Solar Storms Read Online Free Page A

“No one goes anywhere. You stay here and work until
the storm passes.”
    “That’s my family out there, Dr. Tsui! What if I
can’t find them after the storm passes?”
    “We all have families. But we also have work. What
if all the police officers and firefighters abandon their posts?” said a
heavyset woman who worked in programming. She was one of the other scientists
whom Sophie hadn’t yet met. “Society will collapse if the most important people
fail to do their duty,” she continued, her double chin bobbing up and down as
she spoke.
    Sophie brushed a strand of sweaty hair out of her
eyes. “She’s right. We need to ride out the storm and do our jobs. Leaving
isn’t going to do any good, anyways; you’ll just get lost.”
    The young scientist started to reply but hesitated,
opting to refrain from further argument. He continued down the narrow stairway,
his head lowered in defeat.
    The stairway led to a command center in the bowels
of the basement. It was unbearably hot. A state-of-the-art air conditioning
unit was built to cool the room, but the engineer who had designed it failed to
take into account the juice the computers would need when working at full
capacity. Dr. Tsui was forced to re-route power from the cooling unit to the
computers, which were sucking the backup generators dry. By midnight the
temperature in the bunker was nearly 90 degrees.
    The heat didn’t seem to bother Tsui. He nursed a
cup of coffee in the corner, staring intently at the dozens of monitors
attached to the concrete wall. His brilliant mind was sucking the information
in like a leech, analyzing more every second.
    Sophie watched from the bed she was sharing with
Emanuel, trying to drown out the sound of the crying, the hushed voices, and
the prayers from the other dozen scientists throughout the room. She laid her
head down on the tiny pillow, turning to face him. His lips parted and revealed
his perfectly aligned canines. A chill crept down Sophie’s spine, making its
way to her toes. She returned his smile and gripped his hands underneath the
covers. As the lights faded and darkness carpeted the room, she slowly slipped
out of her pants and pulled herself closer to him. The sweat from their bodies
mixed. He bent in to kiss her, pulling her chin toward his with his index
finger.
    Sophie hesitated, looking over his shoulder to see
if anyone was watching. But the darkness shrouded them. With a silent sigh she
pulled him closer until she could feel his warm breath on her neck.
    Another chill raced down her legs. This time it
didn’t make its way to her toes, it stopped just below her abdominals,
lingering until she felt the tingling sensation of lust. She kissed him deeper,
her hands running through his mop of dark, unkempt hair.
    There was something about the world going to shit
that made her want him even more, like it was the last time she would ever feel
intimacy. When she was in high school, she had had a conversation with a friend
about things they would do if the world was ending. “I’d have sex with the
cutest boy I could find,” her friend had said.
    Sophie, on the other hand, had said she would spend
the night staring at the stars—and yet, with the real possibility of the world
ending, the thought of stargazing no longer appealed to her. Tonight she didn’t
want to be a scientist; tonight she wanted what her friend had wanted. Tonight
she wanted nothing more than to feel Emanuel, to wrap her legs around him one
last time. If the world was going to end, she wanted to share it with him.

    THE NEXT MORNING Tsui woke
them. “Wake up! Wake up!” he yelled, flailing his arms in the air. “The storms
have passed!”
    Emanuel reached for his glasses while Sophie
struggled to find her pants. Seconds later they were crowded around the
monitors, watching the data stream in from stations around the world. He was
right; the storm was over, but the damage to the Midwestern states was severe.
Radiation levels were