John Schettler - Meridian

“Good Lord,” said Kelly. “You mean you three have been in here locked away in a meeting all this time?”

“Yes,” said Nordhausen from across the room, “and where have you been all this time?”

Kelly slumped into a chair and Maeve was already dabbing at the cut on his forehead. “How in the world did you do this?” her eyes wrinkled with concern.

“It’s chaotic out there,” Kelly burst out.

“Well, I’ve heard of unruly crowds at concerts,” said Maeve, “but for Verdi?”

“Verdi?” Kelly gave them all a disoriented look. “Hell, the whole city is in an uproar! People are running around like madmen out there.”

“What in blazes are you talking about?” said Nordhausen. “It’s just a little rainstorm. People in California get positively silly with a little rain. They don’t know how to drive and they—”

“OK, Time out!” Kelly raised his voice, making the telltale sign of a ‘T’ with his hands as he spoke. “Turn on CNN. You’re not going to believe this.”

“I don’t keep a television in the study,” said Nordhausen. “I barely tolerate my set at home.”

“Then turn on a radio or something, there’s been one hell of an eruption in the Atlantic and the whole east coast is in a panic.”

“Eruption?” Dorland was immediately interested. “Where?”

“The Canary Islands, off West Africa.” Kelly took a deep breath. “Palma,” he continued. “The whole western flank of Cumbre Vieja has collapsed. There was a massive landslide.”

Paul had often talked about the prospect of such a collapse ever since he had first stumbled on the research of Dr. Simon Day around the turn of the millennium. Day, and his colleagues at the Hazard Research Center of University College in London, had been warning about a build-up of groundwater in vertical columns that seemed to be destabilizing the flank of the Cumbre Vieja Volcano on the Island of Palma. The research indicated that it could be some time, many hundreds of years, in fact, before an eruption capable of collapsing the flank would occur. Paul hesitated when he first heard the news, but he immediately began digging for all the information Kelly had. “When did it happen?”

“About three hours ago, from what I could pull in on the car radio. I had just finished my comp cycle and I was rushing to get over here. The traffic is crazy! People are all over the streets and BART stations are jammed. Hell, some idiot walked right in front of my car and just stood there. I leaned on the horn but old guy refused to budge. Then, he just looked at his watch and walked away. In any case, I got curious as to what all the commotion was about and turned on the car radio. Every channel had the same story!”

“Tsunami!” Dorland had already surmised the implications.

“ Mega tsunami,” Kelly corrected him. “Remember that book by Bill McGuire we picked up at Borders a few years back?”

“You mean the book on natural catastrophes?”

“It’s happened! The coast of North Africa got slammed an hour ago. A 200 foot wave hit Western Sahara about an hour after the eruption.”

“Thank God that’s a sparsely populated coast,” said Maeve.

“Yes, but Casablanca got hit further north in Morocco and was all but inundated. The water wasn’t as high there. Some reports have it at under hundred feet, but that was on the back side of the event. The main force of the water dome will be directed west across the Atlantic and—”

“The east coast,” said Dorland. He ran over to the bookcase scanning about desperately. “Where’s your atlas, Robert?”

“Bottom shelf; to the right.” Nordhausen was up off his chair to assist. In a moment they had a thick volume of the Rand McNally World Atlas over on the study table and Paul was frantically flipping through the pages for a map of the Atlantic. “I’ll get my shortwave.” Nordhausen ran off and flung open a closet near the entrance. Maeve was still trying to dab the last traces of blood from Kelly’s cheek.

“Did you fall or something?” she asked, clearly as concerned for Kelly’s well-being as anything else. She had come to know him quite well since she joined the project three years ago, and they often worked together running calculations for Maeve’s Outcome studies. She was quite fond of Kelly, though a bit awkward with that emotion and too quick to hide it with the routine of their work.

“Like I said, it’s crazy out there. People are running around like idiots. I jumped on 280 to take it up to the Bay Bridge two hours ago and it was jammed.” Kelly was waving his arms about as he spoke. “It took me an hour to get over the bridge, and when I got up here it was almost nine PM. I tried to call, but couldn’t find my cell phone. Probably left it at the University. I got off at my normal exit and made for the pay phone near a Seven-Eleven. When I got out to make the call, some idiot came around the corner and damn near ran me down. I jumped back and slipped. Hit my head on a god-damned street sign! The guy never even stopped. People are running around like madmen out there. I was so pissed off that I just went back to the car and hurried over here.”

“We need to try and get more time on the Berkeley computers,” said Maeve. “It’s too hard going into the City, especially the night before the project launch. I told you we should have set the meeting later, Paul.” Maeve had a distracted, almost pained expression on her face, and she was still fussing with the towel, maneuvering to press a clean surface to the cut on Kelly’s forehead.

“I’ll be fine,” Kelly tried to smile.

“When was the eruption?” Dorland had found his map and was squinting over the page, his finger pressed on the blue surface of the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa. “Did you say three hours ago?”

“Quiet down people,” Nordhausen chimed in. “I can’t hear this thing.” He was fiddling with the dial of his combination AM/FM and shortwave radio, angling the antenna to try and improve the reception. A peal of thunder intruded and the sound of voices seemed to increase outside the study window.

“Three hours…” Dorland pursed his lips as he thought. “Did you say the wave that hit Western Sahara was over 200 feet?”

“Two hundred fucking feet!” Kelly still had the same look of amazement on his face. “Can you believe that? I heard this an hour ago and I still can’t get my mind around it.”

“Well if it was that high on the back end of the eruption I can only imagine what the water dome was like when the flank of the volcano went into the ocean. Are you sure it was the western flank of Cumbre Vieja?”

“That’s what they said on the news. Hell, Robert, why don’t you have a television in here?”

Nordhausen frowned at him, his ear pressed against the speaker of the shortwave radio as he turned the dial with his other hand.

“Let’s see,” said Dorland. The speed of the landslide had to be between 100 and 200 meters per second.” He was calculating something in his mind, brown eyes rolling towards the ceiling as he considered. “That’s going to push some mean water out into the Atlantic,” he concluded. “Three hours would put the wave-front of the tsunami sequence somewhere east of the mid Atlantic Ridge by now. Anybody who was living on the coastal regions of the Canary Islands is dead, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass for real estate in the Azores. Another ten or fifteen minutes and that place will be history, if you’re right about the eruption time.”

“I’ve got something!” Nordhausen rushed over to the study table and set the shortwave down next to the open Atlas. He adjusted the volume and they all leaned in to listen, faces blank with anticipation. Maeve bit at her lower lip, clearly upset.