Listen to the audiobook of this chapter:
“Good morning, Kathy! Hello, Shadow.” The first I called to the lady in the bedroom, the second to her little black dog that greeted me excitedly at the door as I entered.
“Hi, sweetie,” an elderly voice called back. “How was your weekend?”
“It was great. I went to the amusement park with Aaron and his little sister.”
“Sounds like fun.”
I walked over to where she was lying in bed and gave her a hug. “She’s the sweetest kid ever. I can see why Aaron adores her so much.”
Kathy smiled, then handed me a mostly empty cup. “Tell me about it after you get me a cup of coffee?”
“Of course,” I said, taking it from her and heading to the kitchen.
Though I was lucky that I had most of my college tuition covered by scholarships, I still had rent, bills, and food to pay for. And since I was extremely averse to taking food service or desk jobs, I decided to try in-home caregiving. It had taken a while, but the company and I had finally been able to find me someone I could help in the mornings and still be able to attend school in the afternoons and evenings. It wasn’t full time, but it paid my bills, and Kathy and I had clicked instantly. She was almost like the grandma I didn’t have anymore.
I did her shopping, cooked meals, cleaned the small apartment, and whatever other household tasks she needed done, and she let me do homework while we watched TV and movies.
I brought her fresh instant coffee and recapped the events of my Sunday adventure. She agreed that Val sounded like a wonderful girl and hoped she would continue to have a happy childhood, despite her mother’s death.
After a quick clean-up in the kitchen and living room, I sat down at a desk in her bedroom and hauled my backpack closer.
“So what’s on the news today?” I asked.
“The usual. Unrest in the Middle East. Tension in Asia. A debate in Congress about a bill they need to vote on. Someone posting a video online that they swear is a cat person prowling the jungles of Indonesia.”
“Why did they cover something like that? How is that even news?”
“They need to fill twenty-four hours somehow. And I guess it was recorded by a fairly reliable news reporter, Skylar Phillips, so they’re taking it seriously, for now.”
“Oh, her. She’s the one who does all the major magic-related stories? Travels to Indonesia and Brazil and the magicus universities a lot, right?”
“Probably. I can’t keep track of everyone on the news. Though that Vinny guy is cute.”
I laughed. “He’s like forty years younger than you!”
“A woman can still admire a nice-looking guy even if she can’t have him!”
“True,” I grinned and pulled out a history book and digital notepad from my bag.
Kathy looked over at me. “What are you working on today?”
“History of the Roman Empire,” I answered. “Just doing an outline right now. We’re going to be covering it in more detail later today, but the teacher wanted us to read over the chapter ahead of time.”
“Ah, I remember those times. They were good.”
“Studying for school?” I asked skeptically. Nobody liked studying for school.
“No, the Roman Empire.”
I really laughed that time. “I know you’re old, but you’re not two-thousand years old!”
She chuckled. “Sometimes it feels like I am. Do you want to watch any of this today?”
“Nah,” I said. “It doesn’t sound like anything new is happening.”
“All right,” she replied and turned on a pre-recorded reality TV show she enjoyed.
When the second episode ended and the TV temporarily returned to live broadcasting while she loaded up the next show, we saw something that froze us in place. The news was playing video of a building at sunset that just… disappeared. That’s the only word for it. No explosion, no collapse. It was there one second and gone the next.
I blinked rapidly. “What did I just see?”
The mumbling I’d vaguely heard in the background cleared up to become a news reporter. “…don’t know exactly what kind of device was used, but current theories from top magiphysicists suggest that it was some kind of new magi-tech bomb that only works during sunrise or sunset, based on the time of day it was used and the containment of the blast.”
I stared numbly at the television. “What?”
Across the bottom of the screen, words blared at its viewers: “BREAKING NEWS: SUSPECTED TERRORIST ATTACK IN BRUCHETTE DESTROYS GOVERNMENT BUILDING”
The video switched to a newscaster sitting in the studio. “You’re watching PTWNN, your Public Tech World News Network. We’re bringing you up-to-the-minute news coverage of this devastating story where a government building in Bruchette, France was hit by a terrorist attack less than half an hour ago, at 6:34 pm local time. It is unknown how many people may have been in the building at the time of the event, or why this specific building was targeted. Authorities do not know who is responsible, but they are reviewing all available footage of the building at the time surrounding the attack, and are asking anyone who might have any information to contact them as soon as they can. Jose is live near the scene, covering events as they happen. Jose?”
The scene changed, this time showing live footage from traffic cameras around the location the building used to be in. The area was completely deserted, and an overlay from the news station had a clock that read 7:02 pm, nine hours ahead of our clocks. A video of the reporter holding a microphone was placed in the corner.
“As you can see, there’s nobody near the missing building. The temperature of the air around the blast zone is over 200 degrees Fahrenheit and rising. Close to four thousand people have been evacuated from what authorities are calling the ‘heat zone’, a five-mile radius around the area that scientists have projected will become superheated in the coming hours. Fortunately, the attack was far enough from residential areas that most people are being allowed to stay in their homes for now.
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“Due to the type of information and services the building supplied, there was staff working inside twenty-four hours a day. However, it is hoped that there are a limited number of casualties since the attack happened after standard working hours.
“Both authorities and government officials have yet to make any official public statements about the event. It is unknown whether there are more bombs planted either in the area or elsewhere around the city, but authorities believe it is unlikely since they expect other bombs would have gone off at the same time as the first one. However, police are searching all accessible government buildings in the city with magi-tech bomb squads and dog units. Back to you, Teresa.”
“Thank you Jose. Again, here is the video we have of the moments leading up to the attack.”
The image on the screen returned to the video we saw first. A traffic camera which monitored the street corner beside the building had caught the entire event, or at least what little there was to see.
A person walked up to the door and paused, probably waiting for some kind of approval to enter. After a moment, the door opened and the person walked in. Seconds later, the building was gone, faster than the camera could catch. All that was left was a crater in the ground where the building used to be. No dust, no debris, just a perfectly smooth rectangular hole, almost as if the ground had been flash melted. Then it replayed again in slow-motion.
“This video was remotely retrieved by police shortly after the attack. We’ve slowed it down to try to show any indication of what might have happened, but, unfortunately, the camera was unable to capture the details.”
As she said it, the video played one frame where the building was there, a blank white frame, and then the building was gone. They played it again at normal speed. “People nearby said they didn’t hear or see anything until the building had disappeared. Almost immediately afterwards, however, they noticed an intense heat that drove everyone out of the area.”
“What kind of bomb doesn’t make a sound?” Kathy wondered aloud.
“What kind of bomb can make an entire building and all the people disappear without a trace, with such an exact area of effect?” I pointed at the screen, where a live view of the site was showing again. “It’s the exact size of the building.”
Kathy shrugged, “Well, I suppose we can at least be grateful it happened on the other side of the ocean.”
“I guess,” I muttered, frowning at the TV as the newscasters started interviewing famous magiphysicists and public officials about the event. They all had the same answers: nobody knew what kind of bomb or other device was used, nobody knew what happened to the people inside the building, and nobody knew why it happened when and where it did.
When we got tired of hearing the same things over and over about Bruchette, Kathy had me put in one of her Agatha Christie movies. I supposed she’d had enough of real life for the time and wanted a change, so she watched fictional murder mysteries while I continued to outline the history of the Roman Empire.
Mondays and Wednesdays were one-and-a-half hour long European History classes at school. I was also taking the Western Literature class, Brasílian Portuguese 2, Critical Thinking, and Essay Techniques. With a major in Linguistics with a minor in World Literature, I was hoping that I could be a traveling translator for the news or the government someday. Or maybe a historical researcher. Or maybe I’d collect lesser-known folklore and write a book. Ok, so I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with my degrees, but it opened so many possibilities.
After my six-hour shift with Kathy, and my short day at school where the teacher talked about in detail what I’d read that morning, I was able to work on my Lit History essay on my way home so I could have more free time that evening.
When I got home, I fed my cats and reheated some leftovers for myself before dropping into my chair and turning on my VR computer.
Shark! I typed on the virtual keyboard as soon as I was on.
Shark! Came the immediate reply. Sup dude?
Call? I asked. Chatterbox started ringing almost before I got the single word sent.
“Did you hear what happened in Bruchette?” I asked Mikael as I checked my email and scanned my favorite social media sites.
“Yeah, that sucks.”
I grimaced and sighed. “That’s an understatement. What could have done something like that?”
“A bomb.”
“Well... yeah. But what kind of bomb? It made an entire building disappear, but left no other damage around the area. And no sound of explosion, or implosion, or whatever it was.”
“I dunno.”
I frowned. “They say it might be a new kind of technology.”
“Must be.”
Sometimes it was like pulling teeth to talk about anything with Mikael, but when he did have an opinion, he had very strong feelings about it.
“People suck,” he said after a moment of silence.
“Not everyone.”
“Most people do. They don’t care about other people, only about what they want. They say they care, but they only do things if it helps themselves.”
Opinions on topics such as this.
“Again, not everybody is like that. I know a lot of people who care about others without needing to get something out of it.”
“I know. You’re like that. You care about other people.” I felt my face get warm. “That’s what you do for a job, after all. So, how was work?”
“Kathy is doing great. We were even able to go for a walk around the building today. Her hip is getting better every day.”
“That’s great!”
I closed my browser and started up Shakara. “So are you ready to play? I don’t have homework tonight, and I really want to get to level 55 today.”
“I’m already on,” he laughed.
Several hours later, Mikael called a short break to our adventures.
“I’m starving, need to grab some food.”
To kill time, I started sorting through my inventory, moving all the sellable loot to one side and the stuff I wanted to keep to another. When he wasn’t back after five minutes, I checked to make sure the call was still going. It was, and I sighed in exasperation. How long did it take to get some food? Or at least check back and let me know it would be a while?
After another five minutes, I wandered off to find the nearest NPC to sell those previously-separated items to. Then I began wandering around the area looking for hidden treasures. These were randomly generated items that were parts of sets. When you found a whole set, you turned them in for a special currency that was used to purchase otherwise unobtainable items, such as costume pieces or cute but mostly useless vanity pets that followed you around. If you really saved up, there were some rare mounts available, too. I was only a couple of turn-ins from purchasing the last item in the Neptune's Siren set, a costume I'd been working toward for several weeks now.
I found a couple of treasures, but none of the items were ones I was looking for. Still, I knew I could make a little money selling them in the game's auction house. You couldn’t trade the currency or purchased items from the treasure hunt, but you could sell the treasures you found if you didn’t need them.
I'd been wandering around for a good half hour, slowly growing more frustrated and worried at Mikael’s absence, before I finally heard something on the other end of the call.
"Haj," said my favorite voice in the world. Unfortunately, I couldn’t appreciate it much at the moment.
"Hi," I snapped. "Where were you?"
He was immediately on the defensive. "Lying down. My cat curled up in my lap and I didn’t want to move him."
"And you couldn't get near enough to your computer to tell me?" I could feel anger rising, as well as jealousy. Yes, I was feeling jealous of a cat because it got Mikael's attention when I wanted it.
"No," he replied, angry too now. "It was across the room."
"So you chose your cat over me?"
It was about this point that I realized I was being unreasonable and should shut up and leave it be.
I was about to apologize when he said, "And you choose your work over me. You choose school over me. You choose sleep over me."
I sat there with my mouth hanging open, trying to figure out how in the world I could reply to that.
"I need to work. I need to go to school and sleep. You know that. If I didn't have to, I might just stay here all day and play with you. But I can't, unlike you."
And that was when I knew I'd said too much.
"I'm going to bed," he snarled, and hung up. Moments later, his character disconnected from the game.
"You just got up a couple hours ago," I mumbled to the empty room. I sighed heavily and tried not to beat myself up too hard for letting my anger get the better of me.
Ten minutes later, I sent him an "I'm sorry" message. It wasn't actually unusual for us to get in fights like that. We both had short tempers and took things way too personally. I just hoped this would be a time he'd get over it sooner than later.
I hated going to bed with an argument hanging over my head, but I didn't really have a choice. I could stay up and hope he would forgive me, or I could get a couple extra hours of sleep tonight. I decided on sleep since it was the less stressful option.
