“I know I’m just a kid, but I think I found something
terrible.”
That’s what I told the 911 operator
when I was 14. I was right, too. Well, maybe I was wrong depending on how you
look at it. Because of me, I’m alive, and so is the president. At least I think
she’s alive, we don’t hear much from her anymore. Is there even an America left
anymore?
Because of me. Because of me.
Because of me, millions of Americans
are dead. If I hadn’t made that call on that day . . . well, things would have
been different. But I got to believe it all happened for a reason, like it was
all part of some grand plan. When I tell myself that, I feel better. Still,
it’s hard living in this bunker, wondering each day as I wake, “will I get to
see the sun today?” Some days I do. Those are good days.
My mom was white. My dad was Hispanic.
My name is Kim Doppler. I’m black.
I’m 23 now, and I never met my
biological parents. I only have memories of my foster parents. I have three
brothers and two sisters, they’re of all ages . . . and races. Some are white
some are black, some are brown. I can’t really keep track of all of them. My
parents just loved adopting kids, I guess. Still, as many of us as there were,
and as hard as my parents worked, there was still enough love to go around,
somehow. Love is like fishes and loaves that way.
I’m the oldest girl. When I’d talk to
my mom, we’d refer to the rest of them as “the kids”, in fact, I used to joke
with my mom, that they were my kids.
I’ve always felt like I needed to be the one to take care of everyone else. Not
sure why, but I guess I was, at least, mature enough to tell my mom was in a
bit over her head. She’s great. I wouldn’t take any other mom. I wish I could
walk past her in the house and smell her perfume. I wish she were still alive.
My dad was never around. There were two
kinds of dads in my neighborhood growing up, both kinds weren’t around. There’s
the one that aint around because he’s not man enough to take on the
responsibility of raising kids. My dad wasn’t that kind. My dad was the one
that wasn’t around because he worked about 80 hours a week. He put food on the
table. And had a table in the first place. As a kid, there were days I wish I
had one less meal if it meant I could see my dad. Most days were that way. I
wish they still were that way. I wish he was still alive.
My mom was a saint.
That’s why she needed my help. Brushing
hair and cooking breakfast and paying the water bill. Yes, I dropped the
monthly payment off at the city building. It’s OK, I needed to walk the other
kids to school anyway, and it’s on the way. My mom would let me lick the
envelope; the taste had a hint of spearmint. First, I’d walk the kids, then I’d
drop the payment at the city building, then I’d walk to my high school. It’s a
straight line, more or less.
I guess all that responsibility had
given me strength and allowed me to grow beyond my then 14 years of age,
because school was easy peasy. Straight A’s were nothing. School had been a
joke to me for those last few years. I could hardly bear it. I stopped most
days at the public library after school to grab a new book for the evening. The
library is on the way home from school, more or less.
I know everything there is to know
about planetary motion, spacecraft transfer orbits, solar system escape
trajectories. Everything. For my 8th grade science fair project, I
successfully, physically simulated Voyager 2’s double gravity assist slingshot
off of Jupiter and Mars. Think about that. How did that not win?
I’ll tell you how it did not win: Jerk
Dexter. Oops, did I say Jerk, I mean Jack. He made a stupid volcano that won
the science fair. A volcano! Come on Jerk, volcanoes were old news in 1973 when
Peter Brady made one for his science fair.
Jerk!
To be fair, it was pretty cool. Jerk
made two different models, one was a simulated Mount St. Helens, with working
tectonic plates to simulate Northwestern Pacific Convergent Boundary. His
second model simulated a hot-spot style volcano like you’d see in Hawaii.
Nothing too impressive here, but he did add phosphorescent liquid to his magma
and covered the entire model with a black sheet to get the lighting as minimal
as possible so that the magma glowed bright orange for the stupid judges.
His parents gave him a blank check to
buy supplies. Meanwhile my supplies consisted of old pickle jars and empty ajax
bottles.
I was so mad. I told myself I would
stop at nothing to get that trophy the next year. Jack Dexter would not repeat
as champion. So, I spent most nights on the roof, swatting mosquitos and
looking through my $80 telescope, trying to prove evidence of a ninth planet in
our solar system. I figured that should win me the Nobel Prize, easy peasy.
Then if that happened, the dumb judges at the Shawnee County Science Fair would
surely give me first prize. It was then that I made the discovery. Not the
ninth planet. Something far greater, far worse. It’s funny how your world can
change in one instant. Then your life is totally different from that moment on.
In an infinitesimal fraction of a second, you can go from deputy mom to full-fledged
grownup. I was a kid, pretending to be an adult, but I was still a kid, until
that moment.
That whole day is like a vivid film
strip in my brain. On the way to school, my mom was backing out of the
driveway. It was one of the rare days she actually drove me to school. It was
snowing, that was her exception, she’d drive us if it were snowing. I was
riding shotgun because, of course I was. I remember rubbing my hands together
and warming them in the air vents on the dashboard. As we approached the
street, I saw the two Metter kids playing in the street. They’re neighbor kids,
“always on the loose” my mom would say. Today was no different. They were
running and sliding on the packed white snow-ice in the street. I warned my
mom.
“We got Metters, at four o’clock,” I
had said. My breath like a fog.
“Thanks,” Mom said. “I see them. Buggers.”
She eyeballed them as she continued in
reverse. Maybe if I hadn’t warned her, she would have seen what was coming from
the other direction. But she didn’t. She didn’t see the bulldozer coming from
the other direction. Yes, that’s right, a bulldozer was driving down our
street. I’m not sure why, heading to a construction site, I guess. We never saw
it coming. Luckily it wasn’t going fast, and no one was hurt. Still, a machine
designed for pure destruction is still going to do what it does best, even when
slowed down. It totaled our minivan.
My mom was pissed.
She said she was mad at herself, but I
could tell she was mad at me. Mad for distracting her.
I was mad at me too.
Later that night was when I found it in
the sky. I had been shivering on the roof for hours that night leading up to
the discovery. It was my way of coping with the guilt of the accident.
Regardless, I had found it. A little speck of light that was no brighter than
any of the other stars, but I could tell within a few moments it was not a
star. It was moving in a slightly different direction than the other stars in
the night sky. This object was much closer. I took some initial measurements
that evening and did some rough preliminary calculations. As I told you
earlier, I know planetary physics, and when I say “I know” something, trust me
I KNOW it. Planetary physics or Kepler Mechanics as we call it, was one of my
passions.
After two simple measurements of the
object’s position, spaced ten minutes apart, along with looking up on NASA’s
website to find earth’s current position in the solar system at the time of the
measurements, I was able to get a rough trajectory of the object plotted. At
the time I couldn’t be sure of what I had found. I would need to follow up the
measurements with days’ worth of data to fine tune the trajectory and plot a
more accurate course.
But all that extra measurement only did
one thing. It confirmed my initial fear on that night was correct.
In 46 days, the object, an asteroid, would come from
the direction of the constellation Aries and impact earth.
An excerpt from the novel, The Arch Emulator and the Seven Keys.
Buy it now for only 99 cents!
