Flight of the CondorIt has just struck noon in the foggy town of Capache. Capache is a town of about ten thousand people. It's thirty miles south of the metropolis of Thinadan, which lies in the south west hemisphere of the planet Moirae, which orbits the star Proxima. The sun there is red. In the distance are two stars still visible in the day time. They lie close to each other. Their names are Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. None of that matters to the little boys playing in the park though. They're playing a game called Run Away Pig. The main point of the game is for everyone to tackle the boy named as the Pig. This time it's a little boy named Nathan. He has short, pale blond hair, that looks orange because of the light. His eyes are blue, but they look purple, and even from a distance you can see them twinkle with excitement.Nathan's parents came to Moirae because it was newly terra-formed, and newly terra-formed planets always have jobs open. Nathan's father, Mark, is the head of the local quantum fusion power plant. As he says to Nathan, "Daddy makes all the people have power so their TV's, and phones, and computers work." That wasn't an entirely accurate job description. Quantum fusion basically runs itself. What he should have said is this,"Daddy makes sure that there isn't a catostrophic overload of power that would cause an explosion sure kill every living creature within five hundred miles, and throw our planet off of it's orbit and into the sun." Nathan faked left to dodge a kid named Greg, and then got tackled by Greg's older brother, Ricky. Now it was Ricky's turn to be the Pig. All the boys counted to five, while Ricky ran away. Nathan was born on Moirae. His eyes worked equally well indoors and out. People who weren't born on the planet had to wear special contact lenses outside to keep from getting nauseous. Nathan's mother and father had to wear special contacts or they would vomit when they stayed outside. Nathan's father was having an affair with his secretary at the same time his son was playing Run Away Pig. He was banging her in the men's room of the power plant, kissing the nape of her neck, feeling her breasts. Maybe if he hadn't been, he would have noticed that the quantum fusion reactor was having a catostrophic overload of power. This was very bad news for everyone on the planet. The last thing the Nathan and his freinds saw was a flash of light. That flash blinded them. Then they felt a warm wind, and heard a low rumble. No one knew what was happening. Not that they had time to figure it out. That rumbling sound was the earth being thrown away from the power plant by an electric blue explosion. A flash of light, a warm wind, and then the big sleep. The explosion spread out, and consumed five hundred miles of planet. The planet didn't come off it's orbit and bury itself in the sun, though. Because of the time of day, it came off it's orbit and went into the vast emptiness of outerspace. Without the warmth of the red dwarf sun, everyone who wasn't able to escape the planet froze to death within the next month. The moral of this story, boys and girls, is that you should never be having sex with your secretary while you should be watching the gauges of a quantum fusion reactor. |