Heat resonates from the asphalt road that runs straight and flat into the distance for as far as the eye can see. The day is the clear, crisp and cloudless. The setting sun boils and crackles against the horizon, turning the sky into a mass of pink, orange, and yellow. White picket fences surround two story houses. White washed porches outline each floor, populated with heavy, black curled metal chairs and tables waiting for a family to dine together under the stars. Every window is up and the blue shutters are open to let in the summer breeze. The lawns are perfectly cropped, short, lush and green. A single tree grows out of the front of each house, surrounded by purple, summer flower beds unbroken by weeds. Perfectly manicured bushes, tall and square but falling just below the first story windows, outline the bases of the houses. A single car sits in the driveways, a Toyota Camry. At five o'clock the sprinkler systems come on, watering the yards and flowers, which drink greedily, fending against the heat. Complete silence. No sounds of laughing children. No sounds of chatting adults. No sounds even of the cries of birds that fly overhead or the squirrels in the trees. The young boy playing basketball in the driveway, poised for a shot, is cardboard. As is the man holding a cardboard hose, watering real, live plants with cardboard water. A cardboard mother pushes a cardboard stroller and a cardboard man walks a cardboard dog. A cardboard paperboy on a cardboard bike pulls back his arm to throw a cardboard newspaper. Various other cardboard people populate the street, all participating in staged cardboard activities. Talking. Walking. Laughing. Playing. As the sun settles below the horizon and the night darkness settles over the community, the streetlights flicker on. Every window lights up, creating a pulsing glow over the community that hides the stars. Silent televisions spring to life, animated with a movie classic that no one is there to watch. The sky is, just simply, black. The sky clouds over and rain begins to fall, first as a sprinkle and then as a torrential downpour. The cardboard people begin to crumple and fold and water runs down the street. There are no gutters so the water flows freely, covering the road in a one inch puddle. The wind drives the rain into the houses, soaking into the carpet and warping wooden floor boards. Overhead, there's a mysterious whistle, quiet at first, then louder. The time is 10:30 pm. 9,700 pounds crashes into a house, tearing through the dark blue roof, the same shade of the shudders. The heat incinerates the middle suburbia houses with their manicured lawns and the crumpled cardboard people in their perfect cardboard world. 10:31. Harmony Road is a mushroom cloud, high above the ground.