Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(3)

“Goddard, ISS. We’re getting our first data from the probes. Relay in progress. Note: one twenty-seven found something.” I grasp for the right words. “Preliminary telemetry is of an oblong object. Smooth. Does not appear to be an asteroid or comet. Repeat: appears to be a non-natural object constructed by—”

The tablet goes dark. The treadmill stops. The station shudders. Lights flicker.

I tap my internal comm.

“Sergei—”

“Power overload, Commander.”

That doesn’t add up. The solar array is offline. We’re on battery power.

The station shudders again.

My instincts kick in.

“Everybody out of your bunks, right now! Get to the Soyuz capsules! Station evac procedures!”

The station jolts, throwing me into the wall. My head spins. My body reacts instinctively, and my arms propel me up, into the cupola. Through the windows, I see the International Space Station breaking into pieces.





Chapter 2





James





The riots will start soon.

I can feel the tension in the air.

Everywhere I go, eyes linger too long, notes are passed, secrets are whispered.

The world is freezing. The ice is coming for us, and we are all trapped here. If we don’t get out, we’ll die here.

That’s what’s brewing: a plan to get out. That’s the good news. The bad news, frankly, is that I’m not part of the plan. No one has told me anything. I doubt they will.

There’s not much I can do about it. So I do my job and keep my head down and watch the news.

A segment from CNN is playing on the beat-up TV. The reporter’s voice is barely audible over the rumble of the machines behind me.

Snow fell in Miami for the third day in a row, breaking records and prompting the Florida government to seek federal aid.

The request sparked protests from citizens and governments across the Northeast, who have ratcheted up pressure on the federal government to increase the pace of evacuations. As the Long Winter drags on…

I don’t know who coined the term Long Winter. Maybe the media. Or government. Either way, it has stuck. People like it better than glaciation (too technical) or Ice Age (too permanent). Long Winter sounds as if the end is just around the corner—that it’s just another season, this one abnormally long. I hope that’s the case. I’m sure NOAA and its sister agencies around the world know the truth by now. If so, they haven’t told us (hence the highest news ratings this century).

An alarm buzzes.

I ignore it.

The next news segment starts. I stop working long enough to take in the setting.

Text below the scene identifies the location as the Port of Rosyth outside Edinburgh, Scotland. A male reporter with short gray hair stands on a dock, in the shadow of an enormous white cruise ship. The gangway is extended, a steady stream of people shuffling toward the ship. The trees in the distance are completely white, as if they’re frozen solid. Snow falls in sheets.

The scene behind me might look like vacationers setting off for a holiday cruise, but nothing could be further from the truth. The cruise ship you’re seeing was known as the Emerald Princess until three weeks ago, when she was purchased by His Majesty’s government and renamed the Summer Sun. It’s one of a fleet of forty such cruise ships that will temporarily evacuate residents of the UK to warmer latitudes.

The Summer Sun is set to sail to Tunisia, where passengers will be transported to a relocation camp outside Kebili. The camp is part of a long-term lease agreement between the UK and Tunisia. The move follows similar actions in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Japan. The program is reminiscent of the mass evacuation in the UK during the Second World War, when Operation Pied Piper evacuated 3.5 million civilians out of the way of the Nazi threat…

Real estate near the equator has become a hot commodity. So have several places deemed “winter havens”—places below sea level with unusually high temperatures: Death Valley in California; Al Aziziyah, Libya; Wadi Halfa, Sudan; Dasht-e Lut, Iran; Kebili, Tunisia. Two years ago, if you visited one of these places and left a barrel of gasoline open when the sun came up, it would be empty by noon. Evaporated. These used to be wastelands. Now they’re beacons of hope, oases in the Long Winter. People are pouring in by the millions, selling whatever they have to in order to buy a berth in the camps. I wonder if they’ll be safe there.

Another buzzer goes off. The same tone, different machine. Still not the alarm I’m waiting for.

When the third buzzer sounds, I collect the sheets from the three dryers and start folding them.

My job is laundry. It has been for the last two years, ever since I arrived at Edgefield Federal Correctional Institution. Like the other two thousand inmates imprisoned here, I claim my innocence. Unlike most of my fellow inmates, I am innocent.

If I’m guilty of any crime, it’s inventing something the world wasn’t ready for. An innovation that terrified them. My mistake—or crime, if you will—was not accounting for human nature. Humans are scared of what they don’t know, and they’re especially scared of new things that might change life as they know it.

The US attorney assigned to my case found an obscure law and made an example out of me. The message to other inventors was clear: we don’t want this.