Age of Power 1: Legacy Read Online Free Page A

all I’d have with Brand for a while. The gum didn’t cover the smell
of beer on my breath. Mom smelled it, and grounded me for the entire time I
would be out of school. Actually, she grounded me until after the holidays. I
had to ask which holiday she meant. She said that if I were good, she’d
consider letting me out around Independence Day. Ha, Mom was kidding of course.
    Or, so I hoped.
    But as the day
fell onto evening, I found the idea of staying home to be much more enjoyable
than going out and dealing with the incessant talk about the damage in the
town. If I wanted that sort of thing, I could get it from the news
and YouTube. I have to admit that seeing what was on the video blogs
bothered me. After all, I had the camera, a nice looking digital still and
video recorder Dad gave me for my birthday.
    And all I had
were nice pictures of Christmas decorations and the single meteor streak across
the sky. Others caught a fair bit more, such as the entire thing. They also
caught images of people rioting in the streets. YouTube   had some rather embarrassing
videos that would take a long time for some to get over. I’m sure the people in
the videos laughed over it—or they would, after a few decades.
    Still, for all
the panic, things hadn’t turned out to be as bad as they had looked. While
there was property damage, the meteor crashing east of Riverlite had killed no
one. A few empty farms were history from fires caused by the meteor shower. One
of the airport runways would be down, until they cleared the debris and laid
out new asphalt. And the first meteor’s impact had left a great deal of debris
spread out across farmland.
    But Riverlite
remained relatively undamaged. Though, from what I’d seen on the way home, that
included many broken windows, cracked walls, smashed vehicles, and decorations.
I had a feeling that some insurance companies were going to be using that ‘Act
of God’ excuse to get out of paying up. That it primarily came from the shock
wave from the meteor’s impact and the passage of the asteroid gave them a good
reason to play it out that way.
    Cleanup would
take a long time, but the people of Riverlite insisted on celebrating Christmas
just the same. The local radio station announced that the less-damaged stores
would stay open until Christmas Eve, to allow last-minute shoppers the chance
to get presents or replace broken items. Kerrington Hardware, the main supplier
for windows had a sale. And if people couldn’t afford replacement windows, then
Sherrick Lumber would be very happy to help. Merry Christmas
    Beyond the town
and region, people were celebrating Christmas with an intensity unseen since
just after World War Two. Church attendance swelled, scientists became enamored
over the asteroid, and government leaders did their best to assure people that
it wouldn’t happen again. The big cities took advantage of it for tourist
money, at least in my point of view.
    New York City
was the first to announce a weeklong party that they were going to hold in
Times Square. After that, other cities followed with changes of their own. From
Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, people celebrated the idea of simply being
alive. For the most part, they were actual parties and it brought out thousands
of people onto the streets.
    Locally,
however, Riverlite, and other towns along the path of the asteroid, had more
spiritual sorts of celebrations on Christmas Day. Nobody argued the point, we
lucked out, and we knew it. Actually, from things being said by the scientists on television, we were luckier than we deserved. I felt
properly thankful and then I switched channels to watch a   Home Alone   marathon.
    Life goes on,
though, and once we cleaned around the house and yard, Mom and I celebrated
Christmas. I got new books, Dad sent a check for a hundred dollars, and Aunt
Cassie sent me a history DVD about the Celts. That would be the old British
Isles tribe of thousands of years ago, not the basketball