Day 79

This is an assignment where we had to see a structure of a story through translated means. Like looking at artwork or listening to music and looking at the rising or falling, or the use of color to define when and where to place the rising and falling action and when to insert tones or images. It was interesting. Here's what I got out of it.

One day the satellite "Mjolnir" stopped sending cosmic rays out into the void of space and turned itself around, perhaps by an unseen hand, or perhaps all on its own, and began to bombard the Earth with intense waves of radiation that vaporized anything that it glanced its spacey eye on.

I was twenty-three when it happened and had gotten my first job since high school as a sandwich delivery boy, the kind that use bikes instead of cars and overall I was surprisingly okay with the deal. I'd been in school for near sixteen years in total and really, I was looking to get some more sun. The job was easy too, you wait for the sandwich makers to make the sandwich, you put them in the special sandwich backpack, as to not jostle them in transit, and then you go to the houses and hope they tip. No more books, just the feel of my legs pumping and my knuckles on the handlebars. It was nice.

The satellite started to make the job a little more nerve racking though. I didn't wear a helmet, and more often then not there was no cover overhead to protect me from the rain of cosmic rays that might bombard me at any second. I pedaled very quickly. But in those early days the rays were still far away, things on the Eastern Hemisphere had been vaporized firs, a few telephone boxes in south London, all the crops of a small farmer in Laos, the only major object it had destroyed was a single onion bulb dome from the Kremlin. Nobody claimed responsibility, not even Sweden, the nation that had lost it. There was a lot of talk about who needed to step up, but many voices were shoved down, many annalists said that "Mjolnir" only had enough juice to do these minor things, and would soon die out without connection to a host organizer.

So, I still pedaled away, and it felt good.

I was the biker who delivered to the homes just outside of the city, because I could usually keep up with the demand of the dirt roads, I got a lot of compliments on the "racer's pace" I kept. I liked the trees, the nature, all that stuff. Fresh air, you know? But still I kinda got sucked into the mess.

One day I delivered a ham and turkey without mayo, also known as a number five, to 2367 North Maplewood. It was the farthest I had ever gone before, past the railroad tracks, and the Dean's Milk processing factory, in the shade of all these acorn trees, far enough away from the low income Hispanic tenant houses that you couldn't see them but still hear them. Hilda, who ordered the sandwich, met me at her rust colored mailbox, which was a good thing because her house was vaporized as she handed me the seven-fifty for the sandwich and chips. There was a noise, but I thought of it as only a strong wind felling acorns from the trees, the noise wasn't harsh, it just let you knew that it was happening. We both looked at her house and there was onl timbers standing there, not charred like I had always pictured, burned away like from a magnifying glass, but kind of bone white. We walked back to what was left and looked at the damage.

"It's dehydrated, to the point of structural disintegration." She said, perhaps a little too excited for someone who lost a home.

"I'm sorry about your house." I said.

"It's all right. Help me break off a bit of the remaining foundation." She said.

"Okay," I said and went for the small hammer I kept in my special sandwich bad because more than once I've been attempted to be robbed. It took awhile to chip away at the foundation, and while Hilda worked with precise strikes, she told me about how her father was a scientific leader in the trials of satellites and was geared as the expert in stopping "Mjolnir". I would also come to know that she was almost thirty, had natural hazel brown hair and loved matchbox cars as much as I did. These things I learned later though, in the weeks after, as she didn't have a place to stay and I had enough room at my place for two people to be comfortable. We got along well, we had a lot of things in common, like literature and movies. It was nice.

After three more months things got a lot more intense, every day the satellite vaporized more and more, hitting things that people thought were safe. Wall Street, The Sphinx, All of Hawaii, turned bone white and shriveled into floating particles in the air. Hilda's father was getting more and more flack about it, and was in a bit of dire straights, so together we visited him in Houston, where he worked. He seemed to like me, which was nice. But he was preoccupied, "Mjolnir" was really a problem and becoming a bigger one every day. I asked him if they'd sent anyone up there to fix it by hand, with tools.

"Too Risky," he said.

I asked him if they thought about a robot, or maybe just a robot arm attached to probe that could be launched from a remote location.

"Could work," he said.

A week later vertically half of the Empire State Building was vaporized and a probe with a robotic arm was sent up. I was congradulated for the idea and given a lot fo pats on the back. I kind forgot about delivering sandwiches as I watched the silver probe shoot up, shinning until the black swallowed it and it grew too small. I thought maybe this could be good, like I was putting my college years toward something. Hilda was really proud of me, and held my hand a lot, even in front of her father. It was nice. And then the robot arm went rogue like the satellite. Nobody could tell why, like before all communications stopped between the arm and Houston. The arm actually helped to guide the shots of cosmic rays down to Earth. Since it was my idea I got sent back home, as did Hilda and her father, they were tied in with my mess. I apologized, but he never did forgive me. Hilda and I still kept in touch, I let her come over as they rebuilt their home and we pretended like it was those weeks we first met, a lot of tender moments. I still had my job at the sandwich shop, but with a dollar dock in pay because I thought of the arm that was helping the satellite.