Southern Jersey Coast - 12 November 2065
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They call it the Material Rapture. After several isolated incidents of transubstantiation followed the one witnessed by Margot Jasper of the Megaphiladelphia P.I.N. Bureau, a single massive “Delta Crystal” began forming over the Atlantic ocean in mid-August. At first, you couldn’t see it from the coast. It was discovered when a passenger jet slammed into it at top speed, crumpling like a tin can that was eventually located floating off the coast of Spain. Now, it was November, and the red block was so large the sun shone red on the East coast of the New States for nearly half the day. The ecological effects were already mounting, and when the crystal went “sine form”, nobody knew what would happen.
In all the minor instances of transubstantiation, the crystal is formed by an individual node, grows for a matter of seconds, and then goes sine form, raining down as liquid blood. It’s technically not blood, just basically water with an extremely high iron content, but the visual and practical effect is about the same. According to the evening news, scientists are saying there could be as many as a million nodes self-arrayed together to generate this delta crystal, with more joining each day. The government seems to be saying to sit and wait until the scientists have a recommendation, but the scientists have no idea what to suggest. If the Rapture ends with a sine transition, there will be trillions of gallons of blood falling into the ocean. Tidal waves would slam the coasts for days on end, and it is unclear just how far the sea would rise, but rise it would. The damage will be so great and unpredictable that nobody knows what to do, and so nobody is doing anything.
Except Frank Burns. If his mothers’ civil war stories taught him anything, it was that Burnses don’t sit idly by in the face of danger, they fight, and if and when it’s the only option left, they run.
“Loretta get the kids! We’re wheels up in ten!” He called out through his family’s relatively small suburban home without turning away from the news.
Loretta and Frank had sat in the kitchen late into the night only a few days before, discussing what they would do about the current crisis. They both had a longstanding disdain for the bureaucratic dragstep of the government, so they knew it would be up to them to be proactive under the circumstances. Loretta’s parents had a house outside of Megaphilly that had been empty for the last few months since they moved into a senior home, so they were going to move there in anticipation of the destruction of their coastal Jersey hometown. Only yesterday they told Jackie and Junior that they should pack up their favorite things because they would be going away soon. The guest experts on the six AM news were devolving into a practical shouting match, so Frank switched off the television and went to the garage.
In six minutes, Frank moved all of their important belongings that had been packed over the past day and a half into the back of their minivan, and less than a minute later Loretta was buckling Junior into the back and kissing Jackie on the forehead before slamming the door shut and hopping in the passenger seat. Frank reversed out of the garage with a screech of the tires, and paused while the four stared at their house for the last time, before tearing off into the bloodred tones of sunrise.
As they got on the freeway, something was off. “Something’s wrong,” said Loretta.
“Oh my god,” said Frank. “It’s the sky. The sunrise is coming through again.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“That’s- Oh. Oh god no.” Loretta realized what exactly it meant that the sky was quickly becoming the normal colors of sunrise. “Frank step on it!”
Frank moved into the left lane and accelerated. He was pushing their little minivan to its limits, going nearly 100, the axels shuddering after every pothole and depressed drain. After a minute there was a sound like ten thousand claps of thunder all at once. Frank looked in the rearview and saw Junior clap his hands over his ears as he started to cry. Frank tried to say something to comfort him but his ears were ringing so terribly he couldn’t form speech. After the thunderous sound subsided somewhat, the ground began shuddering.
The low earthquake continued for several minutes, and then the road started cracking. Just after careening under an overpass, Frank watched it collapse on top of traffic behind them. Then, only another minute or so later, the horizon on the coastal side began to turn red. A thin line was forming and growing as far as the eye could see, and the thunderous sound was rising again. It was the first wave. Even going over 100, the wave was still quickly gaining on the Burns’ minivan. What had started as a thin line behind them in the distance was now a hundred foot wall rushing toward them less than a mile back and closing in.
The freeway had them running at an angle to the wave up to this point, but now it was curving, putting their trajectory straight away from the wave. They were gaining some distance not a moment too soon, as the van was now eclipsed by the forward roll of the wave. Eventually the wave started to slow, and as the Burns’ crossed the bridge into the greater megalopolitan area of southeastern Pennsylvania, the wave dropped off in the river behind them.
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Pulling into the driveway at Loretta’s parents’ place, Frank let out a long sigh. His family was safe. He refrained from thinking of the rest of the coast for the time being. Frank and his wife brought Junior and Jackie into the house and sent them to their rooms. Jackie complained of the stale smell as her mother got a box of old chapter books for her to occupy herself with. Frank Junior said nothing as his toys were set out in front of him but his father heard him begin to cry as he closed the bedroom door.
Frank and Loretta sat downstairs until late in the afternoon, watching the continuous coverage of the “Material Rapture” on the news. The wave they escaped was followed by four more of similar size, and more than half of Jersey was expected to remain submerged permanently, though the waves wouldn’t die down for days or weeks. There had been virtually no disaster preparation or response and over sixty million people were presumed dead. Waves were headed for Europe as well, and expected to hit before noon. Evacuations were underway there. Senators from all 42 states were on the different news channels saying that “nobody could have predicted when this would happen” and how it was a “terrible but unpreventable tragedy that people had not been evacuated,” which Frank thought was all bullshit.
Neither Frank nor Loretta said a word until eight o’clock at night, as they were watching a live feed from a helicopter over the Atlantic. The ocean was a deep dark red now, and the surface of the water was covered in dark spots. The helicopter switched on a spotlight and it was immediately clear that the spots were the carcasses of fish, and hundreds more were bobbing to the surface every minute. Loretta gagged and Frank said “oh that’s just too much,” and promptly turned off the television.
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