WHFO ch. 3 Stormy Weather

All fourteen students gathered in the living room we had been celebrating in just hours ago. A steady cold had descended upon the underground. Ice coated every window, making it impossible to see outside, not that there was much to see besides the city streets strewn with white dust. The room didn't have a temperature control center, a furnace I think Earthlings call it, since the moonstone usually took care of that. We were all huddled under all the blankets we could find, everyone's eyes fixed upon the t.v.

It was showing nothing but a slide show of random pictures from around the universe. Every now and then, some cheerful woman's voice would come on the air and give us the bad news: "The teleportation network has been disabled by the storm. We're sorry for the inconvenience," and "Government officials are gathering in Amoris to take hold of the issue. Emergency 7a has gone into protocol," and "Do not go outside. Rescue crews are doing everything they can."

None of us said anything. The silence was broken only by the t.v.'s classical elevator music and everyone's teeth chattering. It seemed to be getting colder by the minute. Even the flames in the never-before-used fireplace would not ease the cold much.

A thought suddenly hit me: once the moonstone completely fell apart, nothing would shield us from the mantle's heat. We would burn to death, if we didn't freeze first.

Just to assure myself that there was no way out of here, I opened up the teleport module on my phone and pressed the teleport button, hoping I would appear in Amoris. No such luck, however. The phone made a loud, agitated beeping noise and a message appeared on the screen: "Teleport network disconnected. Please try another time." Pretty much the same thing happened when I tried to look up news on the internet.

Fear and frustration bubbled inside me. If they had only updated the technology powering the moonstone, it wouldn't have been fooled by the heat and this never would have happened.

Suddenly, the t.v. made a staticky 'ftt' noise and a new screen appeared. It showed a small shivering man with flustery red cheeks and a decorative hat on that said "Cada Devils." I recognized him as the mayor of Cada.

"Citizens of Cada," he said shakily, "The moonstone has virtually finished disintegrating. Soon, heat will begin to set in, but for now the temperature is nearing neutral." Indeed, it seemed to be slightly warmer than it had been a few minutes ago. "I need everyone to head into the center of town. Quickly! We have an emergency elevator system set up. So hurry, before we all fry in this hell-hole!"

Nobody laughed at his accidental joke. The screen went staticky again, then went black period.

We sat there, digesting what we had just heard. Then, all at once, everyone started to run across the room in unnatural panicky speeds, slipping on shoes, grabbing their clothes and possessions and stuffing them into their backpacks, chattering with terrified voices. The hotel seemed to suddenly burst into life.

I was one of the first to fly down the stairs, but I was quite rapidly followed by a crowd of my fellow peers. Within two minutes, everyone in the hotel stood gathered in the front foyer. I shoved the front door open slowly. It seemed to be about two times heavier with all the ice on the front.

Instantly, a hard wall of freezing air hit us. I took a surprised breath, and the icy air filled my lungs like lead. I felt parts of my face start to frost over, the moisture turning to tiny bits of ice. Even my eyelashes froze together into a sheet, forcing my eyes shut for a few moments.

After the icy fingers of the storm did everything it could to each and every one of us, I cried, "Come on! What are we waiting for?"

Everyone paraded into the streets, covering their faces as well as they could. Everything was utterly silent aside from the noises caused by us and all the other citizens of the city, and not even a breeze stirred the Christmassy street. There was about a foot of what looked like snow on the ground, but when I picked up a handful, I saw that it was just a LOT of very small, cold grains of a glassy material I knew to be moonstone. I glanced up. There was a black void above us, and I almost expected a cloud to go floating by, or at least to see a few stars. I couldn't grasp the idea that we were far below the surface of the Earth, precariously close to the deadly heat of the second layer of the Earth.

An awful stench began to fill the air. After a moment's thought, I realized it must be from the nearby magma. If we came close enough to mantle, the toxic sulphuric fumes could cause our bodies to go into shock. We hurried on, coughing and covering our mouths with whatever we could: part of a sweater, a napkin, even our hands...

We rounded a corner, and the town hall came into view. A huge crowd of deamons stood outside the entrance, the whole block loud with people's conversations, infants crying, and other unidentifiable sounds. The doors open, and a huge chunk of the people went pouring inside. I almost felt sorry for the mayor and his staff, who had to handle the chaotic crowd.

Quite abruptly, a wave of heat seemed to roll over the city. The buildings seemed to be sweating as the ice that had recently capped them slowly melted away. It was not hot yet, but I took off a few of the sweaters we had found in a back closet.

With every passing minute, the temperature seemed to climb a few degrees. Before I knew it, I was standing in my t-shirt, as I had been in the very beginning.

Overhead, a loud whooshing noise rang in my ears, and a large boxlike object sprang from the top of the town hall building. It was a typical shade of chrome, with several round windows lining the sides of it, and it looked big enough to fit a few hundred deamons or so. It lifted into the air on a large automatic platform. Then the platform dropped and the little ship sped up into the darkness on what seemed to be three rocket engines. I watched it gain altitude until the three blue lights of the engines abruptly disappeared from sight. I knew that it had now entered the emergency tunnel the city had built when it first settled here. It would only be a matter of time when the first refugees set foot upon the surface of Earth.

I wondered where the tunnel led. It would obviously go somewhere vast and unpopulated... like the deserts of central Africa, the forested wilderness of Canada, or perhaps the icy fields know as Antarctica. As I thought about it, I realized there were surprisingly few places on Earth we could go without being spotted. There were hundreds of cities in Hell, so I imagined some of the deamons had to hide in cities too. There, the deamons hid in prisons or asylums, as when Lirika had written about us.

The "elevator" came back faster than I had expected it to, and I saw why. While on the way up it had been shooting on engines, going down it was free falling until it was only a few hundred feet above the building. Then a shockingly old fashioned silver parachute opened up on the top of the box, and it descended neatly back into the building, seemingly guided by magnets or something of the sort.

This cycle continued numerous times. The group gathered in the block began to get smaller and smaller, until only a couple hundred people remained in the streets. The rest were crowded inside, awaiting their turn. Compared to many of the huge cities in Hell, Cada was pretty small, though it was still home to several thousand citizens. There were three town halls, and we had been directed by the t.v. to the one nearest us, so only about three thousand people were waiting in the streets, which is still a lot, by my standards. I couldn't even imagine how many stations there were in places like Zeria, the capital of Hell. Millions of deamons called that place home, and now they were all crowding into strange boxes and flying away from their home, probably never to see it again...

I shuddered. Though Hell was a beautiful and fascinating place to go, I would never be able to live here. Just the fact of being underground all the time was enough to keep me away from the thought of staying here. And now, after this, I wouldn't come back until something was done about the ridiculously held back technology.

I fingered the phone in my pocket thoughtfully. I wondered how we would get away from Earth with nobody on the planet noticing, and how deamons would be able to patch up Hell with the teleportation network down. While we would be on Earth, we'd have to live without the luxuries of advanced technology we deal with every day. I would have to learn to be... human. With all of Hell's population living on Earth, we would never be able to stay unnoticed. We'd have to start living a life like humans, until rescue crews figured out how to get us out. I shuddered, thinking of what was ahead of me.

A voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Hey, Raili!" Mitch cried, slapping a hand on my back. "Good to see a familiar face. I was asleep when all this was happening, none of my buddies even bothered to phone me, and now they're all up in that elevator thingamajig." The creases in his old face seemed somehow older, like the stress of this one night had aged him another ten years.

I grinned at him. "Good to see you too, buddy. They probably didn't call you because they couldn't. Didn't you hear? The whole system is down."

"Talk about having advanced stuff," Mitch muttered, taking out his phone and cursing at it. "Just look at the Gigirods! Their technology is so far ahead, they haven't had a system shut down for almost a millenium!" I had to admit to myself, though, despite his old face, there was something of a stubborn teenager in Mitch. He continued: "And now we won't even be able to read anything interesting! How am I going to keep myself amused on Earth? All they have is a bogus library system."

My heart skipped a beat. I jumped. Maybe it was just the heat, which now felt like a nice sauna, but I felt like something had electrocuted my legs. I broke into a run in the other direction.

"Hey! Where are you going?" James yelled, getting up from his seat on a pile of sweaters.

"I'll be right back!" I yelled, racing toward the library.

In two minutes flat I was at the entrance. I raced up the steps and yanked on the front door. Locked. I yelled a couple swears and reached into my pocket, hoping with all my might that the phone's laser system was still working. I flicked it on and gave a triumphant whoop. A long white laser shot out of my phone, and I changed the intensity to the highest it went. I tried to cut a hole around the lock, the way guys did in old fashioned heist movies... but, of course, this isn't an old fashioned heist movies I'm talking about. Instantly, a series of alarms went off, and normally a police crew would have arrived in under a minute... but as it is, they were all at the town hall. Frankly, I don't think any of them really gave a damn about the library anyway.

I yanked the door open and tried to keep the alarms from getting to me. I ran back into the newspaper section and dug around a little, searching for what I needed.

I opened up my bag and shoved in every single newspaper of "Beyond the Unknown" I could find.

"I'm going to be on Earth anyway..." I said to myself, "Might as well make a stop at my buddy Lirika's place."

Then I ran out the door. The heat was getting really intense now. I even thought I could feel the hairs on my head sizzling. My skin was beyond sweaty now, and as I ran a cloud of steam rose off my body.

When I arrived at the hall, nobody was outside. My heart sank to my feet. I couldn't be too late... I barged through the front door. Nobody was here, either. I frantically ran around the halls of the building for a minute, when I finally found the emergency loading station. I saw my friends there: James, Pat, and even Mitch.

"Where is he?!" Pat gave an anguished cry.

"Here I am!" I said meeting them all with open arms.

Pat's emotion went from worried, to relieved, to screamingly pissed off.

"You left at the last moment to get a bunch of NEWSPAPERS?" she screamed at me.

"Look, I have an idea. You see..."

"Can it wait?" Mitch yelled, and pointed out one of the windows. Lava was creeping up the street toward us at an alarming rate. Then the window fogged over and we couldn't see any more.

"We should probably get out of here," James said with wide eyes.

"I'm way ahead of you," Pat said.

And off we went, speeding away on a flying elevator, off to Earth.

I looked out the window, at the incredible sight below us. The whole city was glowing as the magma rose and ate it all away. I hadn't even stopped to think why there was suddenly lava covering the streets. I decided the moonstone's collapse had let the structures that held the city away from the magma be eaten away by the heat, so the city had slowly sunk into the mantle. Didn't sound very realistic, but that was the best I could think of.

But my thoughts left science now. As I admired the horrible, shocking beauty below, my thoughts were, "Prepare yourself, Lirika Tammathy. I am coming."