The Day the Earth Crak'd

By: Travers Naran

07:00 hours. Los Gatos, California

	Harry Finus woke up to the sound of singing birds and the
light streaming through his window. He felt truly alive that
morning, nothing could ruin his day. He went into the bathroom
and looked at himself in the mirror. The growth under his chin
itched and made him look haggard. Reaching into the shower he
turned on the water and entered the shower. The shock of the cold
water hitting his skin brought him awake. Ice seemed to flow
through his veins, but the coldness soon became a pleasant
coolness, he relaxed and began to wash as he enjoyed his last day
on Earth.
	As Harry entered the kitchen, he felt it's warmth envelope
him. Harry stepped outside and retrieved the morning paper. The
fresh morning air greeted him. As he walked back inside, he
noticed the headlines talking about an earthquake that totally
demolished San Francisco. Harry read the article as he went back
inside and sat down at the table.
	He was eating his toast when he heard the far off rumbling.
Harry ran to the window and looked out, trying to see where the
noise was comming from.  The kitchen started to shake. There was
nothing outside, but as it grew stronger, Harry realized what it
was: an earthquake. He dove under the table with his hands over
his head. The shaking plates fell out of their cupboards and the
table moved. To Harry, it seemed like the shaking would never
end. When the tremmor stopped, Harry looked at his watch. 8:00
a.m., he was going to be late for work.
	He jumped into his car and drove to work as usual. His
bewildered neighbours stood outside looking around quite puzzled.
Harry remained calm and collected as he drove past them. Being a
native Californian helped.

	It took about an hour and a half for the drive through the
desert to Death Valley. By the time he could see the Hades
Project building, it was already 90 degrees Fahrenheit.	
Harry looked at his watch: 9:23 a.m. He stopped at the front
gates and showed his pass to the guard. The guard nodded and
waved him through. Harry parked his car in his usual space and
walked to the low, squat two-story building, the home of the
Hades Project.

	A rush of air-conditioned wind greeted Harry as he walked
into the foyer. The receptionist/secretary was busy trying to
figure out how to use the drinking fountain while the multi-line
phone was lit up like a Christmas tree. A young man in his early
twenties came running into the foyer wearing a lab coat. He
skidded to a stop in front of Harry and started rambling on about
some big problem with the drill. Harry just looked at his
Assistant Drill Ops Engineer and thought, sadly, this was not
going to ruin his day. The young man's face was full of panic
and was still blabering on incoherently. Harry sighed and put
his hands on Alfred's shoulders.
	"Alfred," Harry said. "Calm down. Now what's the problem,
again?" Alfred cleared his throat and began to explain as best he
could. Harry's face went from concerned to panic as the two of
them ran to the Drilling Ops Control room.

	Harry sat at his Sun workstation and started to read the
figures coming on the screen. He seemed more and more depressed
as he read the figures. He was staring at the screen in
disbelief.
	"Alfred," Harry asked calmly. "How many people know about
this?" Alfred took a deep breath then started to count in his
head.
	"About three or four, including Stevenson." He said. Harry
looked at the screen and then through the window shield between
the Drilling Ops Room and the Drilling Room. The workmen were
pulling up the last of the shredded pipe and preparing the camera
to go down. Harry sat back in his chair and looked at Alfred,
"How long ago did the explosion occur?" Harry asked. Alfred
thought for a moment and said, "About 5 this morning." Harry
remembered this morning's earthquake and the headlines about San
Francisco.
	"Was there an earthquake with the explosion?" Harry asked
sadly, he had already figured out what had happened. Alfred
looked at Harry astonished.
	"Yes. How did you know? The moment the drill head exploded,
there was a small earthquake here. Why did you ask?" Harry looked
up at Alfred exasperated.
	"Alfred," He said. "I think you guys destroyed San
Francisco. Get Elizabeth and Stevenson in here."

10:00 hours. Hades Project, Death Valley, California.

	The conference room table had every scientist, engineer and
technician in the building sitting around it. Charles Stevenson,
the young genius who spear-headed the project, and led it to this
stage, stood before the table.
	"I don't think I have to tell you what happened, except for
those who haven't heard yet. Or haven't heard the full story at
any rate. At appoximately 5 a.m. this morning, the drill hit an
unstable geological formation of an unknown type and form. The
best we can determine is that it is a type of fault line that is,
by some means still unknown, connected to every crack and fault
in the Earth's crust. What makes this fault unique is that it is
110 miles down and the two rock faces are made of a remarkable
substance with low friction and a highly volatile, yet strong,
crystal structure. The primary elements in this material appears
to be carbon, plutonium, uranium, oxygen, nitrogen and helium
trapped in the lattice structure of crystal. But that's not all,
folks, this fault passed through a chamber in the Earth's crust
that was estimated to have been 4 kilometers wide and a 500
meters deep. The chamber contained an explosive gas of the same
basic composition as the rock faces, but the structure and
composition of the gas was extremely volatile. A small spark
would set it off, well, a small spark did.
	"Unfortunately, the drill was the small spark when it nicked
the side of the chamber and the mixture exploded destroying the
drill head and one side of the chamber. When we sent down the
remote cameras this morning, we measured the chamber size and
the stress in the fault. The drill had hit a critical junction in
the fault and the explosion had sent a shock wave through the
connecting fault lines -- to every fault in the Earth's surface.
Because of the crystaline structure, the shock was amplified and
is now travelling around the world.
	"We immediately contacted the government and they in turn
contacted the United Nations. We gathered just about every piece
of seismic data we could get our hands on and mapped the fault
lines. As you can see on this map here, they criss-cross the
world. The Soviet Union, Canada, Brazil, South Africa and even
Antarctica have reported seismic disturbances along the predicted
fault lines. And as you no doubt heard, San Francisco has been
destroyed with the largest earthquake in history with Los
Angeles also suffering badly.
	"The shock waves are now traveling around the Earth every
three hours. Harmonics are being created in the Earth's magma,
don't ask me how, I don't know. Now if it were only the magma we
had to worry about, there would be nothing to worry about, but
the magma has become resonant with the crystal fault. Every time
the shock waves come around, they get stronger, amplified, and
more in phase with the magma, but we discovered something even
worse. When we brought up a sample of the crystal, we discovered
the crystal explodes at its resonant frequencies. The energy
release is 90%. Since the resonance will reach climax in roughly
24 hours, the fault structure will explode fracturing the Earth's
crust like a soft-boiled egg.
	"In the meantime, the shock waves are causing seismic
activity never before recorded in the history of the Earth. In
short, ladies and gentlemen, we are looking at the end of the
world." There was a stunned silence. No one spoke, but everyone
was thinking the same thing.
	"But there is a solution." Stevenson continued, "In the
seismic patterns, we discovered three critical points. These
points are where the shockwaves always travel through. We will
detonate thousand-megaton atomic charges at this points at
precisely 3:56 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. The junctions will be
destroyed and the counter shock waves will cause the other shock
waves to die out. The three critical points are located across
the world: A small villiage in the Russian federation; a point in
the Indian Ocean; and this very spot, the drill shaft. The bomb
is already on its way here from New Mexico. The only people
needed here are Harold Finus, The Chief Drilling Ops Engineer,
with his team and Elizabeth Hanson, her geological team, and
myself. Everyone else may go home now. Good day and good luck.
The code name for this operation is Operation Cracker-Jack."
	Everyone stood up and went back to their stations to get
ready to go home. Harry walked back to the Drilling Ops Room.

11:00 a.m. The California side of the Nevada-California border.

	A lone flat-bed truck traveled along the highway; its load
was covered with a heavy tarpaulin. A lone guard sat on top of
the tarpaulin with his M-16. In the cab, a military guard and a
driver passed the time. It's destination was Death Valley. They
came upon a beautiful young girl standing on the side of the
highway beside her car, waving her panties. The truck squealed to
a halt. The young girl ran over to the passenger side of the
truck and hopped on the running board.
	"Can you guys give me a hand?" She asked, her voice almost
child-like. Nice and airheady. "My little car overheated over
there." She waved her panties over at the little VW bug. The
guard smiled at the driver and nodded. As the driver stepped out,
three persons jumped out of nowhere and pointed Uzi's at the
driver's head. A burst of gunfire and the guard on the flatbed
fell to the road. The girl pulled out a .45 Magnum and leveled it
between the guard's eyes. The girl calmly ordered the guard out
of the truck, her bimbo voice gone.
	The guard put his hands up and carefully opened the door. He
suddenly jerked the door open nailing her in the chest with the
door. As she fell from the running board, a burst of gunfire
ended the guard's life.
	Three more people came from the side of the road and hopped
under the tarp. One of them stuck his head out and gave a thumbs
up. The girl hopped into the truck and started it up again. The
rest of the group scrambled under the tarp. As the last person
was about to get into the truck, he dropped a pin on the dead
guard. It showed the Earth with the letters, WPO, on top of it.
The World Peace Orginization had struck again.
	The girl shifted the truck into first and it got under way
again, the destination still Death Valley.

	Harry squatted under a desk listening to the conversation
taking place behind him.
	"The humans have hit the gas pocket as planned, Leader. The
shock waves will create the trigger resonance in the crystal
infrastructure as I had predicted, the plan is under way," the
secretary said into her compact.
	It seemed that the air-headed secretary who couldn't figure
out how to use a water fountain was an alien spy placed in the
Hades project to sabotage it, or so Harry gathered from the
conversation behind him. But the interesting thing though was she
seemed quite adept though at handling the Cray-3 supercomputer as
she programmed it to calculate and transmit the co-ordinates of
the building and the time of explosion.
	Harry was about to walk in to the Ops room when he had heard
the secretary's voice. When she started to program the complex
details of Operation Cracker-Jack into the Cray at lightning
speed, Harry suspected something was up. He had crawled into the
room and hid underneath his desk. He had sat there and listened
to her give the report. The secretary was still at work on the
Cray. Harry ran through his mind what he was going to do. Then he
remembered his terminal, but it was above him and he would have
to stand up to use it. But as luck would have it, she finished
and left the room.
	Harry watched her carefully as she left the room and went
back to the foyer. He scrambled into his chair and turned on the
monitor. It showed a three-dimensional model of the Earth with
the fault lines in white. He pressed a key and a message flashed
on the top of the screen, "SIMULATION." He watched as the time
elapsed and it showed the course of the shock waves. He watched
in horror as he realized the secretary had re-programmed
Elizabeth's model, she had set the detonation off from the
correct time. The shock waves converged at the moment of
detonation. Harry watched the screen in gut-wrenching horror as
he saw the final outcome. He switched off his terminal and ran to
find Elizabeth.

	Outside, a large flat-bed truck stopped at the main gate.
The guard who had greeted Harry earlier that morning walked over
to the truck.
	"You got the pass?" The guard asked. The girl, now wearing a
truck driver's uniform, and the man sitting next to her just
looked at each other. They had forgotten to get the pass off the
dead guard. The girl bit her lip while the man leaned over to
look out the window.
	"I'm sorry," The man said, "But we seem to have lost it."
The guard sighed and looked at his clipboard. His clipboard had
the flat-bed listed but the guard did not know that it carried
1,000 megatons of power that was to save the world. The guard
sighed and thought to himself, "Great! Another no-pass'er!" He
looked up at the smiling faces and groaned.
	"Hey, I'm sorry, guys, but I gotta call it in." As the guard
turned around he heard a round of automatic fire behind him but
he could not turn around, the sound was the least of his
problems. The guard felt something like an 18-wheeler trying to
drive through the back of his head. Then the sensation of
pressure travelling through his head and then the 18-wheeler
comming out his forehead. He felt it eight times before he died.
	 The truck's engine roared and they smashed the gate. They
drove across the lawn island and smashed through the foyer
doors. The terrorists jumped out, all wearing their ski masks and
toting their Uzi's, and opened fire and charged the reception
desk. The two guards in the foyer tried to get their guns out and
fire, but they were shot before they could even reach for them.
The secretary stood up and was about to run when a round of fire
mowed her down. No one noticed the greenish-blue blood that oozed
from her body.
	Three figures ran from the foyer, two down the right hall
and one down the left hall. The terrorists split up. Half went
with the man in the truck, named Matt, and the other half went
with the girl, Gretchen. They shot down anyone in their way,
ocasionally stopping to interrogate someone and taking a couple
of hostages. Half an hour later, they arrived at the Drilling Ops
Room. 

	While the terrorists were still searching the building, a
saucer-shaped ship floated over the Hades Project. It was about
five stories high and twice as large as the building. The ship
slowly descended on the building before putting out its landing
stilts. A white tube dropped from the belly of the ship through
the roof into the Drilling Room.

	Harry sat in Elizabeth Hanson's office and showed her the
simulation. She stared is mute surprise and horror. After the
simulation, she turned to Harry.
	"We gotta tell Stevenson."  She said.

	The tube came to a stop on the floor of the Drilling Room.
Three aliens had stepped out of the door in the tube. They went
over to the drill shaft and looked down the 110 mile hole. One of
the aliens looked up and gave the command, "Bring down the power
tube." 

	Harry and Elizabeth were running to Stevenson's office on
the other side of the building when they saw the truck crash into
the foyer. When the terrorists opened fire, Harry and Elizabeth
turned around and started to run around the other way to
Stevenson's office. When they got to a bend in the hall, the
sound of gunfire came around the corner. Harry pushed Elizabeth
against the wall and looked around. Stevenson was thrown out of
his office, hands tied behind his back. He seemed to be crying.
Harry grabbed Elizabeth's arm and started running with her.
	"Where the hell are we going, Harry?" She asked.
	"Quickly!" Harry shouted. "To the Drilling Ops Room!"

	Stevenson had graduated first in his class in the Dept. of
Geology at UCLA. He had always been fascinated with travelling to
the centre of the Earth, and it had been his prime motivation
since a child. He had argued with senators for funding, rubbing
elbows with the rich, sleeping with a few wives along the way.
But this was too much for him. He had been sitting in his office,
trying to formulate something to say to the next funding hearing
when he heard the gun fire. He didn't know where it came from, so
he headed for the foyer. As he rounded the corner, he saw the two
guards get shot and the terrorists split up. He ran for his
office.
	Unfortunately, he slipped, and the group led by Gretchen
spotted him. He ran into his office, locked the door, hid under
his desk and prayed. A round of gunfire blasted into the office
and the door kicked open. Suddenly a voice shouted, "On your
feet, asshole! Now! Before we shoot your fucking balls off!"
	Stevenson slowly stood up, hands behind his head. He turned
to face his captors. Gretchen looked at Stevenson and signaled
for one of the soldiers to tie his hands. When he tried to
resist, Stevenson got a punch in the gut.
	Gretchen came over to the bent form of Stevenson and asked
bluntly, "Where's your weapons lab?"
	Stevenson was too stunned to answer. "A weapons lab?" He
sputtered out, still shocked out of his mind. "In this place?"
	Before he could answer, someone slapped him across the face.
Gretchen then grabbed the front of his suit and pulled him
towards her. She spat in his face.
	"Where's the goddamn weapons lab? We know you guys have been
working on a new weapon here, so you better talk before we shoot
you."
	At that, one of the soldiers aimed his Uzi at Stevenson's
head. Stevenson looked down the barrel of the Uzi and for the
first time in his life, he started to cry. He started to whimper
then buried his head in Gretchen's ample chest.
	"We don't have a weapons lab." Stevenson whined, "We're just
a bunch of scientists drilling through the Earth's crust! That's
all." His whine was at full force now.
	Gretchen pushed him off her and punched him across the jaw.
Stevenson tasted something coppery in his mouth.
	"Where the fuck is your weapons lab?" Gretchen shouted in
his face. Stevenson was still crying. He looked up at Gretchen
and paused. She was quite beautiful, Stevenson thought. Gretchen
stared back at him.
	"Well?" She said.
	Stevenson remembered the question and pulled himself up
straight. He stopped crying and remembered who he was and smiled.
The same smile he gave to senators who wanted to cut his funding,
the same smile he gave to his collegaues who thought he was mad.
	"Look for yourself," Stevenson replied. "I'll even you give
you all the keys for this god-damned place. You won't find a
weapon's lab. I'll show you every room in this building and I
guarantee you, you won't find any weapons except on the guards."
	Stevenson used his hard, cold stare he reserved for really
stubborn senators. Gretchen just smiled.
	"Give me your keys." She said. "And your pants."

	Harry and Elizabeth were hidding under a console. They had
walked in and seen the aliens preparing a tube to put into the
shaft. Harry looked through the glass between the Ops and
Drilling room at the hook dangling over the drill hole. The drill
pipe had been removed this morning and the hook set up to drop
the bomb. But Harry had seen the truck in front of the foyer, he
knew the terrorists had taken the bomb.
	He dared a peek over the edge. He saw the aliens looking
down the hole and studying a device sitting next to the hole. The
door on the white tube that came through the ceiling opened
again. This time, an alien came out carrying a small metal
sphere. He leaped up the twenty feet to the ceiling and somehow
attatched it to the hook. The hook was explosive so that when the
bomb was to be released, it would just be detonated and it would
separate the hook from the rope. Harry started thinking about a
plan.

	An explosion echoed outside. The terrorists were coming.
Harry hid back under the desk.
	"They've got their bomb sitting on the hook." Harold said
queitly. "I think I can release it with our controls but the
question is, did they know about the terrorists? And if not, what
would they have done if we were still here?"
	Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders then saw something by the
ventilations shaft. She poked Harry and pointed.
	"How about that? Isn't that Ceradin 44? You know, the nerve
gas the government abandoned because there was no protection?"
Harry nodded. He studied the timer on the release valve
intensely.
	Another explosion echoed outside. The door to Ops room flew
open and the terrorists rushed in. Harry held his breath and
looked at Elizabeth. This was the moment.

	Gretchen and Matt came up to the Ops room door, a heavy
metal door. Matt stopped them about 50 meters away and signaled
one of the soldiers to come closer. The soldier had a shoulder-
launched rocket. The rest of the group made space behind him. The
soldier aimed, readied, and fired. The door burst open and the
group rushed in.

	The terrorists entering the Ops room turned to look through
the window to the Drilling room. The aliens stared back. It
wasn't too clear, but someone fired. All hell broke loose. The
laser bolts and the gunfire both hit the glass between the two
rooms at the same time. The shield shattered in a cascade of
powder. The terrorists took positions behind the consoles while
the aliens pressed small buttons on their waist belts. Harry had
run over to the hook release panel and was entering the security
code and the time delay. Just as he was entering the last number,
the console exploded in a shower of sparks and flames.
	Harry was thrown back into the wall. Elizabeth ran over to
help him. Harry looked at the flaming console. Elizabeth held his
head in her lap as she kneeled beside him. Harry was thinking
about opening up the Ceradin 44 when it occured to him that there
was a manual control in the Drilling room, but the gunfire.
	Harry looked to his left at the environmental suits.

	The terrorists were getting frustrated, none of the aliens
seemed to be getting hit. One of them suddenly re-loaded the
rocket launcher and jumped up. An alien saw the human jump up
with a strange tube on his shoulder. The two fired at each other.
The rocket hit the alien. The explosion stressed the shield
controls to the limit. 98% of the energy had to go into
reinforcing the shield, the remaining 2% had to stabilize the
shield. Unfortunately, the shield unit didn't have enough energy
to restablize and it collapsed. The explosion ripped through the
shield and destroyed the alien.
	The terrorist was hit by the laser. He felt an intense heat
and his skin boiling, at first. His muscles were going into
spasms and his nerves felt intense pain. He never noticed his
skin vaporize or his muscles and internal organs become plasma as
the positronic beam dissolved his backbone. Both alien and
terrorist collapsed. Both dead.
	A silver clad figure had stopped and watched the exchange
before continuing his crawl. He descended the stairs and ran
behind a piece of machinery. The terrorists were now trying to
shoot the hook. The aliens noticed too late as the hook exploded
and the silver sphere began to fall. If the bomb went off while
they were still in the Drilling Room, the aliens would become
free electrons for the Universe. The only option was to destroy
the bomb.
	One of the aliens aimed and fired. The bomb dissolved. Harry
groaned and a shiver went up his spine. The planet was doomed. He
looked longingly at the tube, but it was still guarded. Suddenly
the aliens changed their aim. Harry looked back and saw Elizabeth
running down the steps. They hit her and she collapsed.
	The terrorists hesitated as they turned to look who was hit.
The aliens took their advantage and jumped the five feet into the
Drilling Ops Room. Harry had to move fast.

	The terrorists had seen the change of target and turned to
look. They saw a young red-head running down the stairs and then
get hit. They were wondering who she was when the aliens jumped
through where the window had been. Someone re-loaded the rocket
launcher and hit another alien. His shield withstood the blast
but the concentrated fire soon depleted it.
	Gretchen and Matt kissed whispering to each other, "World
Peace through World War." They took out their hand grenades,
pulled the pins and waited. An alien jumped the console and
faced them. The alien was surprised when he was killed a few
moments later.

	No one had noticed the tube withdraw back into the ship. The
aliens certainly hadn't and the terrorists were too busy dying to
care. Outside, Stevenson was lying on the ground, hands tied
behind his back and without pants or underwear. He was lying on
his back staring at the ship. All he knew now was that the world
was gonna blow up and he was on it. He prayed that he wouldn't
die, he wished he was on the ship, at least being a slave on
another planet is better than being dead. Then he started to
fantasize about being part of some studding scheme for a planet
of women with no men. He began to lose it. He though he saw four
jets of steam from the sides of the ship. Then the jets
disappeared and the sound of air rushing into a vacuum echoed
across the landscape. Stevenson began to imagine that he was
being lifted up and pulled into the ship. He closed his eyes and
relaxed. "At least I won't be conscious when I die." Stevenson
thought.

	The ship pulled up its landing stilts and started floating
away. As it started to move slowly away from the building, a
faint explosion could be heard. In the distance, sirens blared
and military and police vehicles raced up the highway to the
Hades Project. The ship moved over the Mojave desert, slowly
gaining speed. It suddenly tilted up and started to fly up into
the sky. The sky outside the ship turned from the blue sky of
Earth to the dark, light-speckled canvas of space.

	Onboard, Harry stood by the food dispenser and waited for
the tea to materialize. He picked up the cup and went over to a
chair. He sat down in it and punched a button on the chair's arm.
	The view screen showed a shrinking Earth. Harry relaxed and
started to drink his tea. The ship's computer, which he re-
programmed in a lightning 45 seconds, gave its report, "Fuel
level low. Re-fueling program complete: sun skimmer operational.
The two medical subjects, Elizabeth Hansen and Charles Stevenson,
are in the medical lab and are recovering well. Enjoy your
flight."
	Harry smilled and watched with a slight feeling of sadness
as the planet exploded.