The New Sunrise, Terry Wilson [best books to read all time .TXT] 📗

The New Sunrise

by Terry Wilson
Featherwing Love Project

I am a leader in training in this new community camp outside the city, to the north. It is a community for training leaders. They brought me out of the city from the living conditions I was in, which were not good. I was tested and found clean and knowledgeable. They said the training program was going to be very brutal, a harsh two years.

"What for?" I asked.

The man put his hand on my shoulder. Strangely, I do not remember his exact words, but what he said left me with the impression that my purpose would become known to me very soon.

I was reluctant to go out there, but I really, at that point, had very little choice. The city I was in had betrayed me, and become deeply apathetic and stagnant. I went through a series of jobs and homes and eventually wound up in the system of shelters in the city. Several religious faiths, including multiple sects of my own took me in, and then turned me away or ignored me when I refused to accept their childish dogma. All, one by one, they fell away from their own basic principles. All were fallen, all were treacherous, refusing to grow, or even to use the potential they had. As my life went further and further along this path, it got worse. I had no references, "gifts" from community organizations would expire before I could get employment. Employment, when I got it, lasted months at most, usually just a few weeks, and often I would be fired for no apparent reason, or even they would refuse to pay me. Near the end, criminals found me and attacked me, stole my property and my reputation, and lied about me. Even friends I had known for years turned their backs on me, and I could never discern why, unless it was that they too had refused to grow and mature. Year after year, the authorities seemed to care less and less. Finally, I was with the drunks, the druggies who were where they were because they had nothing better to do to enjoy themselves. I knew I could commit a crime and go to jail, which would have been a huge improvement on the streets, shelters run by thugs, although I had my doubts that jail would be any different. I could also get into the drugs and the booze and the prostitutes, and people would then have sympathy. That wasn't why I never did it.

I refused to compromise my principles.

Why did this happen? Why did this city treat me so terribly?

I was too smart for my own good. I wrote stories and plans. Abroad they were accepted, other cities, towns, people responding so anonymously I couldn't even figure out where on Earth they were.

When he came, I had no choice. He had goods to sell and buy as well, and I helped him load and unload. Even though I was reluctant to trust him, I could see the love in his eyes, and took his offer, boarding the van and leaving the city.

It is my second day here, the morning classes were tough. We go into field training tomorrow. I'll probably lose ten pounds this week. This building will be occupied by the elementary children from the city to learn how this community operates. We have only five children in the community, along with the twenty-six adults, including myself.

For the morning break, I head over to the window and look out, watching the sun rise into the clear sky. Something doesn't feel right about it. The time. The heading, it's too far south. I look over to my left, and sure enough, the sun is right where it should be, to the southeast, some twenty-five degrees above the horizon.

It was something else.

Behind me, I hear a beep, but dismiss it. I hear another, and dismiss that as well, enthralled at this new sunrise phenomenon. It grows brighter, and I take a brief break from looking at it, so as not to damage my vision. When I see it again, I see that there is a veil cloud over top of it and it continues to rise, larger, redder. Then it dawns on me.

An explosion.

I rush to find the time and begin a log of the event, as is my practice for ensuring that I am reliable witness. There is already talk of making it into a training course and regular practice for this community. I pull out my cell phone:

"00:00"

I start looking around, rushing about in the school. What time is it? Every clock, every computer had reset. Above a shelf, I finally see an analog clock, reading 11:02 and mark the time. I rush back to the window to watch the explosion progress.

It is enormous, its glow faded to a deep red, nearly grey, and it begins to blot out the sun, and I can see the stem of the mushroom, but soon it seems overwhelmed by the destruction below it, a granite grey wall of ash rising like a waterfall flipped upside down. Why so much activity near the surface? I'm confused.

I look at my cell phone again, it is 00:02, so it isn't dead, but it has lost its time. That must mean major damage to the communications networks. Electromagnetic pulse. It is a nuke. Not on the city, we are too far away. "Definitely out of the Alberta Zone," someone says. No, no, that's too far!

Suddenly I realize the ash "waterfall" I was seeing was the dust on the road leading to the school being kicked up by the atmospheric shockwave.

My hands get cold: for those two brief seconds, I realized that was my city. All that I used to love, even as they all betrayed me. All that refused to grow up, was now a huge grey cloud in the sky over my head, blocking the sun and filling the sky.

But I have this community, thirty people, maybe just that, but I have something to live for now. Not two days ago when I was back in there among the traitors and the drunks and the criminals. I would have been in that grey cloud, and I would be just fine with that.

"Everybody! Get down!" I scream, and roll around behind the window frame, falling. I don't hear much commotion, and look across the dimming room as the cloud outside turns down the light of the sun.

The community's leader gives me a small nod. The lights are still on since the community has an independent environmental power system. By "environmental" we mean that it converts the natural energy of the environment, not that it is environmentally friendly, although it has that effect. A combination of microhydro, wind turbine, and solar, feeds a set of batteries that steadies the supply. It did not even glitch from the pulse that crashed my cellular phone. I caught a glimpse of the indicator panel showing that the solar panels were dead, and I realized that is probably because they are made of semiconductor, and the pulse had upset their junctions. Supplies from wind turbines dropped in steps as the shockwave destroyed the ones to the south.

I hear the leader say, "I knew this was coming, but it wasn't me."

The day before, he said that they knew there was a disaster coming. God had promised that all in the community would be trained and ready before this disaster struck. He said he was scouring the city for anyone who was willing to train, anyone who was willing to join him. Out of a city of just over a million, only twenty-five agreed to come out, and all were doing very well. Based on his promise that all would be ready before the disaster, he went out again and again to find new trainees. As long as someone was in the community wasn't trained up, he thought, the disaster would not occur. I felt that he was right, but thought that it was distant, near the completion of my own two year course.

I close my eyes, tears for my city pour out onto my cheeks, and there is clatter about me as everyone else ducks for cover. The children using the building tomorrow were going on a field trip from the city. They might all be dead by now. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way as a young lady cries. There was no fear in it, though. Already I recognize her voice, and she came with her daughter, fleeing an abusive husband and family. She was so strong, the sound of hearing her cry was very, very strange.

Not as strange as the glassing. When the shockwave hit, every window blew at the same moment. It sounded like a bomb had hit us, then all the tinkling and crunching, and the lights finally go out. I curl up behind the support as the wind rushes past. As I feel it reverse as expected, I realize that if the leader was right that this disaster would wait until all in his community were ready, that meant one thing:

I am ready.

Before I even left the city, as his last recruit, I was ready. I open my eyes, realizing that even with the building so badly damaged and others digging out and checking for injuries, the explosion's cloud still growing over our heads, my situation at this moment is still better than the one I had left in the city before the explosion.

This story is based on a dream the author had the morning of 2011 April 28. I read the email about the BookRix "End of the World Contest" a few hours later, the same morning. The dream did not wake me up from my sleep last night.

Text: Cover: 1953 May 25 Grable Upshot Knothole www.sonicbomb.com
Publication Date: 04-28-2011

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Dedication:
To all the cities warned by Matthew 10:15.