Age of Power 1: Legacy Read Online Free Page B

team. She’s a tad
different, my aunt. I sent her and Dad a couple online gift certificates. For
Mom, I bought a clock that I’d seen in Latimer’s Antiques store on Fifth
Avenue, near downtown. A square box type from the 1940s, it had glass walls
inside the deeply lacquered wood frame. Mom liked that sort of thing. It wasn’t
cheap, but I had it on layaway with the owner while I paid for it over the last
year.
    Brand got a
ViaSoft Phad. He sent me pictures he took with his cell phone. The thing was a
two-sectioned unit pulled apart with a paper-thin screen that unrolled from one
side. He showed me how all the touch sensitive buttons on the screen worked,
and before he signed off, Brand sent me one last picture of him watching a new
movie.
    Jealous,
me?   Never!
    Bastard…okay,
maybe I was a little jealous. Of course, he wasn’t playing the game I’d bought
him, but I was sure he would…eventually.
    With presents
opened, and family calls made, I watched the news while Mom started cooking
dinner. Although it would be just the two of us, Mom liked to cook. And because
I loved the chocolate chunk and coconut cookies she always made this time of
year for the desserts, I got out of her way and stayed in the living room.
    Watching
television, I channel surfed the cable news networks. Any other time, it
would’ve been boring. That wasn’t the case right now, as the pictures of the
asteroid and those who reacted to its appearance was more fun than a science fiction movie. And the Christmas theme lent an air of
cheeriness to all the scenes of panic.
    Continuing to
surf, I found an update about what happened to the asteroid on the night it
passed over us. From what the NASA experts could tell, the asteroid had
aerobraked across the upper atmosphere of the Midwest until it left the
atmosphere above Lake Michigan near Chicago. Meteorologists were in a controlled
panic about that part of the event. They were having trouble trying to figure
out how this would affect the weather over time.
    While that news
segment was playing, I glanced outside, saw the sunny weather, and shrugged.
With the crazy weather from global warming, I wasn’t going to worry too much,
yet. Bored, I switched channels to a documentary about who won prizes for this
year’s showiest decorations. I noticed there were a lot of meteor themes for some strange reason.
    Because it was
between elections, the politicians stayed quiet on how they would handle the
emergencies developing from this near hit. Up until the interviews started,
only the President had gone on national television to help calm people.
Congressmen and Senators, however, waited until they were on Sunday news shows
to answer critics about why the budget to find dangerous asteroids was so
limited. Blustering, the politicians promised to increase the NASA budget to
make sure we had better warning in the future. Even the interviewers looked
openly critical about those claims.
    I only watched
moments of an interview about how much the asteroid slowed after the
aerobraking it did through our atmosphere. Not only had it slowed down, it was
now in a permanent orbit around the planet and moon. But while people were
still celebrating, others just didn’t feel comfortable explaining as to
why it had slowed down so much. One scientist's claim was that the atmospheric
drag simply hadn't been enough to slow it down to such a low speed. I didn’t understand
the numbers he was using to get his point across, but the man was acting almost
insulted by his own results. For a moment, I wondered why it was bothering him
so much, then I just shrugged it off, and
shut off the TV.
    Still wanting
something to do, I went back to texting Brand to bug him about his new toy.
Christmas dinner was great, Mom is a fantastic cook, and with that finishing
off the day, I finally started pushing the asteroid news to the back of my
mind.
    The world
couldn’t do that so readily. And because Mom was serious about grounding me,