Gray light filtered through the car's window and rain pelted the roof like bullets. Melanie Timbal nestled into the leather passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt. At six o'clock, a mere five hours from now, she would be out of this backwater and back in New York. New York proper. Upstate didn't count, not least the middle of the Adirondacks. Built over a waterfall, the house at the end of the drive was a blocky Frank Lloyd Wright ripoff with a small observatory built into the back, the rainy sky painting its white walls gray. The SkaiaNet laboratory where Mom and Ms. Lalonde worked, a gray box of a building with the green spirograph company logo painted on the side, loomed over the thick forest behind it. This was a national park. It was supposed to be illegal to build here, not that that mattered to Ms. Lalonde. The woman always made a show of ignoring rules, and her daughter Rose, whom Melanie had just spent the entire weekend trying to avoid, was no different.
This little visit was nothing unusual. Mom had been taking Melanie up here since she was too young to know the difference between Rose Lalonde and a "friend" who is just a bit better than you at just about everything you can imagine, and knows it, and makes sure you know it, and won't ever stop reminding you. In fact, Melanie was still too young to know the difference between Rose Lalonde and that kind of "friend". Because there was no difference between the two. That was the joke. Melanie giggled a bit to herself in her seat.
At least it was Monday. At least she could finally leave.
Melanie looked out the drenched window. Mom and Ms. Lalonde were still talking, obscured by sheets of rain. Mom was short and tan and had wavy black hair, and Ms. Lalonde was tall and blonde and pale as they come. They both wore the kind of tight-fitting white lab coats that Ms. Lalonde favored, the kind that showed off the bust and hips and that no real scientist would touch, mad or otherwise. Their scarves even matched. They huddled together under Ms. Lalonde's black umbrella, held by Mom. Ms. Lalonde held in her black-gloved hand a martini, probably made by Mom. It was a going-away present, Melanie guessed, like they were pretending that a martini was a rare sight in this house, or that Ms. Lalonde's black-gloved hand ever held anything but a martini.
Melanie opened the yellow car door and slammed it shut as loud as she could. Her mom glanced over just long enough to let Melanie know she'd caught the gesture, ignored it, and returned to her conversation.
This was getting ridiculous. Mom and Mrs. Lalonde had been talking for almost ten minutes, their voices muffled by the rain. Whatever they were saying, the discussion had grown somber – and now it stopped. Ms. Lalonde rummaged in her purse one-handed, balancing the martini in the other. She drew a manila folder and held it out for Mom. Mom reached out her hand to grab it, then hesitated. For a moment, both women's hands rested on the folder, and they stared at each other's faces. The bleak expressions on their faces might have seemed significant if the exchange weren't such an obvious trick to waste time.
After a moment of silent staring, Mom took the envelopes and tucked them into her coat. She and Ms. Lalonde kissed each other's cheeks, and she handed off the umbrella and walked toward the car. Finally. Soaked by rain, she strode on, her heels clicking on the driveway in a measured, confident pace.
"Wait!" shouted Ms. Lalonde, her voice still slurred. She dropped her umbrella, her martini, and one of her two designer heels, and made a drunken run down the driveway toward Mom. She threw herself into Mom's arms, and the two embraced in the rain so tight it looked like it hurt.
After a long time, Mom released Ms. Lalonde. She turned on her heel, stiffened her back, and walked back to the car. "Goodbye, Roxy," she called over her shoulder.
"G'bye, Elaine," called Ms. Lalonde.
She opened the door and sat in the driver's seat, drawing the folder out of her coat and setting it on the dash before tossing the soaking thing into the back seat.
"Can we go now?" said Melanie.
Mom looked down the driveway at Ms. Lalonde, who still stood out in the rain, watching them. "Hold this, dear," she said, picking up the folder and handing it to Melanie. It was taped shut on the sides. The tab read BETA: Timbal, E. A. There was a red stamp on the folder that said DO NOT OPEN BEFORE: 4-13-09. That was today.
Melanie hesitated, but took it. Dealing with Mom was like living on a script, and anything unexpected could result in disaster. By touch, Melanie could tell the folder contained a paperback booklet and a few hard, thin objects. "Why am I holding this?"
"It's important. Be very careful with it."
"Sure," said Melanie in her most convincing voice.
Mom turned toward her and clasped her hands, staring at her with dark brown eyes stained just the slightest bit pink. "Dear. Those envelopes contain a pair of very important discs. I need you to take care of them. Make sure they stay safe."
"Just like you took care of Dad's vase?" That comment was just a bit too far off the script, and Melanie regretted it the moment it passed her lips.
Mom jammed the car key into the ignition and gave it an aggressive twist. The car screeched in complaint and fell silent, and her hand jumped away, jittering, flustered. "Melanie, there is not time for this. Be quiet and hold that folder." She turned the key as if it were made of spun glass and the car purred to life. Mom would sooner be party to global annihilation than damage that car. It was some vintage Chevrolet, painted bright yellow, from one of those periods in American history that car aficionados wanted back and everyone else was glad to be gone. It was bullshit.
After five minutes of silent driving down a wooded country road, Melanie realized she was still holding the folder. "Why do we always have to go up there?" she said, breaking the silence.
"We go up once every month and a half," said Mom. "That is hardly 'always'."
"Don't dodge the question."
Mom kept her eyes on the road. She didn't answer.
"You've been taking me there for longer than I can remember, but you never even tell me why I have to go. Dad doesn't have to go. Why should-"
Mom swallowed. "Melanie, I-"
"And why do I have to do all those tests every time we come here? Strapping me into a chair and making me solve puzzles. Electrodes on my head. It's like something out of bad psych research from the 60s!"
"Melanie!" Mom snapped.
"What!" she snapped right back.
Mom swallowed and composed herself. "Flowers for Algernon would make a better simile."
Melanie blinked. "Flowers for what?"
Mom shook her head. "It…" she said, trying to phrase the sentence without using a contraction. Mom hated contractions. "It's fiction," she said, giving up.
"Oh." Perfect Rose Lalonde loved fiction. Melanie had tried reading fiction at Rose's suggestion. She'd tried for years. She'd started with the horror and fantasy Rose favored, then moved on to historical novels at her mom's suggestion. She had then tried out classical American literature, classical British literature, science fiction, and children's books. What a waste of time. Mom had then given her an even subtler suggestion that if she didn't find anything beyond the real world to concern herself with, then she would never learn anything properly.
"Though I suppose Flowers for Algernon is not a great comparison either. Sweetie," she said. "I am so sorry. There is so much I should have told you."
Melanie said nothing. Mom was a thinker, a planner, but she didn't know how to deal with the unexpected. There was no script for this.
"You were part of all this," Mom continued. Her sodden hair covered her face. "The key to it all. And I should have prepared you. I should have filled you in on it. I just…I never made the plans."
Melanie said nothing again. Neither did Mom, though she swallowed hard. Judging by her silence, Mom was just as out of her depth as—
BOOM.
There was a flash of blinding white light and an enormous noise, a noise that pulsed through Melanie's entire body. The entire car shook, and Melanie ducked down – or was knocked down. She tucked her head under her hands. From outside ahead the car, there was a screech, and then series of crashing noises – one, then another. The car swerved, left, right, and left again, tossing Melanie back and forth on her seat. An enormous buzzing noise filled her ears and everything between them. She couldn't see, couldn't hear. Down changed from moment to moment with each sway of the car. The world spun, and her thoughts came slow and thick. Mom was saying something, shouting, but the words were garbled, as if underwater. She quivered and tried to rise, but the world tilted. She tried again, clawed her way up the seat back, but the car lurched forward, tilted, and jerked back, setting the world spinning. Melanie went back down.
After a moment, Melanie exhaled. It seemed to right the world; she could move her body enough to sit up and look around. Her vision returned. She was panting. The windows on the right side of the car – Melanie's side – were cracked in a web-like pattern, refracting gray light from the sky and red from the forest. She looked around. Behind them, one car had been struck by two others, blocking off two of the three lanes. Around them, most of the other cars had pulled to the side of the road and slowed to a stop, their passengers assessing damage, talking on phones, or going to help at the crash. Their own car had veered off to the left shoulder of the road. They were stopped. Next to her, Mom gripped the steering wheel, looking around wildly.
"Melanie!" shouted Mom. Though the buzzing in Melanie's head had mostly subsided, the first words that she understood still seemed distorted, far off. Mom's hands still gripped the wheel, and she was panting as hard as Melanie was.
"What…what was-" Melanie's voice shook.
"Are you hurt?" Mom was tense, controlled, though her voice seemed far away.
"WHAT WAS-"
"Are you hurt?"
"I think I…no, I'm fine, except my ears won't-"
Mom looked hard at her. "Where are we?" Her voice slipped into a practiced tone. She was using Melanie's normal post-test exercises as a basic way to check for brain damage. Clever.
The familiar logic of the tests grounded Melanie, pulling her back to the now. Normally she'd complain about them, but right now they were a comfort. "We're…" she said, shaking her head to stabilize herself. "We're on 87 South. Heading home from Lalonde's. Um…parked on the shoulder."
"Good. Alphabet, backwards."
"Z, X, Y, W, V, U, T-"
"Good enough. Basic arithmetic. Four processes. Double digits."
"Forty-eight plus eighteen is…uh…sixty-one."
"No. Again."
"Sixty…sixty-four. Sorry." The gears of Melanie's mind ground and shrieked, but they started moving again. "Seventy-two minus fifty-four is eighteen. Twelve times fifteen is one hundred eighty. Fifty-four divided by twenty-seven is two."
Mom sighed in relief. "Thank god for safety glass."
Melanie looked at the window, a spiderweb of cracked glass that still held together, and nodded. It was beautiful in a way. She tried not to think what might have happened if it hadn't been there to protect her. "The other cars stopped to help. Shouldn't we…"
"No," Mom said, bringing the car back onto the road. "It is starting. There is not much time. We need to get home and get things ready."
It? "You knew about this? This…whatever is happening?"
"I said I have made some mistakes, and I will explain if you just-"
"You could have told me to get down! Or even taken a different road to avoid it!"
"I didn't know about this exact meteor!" A contraction. She must have been serious.
"Meteor."Melanie blinked, and glanced out the fractured window, noting with numb clarity the forest fire back at the impact site. "This meteor. You said this meteor!"
"Melanie, the first thing you will need to understand is that working at SkaiaNet gave me a degree of insight into certain things-"
"Like meteors?"
"-and if we are going to live through this, I will need you to shut up and listen to me."
Melanie shut up and listened to her.
"And…open that folder. Carefully."
Melanie tore the tape holding the folder closed, ripping it a bit. Inside were two square brown envelopes, each containing a disc. Each envelope bore a lime-green insignia. One had SkaiaNet's round spirograph logo. The other had the image of a stylized house broken up into four separate blocks with a roof above, the top right block holding another, smaller block in its bottom left corner. The folder also contained a paperback booklet entitled SBURB Beta: Instructions.
No. This wasn't right. Sburb was an upcoming computer game, kind of like a co-op version of The Sims from what the ads said. And the ads were all over the place, proclaiming that the open beta version was scheduled for release today, April 13th. She had no idea why Ms. Lalonde's mysterious multinational tech company, a company with high-level security that hired scientists of all types from all around the world, would help develop a computer game, but given what she had just seen, she was willing to bear with Mom a little bit. "Why am I holding this?"
"Because the world is going to end in a few hours," said Mom. "And that game is the only way to survive it."
13:05