Red Sky at Night

Marcia stared up at the night sky, the twinkling stars peeping through the faint, red haze that gave the inhabitants certain assurance that their planet was protected from the asteroids by the ever-present shield. She, like ninety-nine point nine percent of mankind, didn't know, and didn't care how it worked. She was simply thankful for the protection it offered her.
From behind her, she heard her daughter, Felicity, cry out. She was too much a loving mother to ignore the cries, and went inside the home she had known for eight years. Crossing into the nursery, she assuredly picked up her eighteen-month old baby and cradled her lovingly in her arms. Marcia rocked her and the child's plaintive crying died down, making all quiet in the warm, evening.
Waiting until little Felicity had fallen back asleep, Marcia carried the young child as she went in to check on her son. He slept peacefully most nights, and she was pleased to see that tonight was no exception. In the silence of night, Marcia could make out his soft snores that reminded her of a kitten's peaceful purrs.
After snuggling her young daughter back into her cot, Marcia returned to her husband, Eli, whom was seated on the wooden flooring, staring into the warm light of the soothing, open fire. When they had first bought this house, she had insisted on the open fire, and thought it meant nothing to Eli at first, she often found him staring into its' comforting blaze.
“You haven't told me how work was today,” she started conversation.
He made a garbled noise and sighed. “Wasn't anything fancy. I sometimes wonder what I'm doing there. They don't need me.”
She dropped to the floor besides him and leaned her head on his strong, masculine shoulder. “Of course they need you,” she assured him. “Without you, they wouldn't have been able to make the energy conversion cycle almost ninety percent efficient.”
He glance at her sideways. “You don't even know what the energy conversion cycle is,” he smiled.
“So?” she asked, poking him gently in his side. “You're still needed. The field doesn't flux any more, which is always a good thing.”
Her husband worked at the Field-Generation Plant. It was his work, teamed with more than two thousand other scientists, that kept Earth habitable. Without him, life would soon be frozen out of existence.
“I don't know,” he said complacently. “I really liked the flux. They reminded me of the Aurora Borealis.” He looked down into her eyes. “It's been more than seventy years since anyone has seen it with their own eyes, did you know that? Seventy years,” he sighed, allowing that thought to hang in the air.
Marcia felt helpless when her husband felt depressed. “Maybe once we've passed through that meteor storm, we'll be able to bring the shield down?” It was a question, for Marcia had no idea what she was talking about.
But her husband knew, and sadly, he shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Unless we can find a way to move Earth back into its normal orbit around the Sun, there's no way that field can come down.” To explain, he continued, “since the first meteor hit, the Earth has slowly been moving away from the Sun. The farther we go, the bigger the temperature drop when the shield goes down.”
Marcia had always lived with the hope that one day her children would see the sky as it was meant to be – something she herself had never seen first-hand. To have that hope taken away smarted.
Eli had noticed her mood change. He wrapped his arm around her, subconsciously feeling that that act alone could protect her from any harm. “I know it's not what we wanted. But at least we have our lives. Maybe in the future we'll find a solution.”
She nodded, trying to muster some confidence in the wake of his damning verdict.
Disturbing the silence that followed, the distinct chime of the phone came across from the kitchen. Marcia made a move to answer, but her husband put his hand on her arm. “You stay there. I'll get it.”
She watched her husband rise and walk sedately into the kitchen. Waiting for him to return, she continued to enjoy the warmth given out by the flickering tongues of fire. She was thankful for it, and wondered how she had ever managed to live without one before.
Rushing back into the room, Eli startled his wife. “I'm sorry, love, but I've been called back to the Plant.”
“Problems?” she called out as Eli ran to get his coat.
They both stared at each other as, shocking them both, they heard a loud bang that seemed to reverberate through their bones. With her eyes wide in fright, Marcia rushed to the window just to see another object strike upon the red field, sending another loud booming noise across the surface of the Earth.
She turned panicking eyes towards her husband. “I thought we weren't due to hit the meteor storm for another two months?” she cried against the roar from another strike.
Stammering, he told her, “we weren't!” Hesitating, for he knew his wife needed him here, he reluctantly spoke the words she hated to hear, “I have to go. I'll be back as soon as I can.”
Marcia watched, horrified, as her husband – her rock and strength – rushed away. As she stood, alone, fearful and confused, she forced herself to think of her children, and not of the immense anxiety that coursed through her veins.
Reaching Felicity first, she hurriedly picked her out of her cot and then carried her into Ethan's room. He sat in his bed, his hands clutching his ears to stop the intrusion of the resounding booms. She could hear them both with their fearful wailing, and as she sat on Ethan's bed, clutching her children close, she realised she was crying, too.
“Mummy, what's happening?” Ethan shouted, trying to get his little voice heard above the clamour from outside.
“Some very big rocks are colliding with the paper above us, the one that Daddy runs.” Paper was the only way of describing the field that was being generated above the atmosphere of the Earth to a three-year old.
“Are they going to break through, Mummy?”
The question caught Marcia without an answer, or at least, without an answer that she liked. She simply prayed that her husband, one of the foremost physicists at the Plant, could keep the field up and running throughout the meteor storm.
A sudden ring of the doorbell caught Marcia's attention. Grabbing Ethan's hand, she walked to the door, ducking every time she heard another meteor strike. Reaching the door, she opened it marginally. Breathing a sigh of relief, she saw it was her sister-in-law, but the relief only lasted seconds as yet another chorus of booms came, this time half-deafening all four of them from the intensity.
Marcia grabbed the younger woman's arm, pulling her inside, and then kicked the door shut unceremoniously behind her.
“Tally, it's good to see you...” The lights flickered and Ethan cried out. Tallulah took the quiet girl from her mother's arms, allowing her to kneel beside her son and wrap her arms around him.
“The moment I heard the loud...thunder,” she settled on the word, not sure it was actually correct, “I thought you would need some help with the kids.” She looked around, then, “Eli at the Plant?”
Marcia lifted her three-year old to her hip. “Yes,” she confirmed, though her mind was everywhere, it seemed, except within the house. “He left...about ten minutes ago. Just as the first meteor hit.” She remembered that moment as if it were happening all over again – which, she realised, it was.
Tallulah, seeing the fear that was inscribed on her face, asked, “have you got the fire lit? If the lights goes out, it'll be a comfort to have the fire.”
Marcia nodded, wrenching her mind from her husband to think of the needs of her children. She nodded again, and, carrying baby Felicity, who now thought the loud booms were rather exciting, Tallulah made her way past Marcia to lead the way into the open plan living room, where she could hear the familiar crackle of the wood being consumed. Marcia followed, then watched as Tallulah carefully lowered herself onto the floor, clinging on tightly to her little bundle.
The lights flickered again.
“Mummy!” her son cried, flinging his arms tightly around her neck.
“Shhh... It's okay, sweetie,” Marcia told him, using her best calming voice to quieten him.
She deposited him on the floor, much to his consternation, before joining her sister-in-law. Ethan took the opportunity of a comfortable bed by climbing onto his mother's legs and leaning back onto her stomach.
“Do you know what's going on?” Tallulah asked, stroking Felicity's blonde hair.
“I think it's the meteor storm.”
“But that's not supposed...”
“I know,” she interrupted her. She felt as let down as Tallulah was about to. Her husband should have known that the meteor storm was on its way, yet he had seemed as confused and as frightened as she was by it. She didn't blame him for not alerting her for the upcoming danger, but she certainly blamed the head ones at the Plant. They were there to protect her, her children, and their future lives. If she could not trust them, whom could she trust?

*          *          *

Eli knew he was in for a long night the moment he had received the call, but he hadn't realised just how long. He had been at the Plant for three hours now, and it had seemed like he'd aged fifty years along the way. What had started out as a beautiful evening with his wife had turned into a global catastrophe. Lives depended on him. His family's future depended on him. Though surrounded by thousands, Eli felt alone.
“There has got to be an explanation for this,” Isaac Bone bellowed as he entered the bustling research centre. The top fifty physicists had relocated here, where all the research computers were in easy reach. “Eli, tell me you have an explanation. A theory. A vague idea that would be right, if only the sun had exploded three millennia ago. Something!” he cried.
Eli sighed, exasperated. “I have a theory that's crude at best.”
“Tell me!”
“Well, the Boyle satellite that we sent to monitor the progress of the meteor storm developed a problem with its thermal sensors. Although not that important in the mission, it created a hole in the sensor network. It's possible that some thing collided with the Boyle that wasn't detectable by the other sensors.”
Isaac Bone sighed. “I hate it when things don't make sense. Something has temperature, but no actual substance?” He shook his head, dispelling the incongruous idea. “So whatever hit it didn't destroy the satellite?
Eli nodded, feeling the same sense of confusion as his superior did. “It's possible that the strike altered both its' trajectory and also the equipment that relays the information back to us.”
“So it's been sending false readings? Fantastic!” he cried sarcastically.
“Maybe not false, but not accurate for its' position.”
Bone's eyes had glazed. “I'm not a physicist. You lost me, Eli.”
Eli stood up, his back aching for a stretch, and then crossed to the white-board. Picking up  the black marker, he drew what he was trying to explain.
“We've assumed – as does the computer – that the Boyle satellite is on the trajectory it's telling us. But if the satellite's computers were damaged, it might not recognise that its' trajectory has changed – and neither would we. So while it, and us, think it's travelling along this path, it could actually be coming towards us. That also means that the satellite thinks it's tracking the meteors up here,” he placed a dot, “when actually they're down here, plummeting into the field around Earth. The satellite told us two months to go till impact, when actually it wasn't even six hours.”
Isaac Bone glowered. “But surely the transmission time would have lessened as the satellite got closer?”
Eli conceded that point. “And it did. Just not to the degree that would allow us to catch on. The satellite is taking ten-times as long as it should in its estimated position. We can only assume that its' transmission computer was damaged, too.”
Bone glowered again, and Eli wondered whether he would ever see the man happy again. “We'll have to salvage what we can of the Boyle, and the rest will have to be scrapped.”
Eli coughed nervously, and he received a piercing glare. “What?”
He shifted from foot to foot. “Unless we find a way to stabilise the field, it will fail in the next hour or two. At that point, whenever the satellite hits Earth's atmosphere, it will burn up. There'll be nothing left to salvage.”
“The field...fail?” The full force of all that entailed struck Bone like an iron fist. His countenance blanched. “If that field fails,” his voice cracked for the first time in all the years Eli had known him, “we'll all die.”
“We'll have an hour or two before then,” Eli assured him, though his heart didn't feel any better than Bone's. “Every house has a thermal sealer. If we activate them universally, it should give us an hour or two to get the field up and running again.”
Isaac Bone didn't appreciate the assurance. “And if we don't succeed, every man, woman and child will freeze to death.”
Through gritted teeth, Eli responded, “I'm aware of that, sir. I have a wife and two children. Don't you think I will try my hardest to keep them alive?”

*          *          *

Marcia woke with a twinge in her spine. She didn't remember falling asleep, and briefly wondered just what she was doing sat in her living room rather than being asleep in her bed. She looked to her left and saw Tallulah, curled up on the floor with little Felicity sleeping soundly in the curve Tallulah's body made, and remembered what happened.
A boom came and made Marcia duck, though within the protection of her home and the field. Tallulah, Felicity and Ethan didn't seem to hear the loud cadence any more than she had while sleeping.
Despite being loathe to disturb her slumbering son, she wanted to ease the pain in her back and to regain feeling in her legs. She moved him gently, from her legs to the floor  besides her, and was grateful to feel her blood returning to her cold, lower limbs.
Quietly, Marcia climbed to a vertical position, and, stretching out the aches and the twinges, she tip-toed out of the living room and into the kitchen. When she went to turn the light on, she realised that the electricity had gone off. Well, at least it didn't wake the kids, she thought to herself.
The meteor strikes, she was sure, had decreased in intensity and number, so Marcia decided to peak outside. She opened the back door in the kitchen that lead out into the large garden, and crossed the house's boundaries. The sky was still dark, though tinted with the red from the shield, and Marcia guessed the time at around two in the morning.
She was glad, now that she thought about it, that they lived some distance out from the nearby village. No doubt people would be screaming and running about in the streets in hysteria. Their panic would have fuelled Marcia's own.
Shock overwhelmed Marcia when, out of the blue, she saw the red haze start to shrink, and then suddenly disappear, the protection from the elements and from the meteors gone. Fear alone compelled her to run inside her home as she felt the temperature drop instantly.
Once inside, she slammed the back door shut, and waited for the thermal sealer to be activated. She silently thanked her husband for teaching her what she had once thought to be boring safety mechanisms that would never be useful. The thermal sealer, which automatically activates within thirty seconds when the protective field goes down, seals the house so that warmth stays inside as much as possible. That seal was activated, and now no-one would be able to leave the house – ever – until the field was up and running again.
“Marcia!” Tallulah called, panic etching her voice. Marcia heard her run into the kitchen. When she saw her friend inside and safe, Tallulah embraced her fiercely. “I thought you'd gone out. When I heard the seal go, I thought...I thought...”
Marcia returned the heartfelt hug, feeling the younger woman break down. She realised that even the strong needed their time to weep. “It's okay, Tally.”
“Mummy,” Ethan called, his little voice cutting through the night. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, and then ran up to her. Placing a hand on Tally's arm, he tugged it, trying to get her attention.
“Don't cry,” he told her. “You'll get mummy wet.”
Tallulah smiled, breaking away from the embrace, and brushed away her brief flood of tears. “You're right, but I thought she needed a bath,” she chuckled. She bent down and lifted him up, placing him on her hip. “Come on, lets get you snuggled onto the sofa.”
Marcia stayed in the kitchen and looked out of the window upon the world that had changed so drastically. Within the few minutes she'd been inside, the ground now had frost, glistening under the bright moonlight.
And it was beautiful.
“You're smiling,” Tallulah observed, a hint of surprise and wonderment in her tone.
“I am?” she laughed. “I suppose I am.” She paused, thinking. “You know, Eli and I were talking before this all started. We said that not one person in the last seventy years had seen the sky the way it was naturally. Not one person. But in the seconds I was out there, when the shield was gone...I saw it. I saw the night sky in all its glory. The stars twinkled. There are millions now in the night sky. Millions! The moon was so much brighter...and its not red! I know it never has been, but I've never seen it without the red haze.”
Marcia turned to her sister-in-law, and grabbed her arms. “Tally, I know we could all die today. But at least, before I do, I have seen the beauty of the night sky for myself. It wasn't a photo. It wasn't a painting. It was real. And it was...it is magnificent!”
She felt the tears in her eyes, but didn't care – whether she live or die, she was determined to be happy having seen the one thing she had always dreamt of. The only thing that saddened her was that her children could not see it without having to look through a pane of thermal-sealed glass.

*          *          *

“Sir?” Eli turned to face Isaac Bone, whose face was set in a permanent grimace. He turned stony eyes on Eli. “The field has collapsed. The thirty second countdown has started for the thermal-seal.”
Eli recoiled as the man growled, “how long until it's back up?” All Eli could do in response was slowly shake his head.
Eli returned to looking at his console, which showed the flightpath of the last few meteors. They had managed to protect Earth from the bulk of the onslaught, but each strike now would rock the Earth, causing massive destruction.
He felt the next strike in his bones. The emergency electric lighting flickered, and glasses of water dropped to the floor, sending shards of glass in every direction.
“Eli?” The call came from a physicist to his left. “Hook your video into the space station.”
Eli did so and was presented with a live feed from the space station. He recognised the large shape now about to hit the upper atmosphere. The Boyle satellite.
Muttering to himself, he said, “we'll never know just what went wrong.”
An eerie hush fell upon all those in the research centre, as one and all watched the burning of what had once been their doomsday clock. They continued to watch until the whole thing was nothing more than a memory in the minds of those who had built it. It had ticked its' last.
“Eli?” He groaned. He was starting to get sick of hearing his name. He only wanted to hear his wife calling for him. He wanted to be with her and his children when the bitter-cold end came.
“Yes?” he replied to another of the physicists.
“Have you seen the temperatures?”
Eli frowned, then patched into the weather stations across the globe. Each station reported the temperatures, which then flicked up onto an image of the Earth.
Calling back to the physicist, “are these correct figures?” He received a nod in reply.
Eli then called Isaac Bone over to his console, and showed him the temperatures.
“What do they all mean, Eli?”
He blinked in disbelief before answering. He was having trouble accepting it. “Over the northern hemisphere, temperatures are, on average, about minus-six degrees centigrade.”
“That's below freezing point,” Bone replied, “as expected.”
“But it's not below liveable, sir!”
Bone shot him a disgusted look. “That's thirty degrees below normal, Eli! You can't survive at that temperature.”
“Can I please continue?” Eli asked, his temper starting to brew over being told he's wrong. “The southern hemisphere has an average of twenty-eight degrees...”
“I thought the whole globe was going to freeze?” he asked, interrupting. “The southern hemisphere has increased in temperature.”
“Yes, sir,” Eli responded. “The north is having its' winter, the south, its' summer.”
“Those words mean nothing to me, Eli. Just answer me, why isn't the south freezing?” He was becoming exasperated at each passing confused moment.
“Because we've shifted back into our normal orbit! I can only guess that some of those meteor hits were enough to push us back.” Pausing, he muttered, “it's safe without the shield now.” Realising that this was a time to be extremely happy, Eli jumped to his feet, his expression one of jubilation. “It's safe!”
“It's below freezing, Eli!” Bone screamed. “Below freezing!”
“Our bodies can adapt. It's only been seventy years that we've been in this protective bubble.” He looked around at the stunned faces of all. “I'm going home to see my wife and my two beautiful children. I would suggest you all do the same.” He looked around and smiled. “We're safe!”
Much to his delight, the physicists soon agreed with him and similarly jumped for joy. As he headed home to his wife, he reflected upon the fact that the Plant would no longer require his services. And he was glad.

*          *          *

Marcia sat cradling her knees, Ethan soundly sleeping at her feet. Even little Felicity hadn't woken for some hours. Though Marcia had tried to go back to sleep, her impending doom kept her awake. She sighed as quietly as she could, but even the small noise she had made had woken Tallulah.
“Sorry,” she said to her.
“I wasn't asleep,” Tallulah replied, sitting up. “Felicity's stomach is growling.” She yawned. “I haven't heard a meteor hit in an hour. Do you think we're clear?”
With heartache, she replied, “I hope so.” She paused, thinking about her loved ones. “I wish Eli could contact me. With the electricity down, I can't talk to him one last time before...” She stopped, forbidding herself to say another word.
Both Marcia and Tallulah jumped at the sound of loud thumping on the house's front door, making sensitive Felicity awaken and cry. Marcia immediately picked her up, hugging her tightly to calm her fears.
“She slept through four hours of that tumult, and she wakes up now?” Marcia exclaimed, rocking the child from side to side.
“Don't you think we ought to let whoever is out there in?” Tallulah cried.
Marcia blinked. “No one can be out there. No one can survive,” she told herself, trying to convince herself that no one was out there.
Another loud banging stint caused Tallulah to cry out, “well somebody's out there!” She ran to the door and Marcia followed. “Where's the override?”
“Override. Override,” Marcia muttered, desperately trying to remember. “Over there!”
Every home had an override system for the thermal system, in case someone was stuck outside and wasn't able to make it in before the thermal seals were activated.
Tallulah yanked on the switch, and everyone waited for the temperature to plummet with held breaths. When it didn't, Tallulah bravely pushed the heavy door open and allowed the newcomer entry. Upon closing the door again, the seal activated instantaneously.
The newcomer muttered 'thanks' behind his thick coat that was wrapped around his face, protecting it from the cold. He then began peeling all the extra layers he had previously donned.
“Eli!” Marcia cried, as the balaclava came off his face. He pulled his wife into a bear hug, just managing not to crush his young daughter in the process. “I never thought I'd see you again.”
He smiled. “Can't get rid of me that easy. You're going to have to try something bigger than meteors!”
He took Felicity from her mother's arms, and laughed as the 'sweet-faced pumpkin' tugged on his cold ear playfully.
“Have you all been okay?” he asked. “Where's Ethan? Sleeping?”
“We're okay, and Ethan's zonked out on the sofa” She took his arm, grateful to be with him. “How ever did you get home?”
He smiled again. “Wake Ethan. He's not going to want to miss this.”
They all went into the living room and waked a groggy, protesting, sleeping child. He mumbled incoherently and Marcia picked him up, putting her son onto her hip. Then Eli took them all into the kitchen. He went to override the seal system, but Marcia protested loudly, fearing for her children's lives.
“It's cold, but it's safe,” he assured her.
He pulled the switch and pushed the door open. Silently, one and all walked out in to the garden, the frosty grass cold underfoot. Eli took his wife's hand in his, and pointed upwards. “For seventy years, it's not been seen. Our children get to see it on its' first night.”
Marcia looked up into the night sky, and her breath was instantly taken away. Up there, against the backdrop of twinkling stars on black velvet, was the rippling visage of the Aurora Borealis, its green and blue ribbons dancing across, as if in glee to be seen again.
It was only when having seen the Aurora Borealis for the first time that she began to realise her life was not ending, but rather beginning. All her hopes and dreams seemed so more real to her now, and she knew her children would grow up seeing the beauty of the night sky as it should be seen. She vowed never to forget this moment, and all that it meant. Though her feet were cold, her heart was warm.