does not have to be.

Breaking the silence and spell the doctor in Kenya speaks first. “Thank you.”

“And thank you. Good luck to you my brother.”

The brothers disconnect. The brother away in the Indian Ocean begins making calls, setting a plan in motion months in the making.

Now stepping to the window the doctor presses number 4. As he opens the blind the phone rings on the other end. Looking out the open window the flat African desert is lit a blue milky white. Ahead is the glowing light of a small city and from its center a single steel silver beam gleaming from the glowing bottom and rising into the sky disappearing from sight. Somewhere up that beam history had been made as the Earth tether connected to its sister counterpart in orbit. The world’s first Space Elevator had been connected. There would be no celebration. Not now and not when the first payloads where in space.

“Mans greatest achievement.” The docotor replayed the words in his head The Prince had said months earlier.

“Maybe his last.” The doctor said aloud to the quiet buzz of the room.

There is no answer at the other end after ten rings. The doctor hangs up and quickly dresses.

Stepping outside the air is a thick and sticky tropic syrup. An insect greets him by stinging his forehead. He swats at it instictively and looks up and the glowing orb in the sky. A second moon. Odd shaped and growing each day. It’s craters now clearly visable. Looking to his left where he can see beyound the compound a series of fences of shining metal and rolls of razor wire.

Bright white lights pointing away illuminate beyound the guard towers at the mass piling of humanity on the other side. Growing each day with more and more people. They have come from hundreds of miles or more. The mounted machine guns keep them back.

The doctor thinks to himself that when that thing in the sky gets bigger there will not be guns large enough to keep them back.

Silently getting in the jeep he nods at the driver and they take off towards the glowing beam and the awaiting Prince.

The jeep rapidly accelerates on the smooth road cut across the desert as a scream rips overhead then the pop of a sonic boom. Above high along the path of the beam a bright flash and an explosion. Then the sound of the explosion. A lower and much closer scream causes the driver to slam the brakes and swerve onto the sand coming to an abrupt dusty halt. Roaring trails in the thick air above disappear in a violent explosion at the base of the fortified beam rocking the jeep and lighting the sky and earth with its massive fireball. (to be continued)

Lt. James Threader was finishing up his first spacewalk. This was an exercise in fixing a pretend faulty valve on an external oxygen tank.

With Commander Antonin Voresky on the opposite side and facing away, Voresky suddenly drops his tools and begins scrambling frantically along the cable towards Threader and the Space Station. His hand pawing the vacuum to grasp the cable he clips the floating wrench sending it spinning horizontally end-over-end away. Threader can see his mouth moving through the opaque glass mask but there is no audio in his helmet. He did not notice it going out even as the constant soft static sound has stopped. “Voresky, you all right?” Threader asks in his southern drawl as he taps his helmet instinctively to the silenced communication device.

Voresky cranes his head up, then looks and points desperately at Threader motioning to move back towards the Station.

Threader looks up as his eyes widen and mouth open in sudden shock and disbelief. Above him is a massive object. A massive spacecraft. Bright white and shaped like a giant English capital letter H, with the sides lower than the middle. Pure ivory white and gleaming in the sun’s brilliance, the shadows cast by the shapes on its surface a stark black contrast.

The shapes on the bottom are perfect cylinders, they look like many transistors or canisters, reminding Threader of a giant Lego creation. As the sides of the H begin to move with the lower parts folding in as the entire ship shifts into a new shape. A large basket lowered on a white wire is rapidly approaching Voresky as the Commander limited in movement scrambles in panic down the cable. As the wrench Voresky was using silently spins away the basket comes below and scoops Voresky in. The wire producing two smaller wires that cut the cable with a swiping motion and then wrap around the cosmonaut and pull him inside as the basket begins to return to the craft above.

By now Threader with his heart pounding and helmet fogging is at the door. As he enters the airlock the door shuts behind him. He turns to see he is not alone.

One hour later and One Hundred miles below.

Earl woke on last day of reunion weekend with the traditional heaviest hangover. The group had spent the night in the Fraternity House and the pledges slept outside on benches. But this morning they failed to bring them coffee and breakfast. They failed to show up at all.

Earl was first to wake. And after washing his face with cold water and staring at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror for 15 thoughtless minutes, he broke his spell, staggered out of the bathroom slogging past his snoring fraternity brothers. Some on the floor in piles of blankets and pillows, others lying on couches and chairs heads covered under quilts and pillows.

Approaching the green matted couch near the door and pulling the pillow from under Brads head then smacking him with it, “let’s go outside and kick some ass, the girls are late.”

Before kicking ass, Earl had the intention to grab a beer from the cooler outside. He thought about the cool beer and smiled. A bit of the snake that bit him had always worked to cure the skull throbbing.

Walking to the door rubbing his temples, Earl considered it was possible he could not recover as quickly from drinking as he did as a younger man. Turning to look at Brad, who was now sitting on the green matted couch. Laughing, “What’s the matter Nancy? Too much of Grandpa’s cough medicine?”

Brad fires the same pillow which woke him in the general direction of Earl. “Fuck you dude. Never.”

Earl is laughing as the pillow hit the wall next to him. Covered in posters of beer ads and girls in bikinis the pillow harmlessly fell to the floor. At least 5 feet from where he was standing.

“Great aim.”

“Yah. Well, I need my Wheaties. Where the fuck is our breakfast. It’s the last day. Them pussies should be bringing us flowers with our grub. What time is it exactly?”

Earl, looking at his Breitling, “Well it is Exaclty, 10:30 am. Those fuckers are an hour and a half late. Time to kick some ass.”

Next to the door in a deep bucket with a few umbrellas and golf club and some other wooden handle objects Earl pulls out a large wooded oar.

“Ready to kick some ass?”

“Hell fucking yeah.” As Brad gets off the couch and does a slight run to the door, pausing briefly to playfully kick a man in the ribs lying next to the couch.

Earl opens the door and stops in his tracks.

The benches were empty. The street was empty. At this time there would normally be joggers and bikers on the trail next to the house. More reason to make them sleep on the benches was the fact there was an audience.

But there was no one to be seen outside. And it was too quiet. Even the starlings that had made a nest above the dorm front door overhang had stopped their incessant singing.

Strange signs had appeared everywhere. They looked like temporary road signs. Red metal with a heavy base and a round circle with an X on top. With some strange symbols on the base and a picture below the red circle of the very spot they were on. But in black and white with and a yellowish tint.

There were signs hanging in the trees on red hooks and on the light poles and the telephone wires signs of different sizes but with the same red X.

On the ground every few feet in some locations were thin plastic clear strips with thin copper looking wires running through them.

In the middle of the street a popping sound and the smell of ozone reminding of just before a heavy rain, a truck appears out of thin air. Bursting through a ring-like cloud. Skidding a few feet and coming to a halt.

It is a military truck. It is over 20 feet away but Brad and Earl jump back. Another pop and a stack of crates and boxes skids to a halt on the grass to their left. And again. Another truck and another. A larger pile of crates. This one covered in a tarp.

Pop. A louder one. This one right in front of them. The smell very heavy and the air moist. A truck skids to stop just several feet from where they stand. They can see in the windshield. In military uniform there are two people in the cab, a young white woman is driving, light complexion, reddish brown hair. Her passenger a dark complexion man with aviator sunglasses with his hand on his ear he is talking frantically. The woman’s eyes lock with Brads for a second. She then picks up and responds to her radio from the dash. Getting out of the cab is her passenger, he has a clipboard in hand and is barking orders into his headset. Over the top of the truck is a helmet with a reflective shade visor and a radio antennae on the left side, the soldier aims his machine gun straight up and away from the two bewildered men.

On the bed of the truck in the street is a another soldier with the same antennae helmet, with cutoff sleeves and the same dark green pants, he is a male of large build and sunburned arms. The man dismounts the machine gun, places the gun on the side of the truck, jumps down, picks the machine gun up and joins the man barking orders on the side of the truck.

Another truck appears and men begin jumping out and falling in rank. A tent is being constructed in the common area beyond to the right. The soldiers are moving quickly. The woman finishes talking and places the radio down, she looks up and cracks a brief smile at Brad again before looking away and stepping out of the truck.

The air is rich with the smell of ozone.