Twin Earth

I pulled my old Fiesta into the familiar campus of the UKSA headquarters and dumped it right outside my old boss’ office, barely locking the door before running into the building clutching my handful of papers and printouts. It was nearly three in the morning and no-one was on reception, so I used my old security pass and yanked open the door, grateful that it still worked. However, I was surprised to see my old boss’ office, just off the main entrance, was in complete darkness.

“They’re down the hall,” a young female employee muttered as she walked by. “Guess it’s important.”

Ignoring her miserable attitude, I nodded in thanks and made my way quickly down to the conference room and peered in.

“Tom,” my old boss remarked as I walked in. “Glad you could join us.”

“Robert,” I nodded in acknowledgement, debating if he was being sarcastic or not. It was weird seeing him again and a nervous feeling crept over my stomach as I looked around the room and recognised a few familiar faces. I knew what they were thinking. It was all still raw in their minds, just as it was in mine, but no-one said anything.

“You haven’t met Rachel before. She’s a post graduate student at UCL,” Robert continued.

“Hi,” I replied awkwardly, shaking the hand of the young girl that stood up to greet me. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, maybe a bit older, but she had a childish enthusiasm in her manner that immediately irritated me.

“Rachel’s team are the ones who built the space telescope we’ve been using to track this object. I’ve asked her to join us because her team’s study of galactic objects confirms what your father has just sent through. You might want to look at this,” Robert motioned.

I briefly scanned through the paper that Rachel passed me, but not knowing if I was just tired or out of practice, I failed to understand what I was looking at.

“I know the asteroid has jumped. From my calculations about 200,000 miles closer to us in barely a few seconds, but what am I looking at here?” I asked confused.

Rachel smiled and ran her fingers over the data. “It’s exciting stuff Tom. Like your father’s team in Tokyo we too were monitoring the asteroid’s trajectory and discovered it had disappeared so we decided to track the skies to see if it had moved rather than somehow becoming destroyed, and we noticed it had jumped.”

Flinching at the personal use of my name in the young woman’s response, I looked up at Rachel in confusion and replied quickly, “Yes, that was what I saw, but how? What’s am I not getting?”

“We think it hit something,” Rachel smiled eagerly.

“Hit something? Hit what?”

“Some kind of anomaly,” my old colleague James remarked leaning forward.

“An anomaly?” I whispered drawing in a sharp breath. This, I hadn’t expected.

“What is confusing us however,” Rachel continued, passing me some photos, “is that we can’t see whatever it hit. We scanned that area of space where the anomaly seems to be located, but we can’t see anything particularly unusual.”

“What do you mean by particularly unusual? Does that mean you can see something?” I asked intrigued.

“Only glare,” James interjected, “a hazy reflection of some kind.”

“Well, that does suggest that something is there for light to bounce off of it,” I stated. “Could it just be a fragment of the asteroid? Or perhaps even another asteroid we haven’t detected?”

“Maybe, we don’t know,” Rachel replied. “But whatever it hit, whatever forced it to jump like this, means it is now on a collision course with Earth.”

“So why do you need me? Not that I’m not grateful,” I replied awkwardly.

“Tom, if I had my way you wouldn’t step foot in this place again, but NASA and your father disagree. They know your expertise and as reluctant as I am to admit it, I agree. I’m sending you out to Morocco tonight with Rachel to meet up with that NASA lot and the guys at the ESA,” Robert replied with impatience.

“Why Morocco?” I asked.

“Because that’s where the asteroid is going to hit in less than an hour,” Rachel stated.

A hushed silence enveloped the room as the realisation of what Rachel had said washed over us, interrupted only by Robert’s phone suddenly ringing.

“I understand,” Robert muttered into his phone before hanging up. “Time to go,” he ordered. “We need people on the ground ASAP so that the local military or any other rogue locals don’t get their hands on it. That asteroid is likely to stay intact and if it does, we need to know more about it.”

Nodding I grabbed my paperwork and followed him and Rachel out of the room, briefly lifting a hand to wave goodbye to my old team. At least they looked happy to see me, albeit so fleetingly and under very strange circumstances.

“Good luck,” James shouted quickly. “Looks like your back!”

Smiling back at him, I was nervous, but also excited at the prospect of being back in the fold. Perhaps what Rachel and Robert had just shared with me hadn’t sunk in yet, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it as I was swiftly led into a dark saloon car and towards a nearby military airfield.