SNBRN

I awoke on Friday, the 14th of October, at the ripe hour of 11 AM. Clearly, I was putting the prophecy I'd made the night before into terrible practice. Alas, if I knew anything about college, it was that there was no way any decent chunk of the student body would be asleep before midnight. And in any case, I was sure to not be clocking out that early. In fact, I was almost inclined to sleep in even later, for once in my life enjoying the knowledge that there was nothing forcing me out of bed.

The light from the outside world, much further progressed in its own day than I was in mine, wavered on the wall across from my bed. The breath of the vents must have brought my blinds to life, their gentle motion a reminder that, indeed, the sun was quite up, and so it would behoove me to get myself up and waste no more time. Not that I was planning on doing anything terribly exciting that day, but I held onto hope that I'd be doing more than lying indoors.

As much joy as I could have gotten from hanging around the house, just listening to music or something, I thought it might be a good idea to celebrate the break from classes by spending time with someone. The question that remained, of course, was who. If I knew Paulie and Anatoli, they'd be hanging out for a while at one of their places, or getting food on campus. Tae-joon had been showing a tremendous amount of self-control by not yet playing Snbrn, so I imagined he'd quite literally be pregaming for a good chunk of the day. Pierce, however, seemed to be a reliable choice.

I'd met Pierce very early in his first semester at the university, during our fraternity's formal recruitment week. He had hardly added anything to the conversation, clearly not one to raise his voice over anyone else. Six weeks later, he was my first little. Any member of Greek Life knows the kind of brotherhood shared between a big and a little, and it had persisted without fail throughout the two years since. Fortunately, much like it had for me, the fraternity helped him open up, and he was now one of my first picks when I had free time.

Thus, I opened up my instachat, seeking his purple banner and typing out a quick greeting.

kuiperTitan: Pierceee

kickinIt: What's happening dude

kuiperTitan: Nothing, naturally. Was hoping you'd be up to hang out? Let's get some pizza.

kickinIt: Sounds good but don't want to be out too long

kickinIt: Mail comes by in two hours and I don't want to waste any time after the game comes

kuiperTitan: Is my own son getting excited about a video game?

kickinIt: Maybe

kickinIt: Catch you at the keller in ten

kuiperTitan: Cheers

If he was planning on meeting up in ten minutes, that meant I would have to be shoving myself out the door in basically no time, and I hadn't even dressed yet. I quickly threw on a pair of shorts and my favorite tee, a teal one with the number phi on it. The white print had started to break up a bit, as well-worn shirts were wont to do when I just kind of shoved them into the washing machine with the rest of my clothing. But there was no time to mourn the lives of the crumbling little digits - a hearty lunch awaited.

There was nothing quite like going outside on a day when you'd briefly considered not doing so at all. People around me have always lauded the health benefits of being in the sunlight, raving on about Vitamin D or whatever, but it had never felt quite so refreshing before. Perhaps I was just really able to focus on it as I enjoyed an event-free drive, or perhaps I was reaching a particularly interesting place in my hormonal cycle. Whatever the case may have been, I made note to ask Pierce if he'd be okay with sitting outside.

He was, naturally. It seemed my request was minor enough to be accommodated with no resistance. "Glad to be out of classes?" I asked as I shifted in my seat, a sizable pie approaching from inside.

"It's hard not to be," Pierce answered. "Being out in the middle of the day really helps you appreciate that Florida weather, doesn't it?" The talk was a bit bland for us, perhaps, but his love of the warmth of the south was hard to disagree with. Even here, in the middle of the closest thing this town had to an urban center, a wealth of greenery sprouted from the patch of rich soil that framed the restaurant. As we gave the plants a pensive look, they almost seemed to spread their leaves further, as though stretching to soak in more rays.

"Too bad you're eating their cousins," I said to Pierce, capping off with a melodramatic sigh as he took another bite of salad.

"It's okay, they're too dumb to notice."

I could only respond with a chuckle before going to town on another slice of pizza. Pierce seemed to show a hint of relief that the conversation ended there; he grew easily tired when others who knew him less ribbed him about his more careful eating habits. Naturally, I'd be the last person to think of crossing that line.

Indeed, we were basically silent until after I had slain the two-thirds of the pizza that had been allotted to me. He held his standard contented look upon his face, although I could have sworn there was a glimmer of consternation in his eyes. "You okay?" I asked.

The glimmer snapped away as he blinked. "Huh, oh yeah," he answered. "Just got kind of a weird feeling is all."

I was no stranger to such things. "What kind of feeling?" I gripped my drink, scooting my chair forward to give him my full attention.

Alas, his first answer was a shrug, and several seconds passed before he spoke again. "I don't really know. It feels like I've got some big responsibility I'm forgetting about."

I had grown very familiar with a feeling like the one Pierce was describing. That's college for ya, I thought, but I didn't think that would exactly be comforting. No, if Pierce had truly been worried about an assignment, he would not have been so unnerved. Whatever it was, there was no way he'd be able to explain it, so there was no sense in ragging him to get a better understanding.

"So," he said, a few minutes later, "I guess you haven't got your game in yet?"

"Yeah, I think it'll be today."

Pierce nodded, looking down at his phone. "I was chatting with Anatoli last night, and he mentioned having his already. He also said something about chasing some raccoons off his doorstep with a knife."

"That sounds like him," I answered. "Although I'd figure the knife thing would come first." In response to this, Pierce reversed his phone, showing me the conversation. Indeed, there was the tale of captainTorpedo and the rowdy raccoons, right before me in russet text, with Snbrn only a footnote afterwards. "It's a wonder that man hasn't gotten himself seriously injured."

"Honestly, do we even need to fund a giant military? If we just cloned like ten of him then we'd be covered."

Lord help anyone going against more than one Anatoli…

As refreshing as it had been to spend lunch outside with Pierce, we both had classwork that needed to be done over the weekend. I had a wealth of homework to finish for Optics, easily the worst class in the history of science. Similarly, as a biomedical engineering major, Pierce had to have been knee deep in genetics or some shit. In all honesty, I wasn't entirely sure what kind of classes biomedical engineers really took, but I had a feeling that they were far beyond the scope of my understanding, so I had never asked.

That thought, however, easily distracted me from my work. I had always thought it weird that people would, on hearing others' majors, gasp in shock and talk about how difficult a life path others had chosen for themselves. In my case, people seemed to love astronomy, but the second I mentioned physics they would be running for the hills. However, I never thought of my major as hard. Well, that was a lie. I had never thought of my major as despairingly, pointlessly difficult. There was a lot about outer space that was not understood, of course, but the field truly seemed to be where I shined. The same could be said about Pierce in biomedics. He had an amazing intuition for the science of healing, and his GPA was an excellent reflection of that. Although I had done little to shape him - he was already an amazing student - I couldn't help feeling proud of him as though he really were my son or something.

Alas, if I wanted to be equally proud of myself, I needed to get back on that Optics homework without letting myself get distracted. In an ideal world, the subject would have been fascinating. Literally all of the information we got from deep space was in the form of electromagnetic radiation, so mastery of it opened up a ton of interesting questions. Unfortunately, the professor had been dead set in his ways, convinced that the way he'd been instructed sixty years prior was the only way it could be taught. I felt bad for the rest of the class, as a majority of them struggled to see what was important in a sea of formulas our professor had splattered across the board. Admittedly, though, I was grateful that I had an almost intuitive understanding. It was a tactic I'd used to get through a ton of less-interesting classes, and I was hardly about to keep myself from continuing to succeed.

That being said… one could tell how distracted I was still letting myself be. It seemed to be one of those days where I just could not make myself do school work, almost as if the university was a tangible force, punishing me for trying to do things on our day off. I lolled my head to the side, glancing at my wall clock before deciding to finally give the work a rest. I had toiled for at least thirty minutes, and that would have to be enough for the time being.

Before I could even crash back down in my desk chair, a ding resounded from my cell phone. I thought I'd put the thing on silent, but apparently the instachat had other plans for me. The screen lit up, showing a lime-green banner and the name of the accosting party. "It's crystalKrypton…" I hummed to myself.

crystalKrypton: so it's after three, is your mail in?

kuiperTitan: Taej… My amigo…

crystalKrypton: i know, i know. but seriously, i've been waiting my whole life for this.

kuiperTitan: It has literally been one day…

crystalKrypton: ok you might be right but come on lol

kuiperTitan: Thy will be done

As I stepped outside to see if the mail truck had passed, I found myself distracted by the sky. It was bright and warm, although filled with an intricate series of clouds. I could tell that this is the kind of weather Farmer would have loved to have back home.

"Farmer" was the affectionate nickname I had given to the man who raised me. He never bothered to hide the fact that he was not my biological father, but we made sure not to let that get between us on any occasion. By all accounts, I was incredibly lucky; he protected me, engaged in some of my interests, and was frequently supportive of me, even when I wanted to go to college far away from our home in Ireland. Indeed, he was definitely the best thing that could have happened to me; wherever my birth parents were, I never found myself wanting to find them.

Of course, no one is a perfect parent; the man was less than twenty years my senior, and there were several times where he had a look on his face as though he was in way over his head with raising me. As one might have been able to tell from the nickname, his original goal in life had been to manage a large, thriving farm by himself in the countryside. Although I rather enjoyed being there, the countryside was absolutely filled with backwards-thinking, anti-progressive types, people that would sooner turn a blind eye to oppression than risk their social life by speaking out against it. I briefly recalled one of Farmer's best friends, a man who he often hung out with when I was a preteen. He had believed he could waltz right in the door while on the phone, muttering to the unfortunate soul on the other end of the line about… something upsetting.

Whatever it had been, he had dropped a slur without even blinking. Filled with the energy and ambition of youth, I had demanded he get his ass out of my house and never return, and he seemed pissed enough to make good on that demand. Farmer gave me the strangest look immediately after, but if he was disappointed, he never said anything. How could he even make friends like that? I wondered, perhaps only a bit grateful that he'd never mentioned the encounter again. I couldn't tell if moments like that made him regret his decision to take me in… one he'd never given me more specific details about. For all I knew, I could have been in line for the royal throne, not that it mattered…

And, just like that, I had managed to amble right past the mailbox, which I only noticed as my foot stepped down off the boulevard strip and into the side of the street, shaking me out of my thoughts. Fortunately I had only been in my own driveway, and there was no traffic to be disturbed by my reverie. As I reached my hand into the mailbox, I gave another long, appreciative look to the sky, returning to my initial thought. Farmer loves this kind of weather. It was warm, but not directly sunny, and a breeze gently caressed the trees around me. This was perfect outdoors weather, and considering almost everything he did revolved around the crops or the animals, he'd take special care to not let days like this go to waste.

Somehow, it seemed like that was the push I needed to finally get me to actually do something. Of course, I still wasn't planning on finishing that homework just yet, and there was not a ton of yard work that Gian and I ever needed to do in this very basic house, but I'd be damned if I wasn't going to do, well… something. Thus, as I shuffled through the envelopes we'd received, my eyes softened at the sight - I had gotten Snbrn. And I was going to play the shit out of it with four of my best friends.

My first order of business would be to check back in with Tae-joon, who I was certain was giving me an assortment of concerned messages. Well, I supposed it was my fault for making him wait three minutes for a response. Next would be to ensure that Pierce's copy mailed as well, unless Taej had already done so and was ragging me about it, which was definitely not out of the question. Then I'd have to check with Paulie and Anatoli… honestly, it would have been much easier for the five of us to all instachat in the same window. I couldn't understand why the app didn't have that functionality, but that would have to be a question for another day.

crystalKrypton: soooo?

kuiperTitan: You can rejoice, lol, I have it. I'm guessing you've already been talkin to Pierce?

crystalKrypton: you know me lol. he got it about fifteen minutes ago, so you're the last one.

kuiperTitan: Cool. Should we go ahead and fire this up then? What's the plan?

crystalKrypton: well there isn't one exactly tbh. hard to believe i know but it's not like it's gonna take us forever to come up with one

kuiperTitan: It would sure be a lot faster if all five of us could chat at once. Know any apps where we can do that?

crystalKrypton: dude, this one. this app can do that… you have to have version 1.4 though

kuiperTitan: Ah, hells. I'll go ahead and update then. Get the rest of the bros to do so too, and THEN we can figure out the rest

I didn't stick around to see Taej's response; I knew he'd be happy to oblige and not waste any more time. And so, still standing beside my mailbox, I opened up the app store to update. As I stood stock-still, staring into my phone and clutching a heap of envelopes, I wondered if I looked odd. Surely most people would have stepped back inside by this point. But something was nagging at me, tapping in my head to make sure I was staying outside. It must have been another one of my hunches, so I would have been loathe to disobey it. Besides, there was no reason to rush away from what I presumed would be my last time enjoying the beautiful day.

A booming sound from behind me caused my attention to waver, sending a flinch up my spine. The nerves manifested in my hand, causing me to squeeze my phone tightly and jam my thumb to the screen as I turned around. I couldn't see any immediate sign of what had made the noise; it sounded like it had been rather far in the distance, but whatever it had been must have dissipated. In fact, I wasn't even sure I hadn't imagined it.

In any case, my next glance at my phone revealed that I'd cancelled the updating process on the instachat app. "Damn," I mumbled. Who knows how long that had wasted - perhaps an entire minute.

Unfortunately, the situation did not improve, as I heard another boom from the same direction. This time, I spun my entire body around to see if the perpetrator was still visible. There was no obvious sign of the source, but a tendril of smoke appeared in the distance, slowly thickening. As the ash rose, I could feel my chest sink.

Before the sense of dread could completely grey my heart, a bright light streaked across my field of vision, flaring as though inflamed. No… it was definitely inflamed. And it tumbled right towards the earth, beyond the treeline, with yet another boom. We were being hit by meteors.