Scotland.
When it came, the media reported the Event as an "Explosion!!!" And that is what the media does. It creates a headline to attract interest, readers, and viewership. And this Event was perfect for exactly that kind of reporting. the explosion came, and with an unparalleled exuberance, the news feeds around the globe buzzed and gabbled with hour upon hour of reporting on the Event. Speculation ran like an overstimulated toddler left alone in a field of wildflowers; which is to say, it was directionless, excitable, and had zero cognition nor a modicum of self control.
And so, people, acting on the complete lack of any confirmable data at first thought of the current round of terrorism and political strife raining down over various parts of the western world. For miles around the site, natives of the Highlands thought that any number of dark and nefarious foes had tried to wrest control of their share of Greater Britain from the King and Parliament by attacking those who could not fight back. "This is what terrorists do," they said.
"Never works," others countered, "some of “The People” die, but “The People” are never in charge, so we will do well enough in time."
Many were heard to lament the world we live in that would have such cowards who would destroy innocents for an ideology. Pundits across the spectrum and across the seas sat and spun fantastic and gigantic theories spanning from both the certain, yet tiny gossamer truths they possessed, as well as the masses of speculation they all insisted upon adding in themselves.
Many networks dredged up file footage from fifty years back when the former country of Israel had been obliterated and made a glowing waste. As well as the crater that had once been Kabul, gone now 60 years, and the ruins of the Paris suburbs, all now irradiated pits in the landscape of the world. All terrorist acts that had punctuated a dark time in recent history; all failures to the causes of the terrorists, each of which having resulted in more bombs being dropped on the mountains in which the leaders had hidden; some venerable and mighty granite ranges that had weathered history’s slings and arrows for millennia, no longer stood as they once had due to repeated heavy bombing from such countries as Pakistan, Brazil, India, and Iran.
Popular opinion in the papers that first day would have had one believe that either Armageddon had at last come, or this was the first step, a mere opening volley, in a new war. There were those that even held the notion that a new war for Independence for Scotland had finally come, after all these years. Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Policing Authority, and the SIS (no longer "MI6," that designation falling into disuse back in the 2050s) down in London threw as many agents on the trails of many innocent people who in the past voiced such ideas as an Independent Scotland.
Newsmen and ideologues on all six sides of the seemingly random cultural lines held this theory too close to their hearts, and many articles in those first frightful days reached a stunning level of inflammatory rhetoric. At one point the entire BBC evening anchor team broke out in a hair-pulling, arm biting, fist fight during the evening news segment. Apologies were issued the next day as lawyers within and without the offices of the BBC converged on the hapless (and bruised) talking heads.
Much of what was reported engaged the same image, captured by a park employee on a cell device, of the luridly colored fireball that could be seen in the evening sky as far away as Glasgow. Many of these page turning, screen scrolling eyesores burned into readers’ minds simply by columnists and talking heads quoting one another in an illusory cycle of ignorance. "A nuclear war!" "A bomb must have been dropped," and many reports of what some military, and pseudo-military boffins would call a “city killer” must have been smuggled in and set off. "Bio warfare gone amok!" "Mid-East terrorists once again somehow missing the entire British governmental centers, and even the commerce centers, and all the "fascist rulers!" they hated so much! The North American reporters were, for once, much restrained in their reporting. Most simply repeating the few known facts available concerning the Event. Though, there are always those rare few who insist upon reporting the wild speculation along with the known data. "Disney wants a new Euro park in amongst the Jocks! The bomb was placed JUST to clear the land!"
Not since the accidental bombing and annihilation of Tehran more than half a century ago by a group of terrorists aiming for Israel had such an explosion been felt; and many a giddily smiling reporter went on air just to report these historic tidbits for the many people who failed to pay attention in their middle-school history classes. They went to great lengths to point this out to the viewers.
The reality of the Event included tremors through the Earth that were felt as far away as London. The sky was darkened for days leading into weeks from the northernmost Hebrides, down nearly to the Hegemony of Welsh City States. A four square mile area of mountainous forestland in the Cairngorms, flattened to sticks and rubble, with an epicenter of stone as smoothly scooped from the landscape as an ice cream on a hot day.
“Oh…so many must have lost their lives,” folk were want to say. The number was actually two. And those two particular bodies were never found, and not missed at all, in this world at least. In spite of, or because of, the single survivor found injured and unconscious in the epicenter of the blasted forest most scientists and other respected scholars began to bandy about the word Tunguska.
What had happened on a larger scale in Tunguska well over two hundred and fifty years ago in 1908, had now occurred in the Highlands of modern Scotland at one one-hundredth scale. As a better understanding of the Event was slowly gained, it was from then on called “Little Tunguska” by both theoretical physicists, and by those interested in such odd catastrophic events in history. Months later, after many scientists had made studies, taken samples, and argued until blue in the face, a new theory was put forth and generally accepted, there being no better explanation available to them.
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Almost three centuries had come and gone since the unreasonably over explained event in Tunguska, and not once had science come to agreement on what had happened in that cold and dreary swampland so long ago. Every scientist in the field had an opinion, all of them held dear and closer to the scientists' hearts than they would otherwise admit. Scientists are, at heart, people, sadly. Some were even close to understanding the event, and the new “Little Tunguska” had lead those few to greater understanding of the science behind such an event; those in that minority who spoke up about their findings and theories did not suffer career longevity. Wormholes, indeed! 20th Century mysticism!
Most people around the world forgot about the lone survivor after a few months, as headlines waned, and interest moved on to other exciting things. The oddly burned and wounded man found crawling fitfully away from the impact site, fully three days after the explosion when research teams and optimistic rescue groups converged on the site. A few stunned headlines in world papers, even talks of a Made-for-TV movie in the Confederation of Northern United States concerned this poor, brave soul. Many popular young actors lined up at major studios and auditioned for the career making role that never came to pass, as the Hollywood Myth Machine floundered while looking for just the right script.
No publishers wanted to touch the dramatized tales spun from young hungry writers’ poor fantasy lives and dreams of power, half naked women, twisted revenge plots and big explosions; not enough facts and too much speculation even for the poorest of stream-book houses. Too much chance that when (if…) the comatose fellow awoke, his lawyers might demand a cut of the monies made; or press libel charges with companies with which he might have found reasons for offense.
Then as his hospital stay lengthened with no new news; and, as his injuries slowly healed while he slept, the world moved on in that year and a half without such fanfare as first came after the explosion that had created the Event. Few beyond the medical staff of the St Alban's Hospital even remembered him, or the photos taken of the burned and abused body of the “Lone Survivor of Little Tunguska,” or "Tunguska-Man," as he was briefly known, that appeared in all the major world papers just after his discovery. News media by the score sought out the doctors and specialists in charge of “the poor burned fellow;” but as time progressed with no juicy new information or changes to report, interest flagged. He became just another “John Doe” in a hospital bed to the outside world.
Most reporters originally speculated on his being a hiker inadvertently in the woods on Holiday when the explosion occurred, some few made up theories about a suicide bomber mistakenly, and miraculously surviving the blast. A flurry of news journals agreed that this unfortunate soul was an archeology student of some sort, and was studying the ancient Pictish broch hidden away from all but the most die hard of hikers in the center of the small Cairngorms parkland. For a short while most news outlets ran with this romantic idea, and many were the companion articles written about the old stone roundhouse style towers once so popular with Pictish family groups. Few realized the epicenter of the explosion was located right under the old broch itself. Just after being admitted to the hospital, a plethora of doctors argued whether or not he would make it. Some few, still under the impression about a nuclear terrorist attack, at the time worried over radiation and the slow horrid fatality it represented. Better a quick death than the irradiated liquefying hell those doctors thought awaited this poor man.
Other learned doctors marveled over the number of broken bones, dislocated joints, and why only two missing fingers? Why those two fingers? “How does a bloody great bang of a thing remove only the ring fingers of each hand?” one noted doctor was heard asking another in the trauma room. “Why not all the fingers, or most of the fingers?” But being an American who had relocated to Greater Britain to work for the NIH, and an absolute prat, most other staff ignored his comments whenever possible, no matter how cogent.
Yet a few more doctors couldn’t guess as to whether the odd bone structure was from congenital defect, or of the odd nature of having survived an explosion that destroyed a portion of a small National Forest. Shoulders unusually wide, slightly longer than expected arm and leg bones, in fact unaccountably longer than normal, and the sternum was as wide as any two they had ever seen put together. The scapulae were unusually wide, long and ridged with growth structures they found just odd enough to comment upon in their notes, but when testing of the bone tissues turned up no abnormalities, such as cancerous cells, they left the mystery for possibly the coroner to deal with. No, they decided, this must be an odd combination of birth defects and explosive impact exaggeration (a term they coined just for this case, thinking themselves clever)by the injuries suffered. Noteworthy, but these things taken on the whole were nothing amazing in and of themselves, the gaggle of physicians finally concluded. Nothing about which to write home, other than the singular fact of this man’s grudging and determined survival.
After a very short time no doctor would admit to being surprised by any of the medical findings of this patient; there being no group of professionals in the world quite as stoic and pigheaded as Scottish doctors. Whenever questions from the press battered past the desks of hospital staff, the doctors all dug in their collective heels and agreed there was nothing out of the ordinary with the survivor. Dark brown hair with some red highlights, the remaining eye colored hazel just a short step from brown, B Negative type blood, very high cholesterol (we’re seeing to that, thanks…), surviving fingerprints sent along to the authorities; do you know him? Anyone of this description been reported missing?
Anything and everything else was a blank slate, and as impenetrable as a stone wall, even to the most tenacious of reporters. No matter what they found to the contrary of reasonable physiognomy; some doctors even began to forget all about the man wrapped in bandages, lifted by traction cables, secured by splints and casts up on the Burn Ward of St Alban's. As ever more quiet months passed without incident and no new findings found their way to the press, furor died down about "Tunguska-Man" and the “Little Tunguska” Event outside of those rarefied circles sought by physicists, and anatomists.
After just over a year, the public at large forgot all about the one witness to the Event who might have had the answers they all had been interested in hearing the previous year. And as the world media machine ground its way on to other topics and new celebrity controversies, 'Tj'Chin'Ker slept and slowly healed.