Russell Moran - A Climate of Doubt

I ran to my desk and pulled out a pair of binoculars. Having grown up and spent all my life in New York City, I had never seen a tornado, only in photos and on film. The gigantic cloud looked to be 10 blocks wide. The roaring sound was like a speeding train on our roof.

It wasn’t just a tornado, but a gigantic tornado.

I handed the binoculars to Ellen. She turned the dial on the view finder to get a better closeup.

“Oh, no. I can’t be seeing that. What’s that debris I see flying? Tell me it’s impossible.”

I looked again through the binoculars. The debris that Ellen mentioned was vehicles—cars, busses, and trucks. The slushy but still deep snow began to swirl in front of us. Something pelted the window.

“Hey, let’s go into the den. We shouldn’t be near any windows.”

A TV monitor in the den picked up the view outside 26 Federal Plaza from the security cameras pointed at the entrance. I breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The scene in front of the building was a riot of slush and rain, but it was not a tornado. I ran back to the window. The gigantic tornado moved off to the west. We dodged a bullet. After 15 minutes, the wind died, but we could still hear a distant roar and crashing sounds of flying debris, including vehicles. The tornado moved northwest up the Hudson River and, as we later discovered, would devastate Weehawken, New Jersey.

We looked at each other, speechless. Thankfully the window held. I looked down at the scene in front of 26 Federal Plaza. The twister obviously didn’t come north to us, but a lot of debris did.

I tried the phone. Dead. Then my cell phone. Dead.

“Let’s see if TV works,” I said.

The strong TV infrastructure that the network execs put in place worked. Al Roker, his handsome dark face almost ashen white, was manning the microphone.

“Someday a playwright, an opera producer, or a novelist will summarize what just happened to lower Manhattan today. I’ll try to fill you in on this devastation. Battery Park is a wasteland but thank God the twister didn’t do much damage to the residential buildings in Battery Park City. Weehawken, New Jersey took the full brunt of the tornado, which picked up strength as it traveled up the Hudson River. We’ll be updating you all day on the wreckage left in the path of the storm. According to the scientists at NOAA, the tornado clocked in on the Fujita Scale at a powerful F4. The strongest tornado ever that ever hit, registered F5 on the scale, so the lower Manhattan twister was a big one.”

As Ellen and I watched the reports on TV, I wondered what was coming our way next.

August 2

“I’ve gotten so used to being near you, Bill, I hate the thought of being without you.”

“I love being near you too, Nance, but I’d feel a little safer if we had communication with Rosetta. We’re due for a resupply visit next week. They always call to alert us when the supply capsule is approaching. I have no idea how they’re going to pull it off without communications.”

“We’ll just have to keep looking at the space around us to see if a supply pod is heading our way,” Nancy said. “Once the capsule gets close, we can use shortwave radio. Until then, we’re blind—and deaf.”

“We took an inventory just two days ago, Nance. After about another three weeks we’ll be down to water and saltine crackers, and precious few saltines at that. For now, we’re going to work on a big assumption—that our only problem is communication. We have no idea if there’s a technical issue in our connection to Montana.”

“We can’t even run tests without Montana knowing about it, Bill. Too dangerous. The only thing we have is each other—which is the most important thing.”

“Hey, I’ve got a little surprise for you, Nance.”

He handed her a small metal box with a string around it to serve as a bow.

“For me?”

“Who else? Open it.”

She removed the string and opened the box. Inside was a ring made of aluminum. Bill had salvaged it from a toolbox.

“Marry me, hon. Make me the happiest man in space.”

Nancy gave herself a shove off the bulkhead and did a 360-degree twirl. She then wrapped her arms around him and squeezed.

“The answer is yes! We may be low on supplies but now we have other things to do. Let’s decide on a date and prepare the guest list. Once we have everything in place, reality may cooperate with us. I think we should celebrate.”

“We don’t have any wine or booze, Nance, so we’ll have to come up with something else.”

“We’ll think of something.”

“This is Phil Duncan with the Rosetta Corporation. May I speak to Secretary Bellamy, please?”

“Go ahead, Phil. I guess you heard about that huge tornado that wrecked a lot of lower Manhattan and New Jersey. I hope you have some better news than the last time we spoke.”

“We’re still in a communication blackout with Stargazer , Rick, and we’re due to send a supply capsule next week. The astronauts are getting low on essentials, like food. Normally, we communicate with them days before the resupply flight so they can prepare for dockage, but now we can’t. Our only choice is to launch the supply pod and hope they’re looking for it.”

“Any idea if you’ll be able to communicate with the supply pod, Phil?”

“We just don’t know, Mr. Secretary. If our communication blackout is the result of atmospheric or electrical conditions in space, the answer is no. Once the supply pod gets close to Stargazer , they can communicate with shortwave radio. We’ll just have to launch the supply pod and hope for the best.”

“What if you can’t resupply the Stargazer , Phil?”

“To be blunt, our astronaut friends will starve to death within a month.”

“It’s the White House for you on line one, Mr. Secretary.”

“Yes, Mr. President, Rick Bellamy here.” Whenever I got a call from the White House I assumed it was President Blake on the line. He always likes to make his own calls, especially to old friends.

“Rick, I don’t have to tell you how critical our linkup with the space station Stargazer is. We’re getting full cooperation from the Rosetta Corporation, but that’s not enough. From your recent reports, it seems that Rosetta no longer controls Stargazer . We’re convinced that the tests they ran on the satellites resulted in the wild weather. We’re satisfied that Rosetta had nothing directly to do with the event, but we don’t know who is in control. The latest we’ve learned is that Rosetta not only has lost control of the station, but all communication links as well. This is deep shit, Rick. Bring me up to date on what you know.”

“Mr. President, I share your concerns about the space station. We just found out about the communications blackout, but we also discovered another critical issue. Stargazer will run out of supplies in a week. Unless they’re able to replenish from a supply ship, the two astronauts are as good as dead within a month. Rosetta tells me that they’re going to attempt a resupply mission, but without communication with the station it could be risky. We hope that they’ll be able to use shortwave radio. Everybody in government, including us at Homeland Security, has concluded that someone or some group is pulling this crap off. Whoever they are will soon be in total control of earth’s weather, if they aren’t already. As you know, sir, the temperatures have been moderating across the globe. We would normally greet that as good news, but, because we don’t know who’s in control, we can’t sit back and relax. Ellen and I watched part of lower Manhattan get torn up by a tornado. Every scientist I talk to thinks the tornado had a lot to do with the weather anomalies.”