Everyone just looked at him.
2
There was a brief moment of paralysis and then the room animated again as Dorland spoke. “What haven’t we heard? Was there a fire at Sidney Hall?”
“Fire?” Kelly had a confused look on his face. Maeve rushed to his side with a towel soaked in hot water. She waved at Paul to help get Kelly’s raincoat off, but Dorland’s mind immediately shifted back to the project when he caught sight of Kelly’s laptop computer.
“Did you manage to finish your comp cycle?” He was already easing the satchel strap off of Kelly’s shoulder.
“Put that down,” said Maeve. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?”
Paul noticed the cut on Kelly’s forehead for the first time, and winced. Kelly Ramer was one of his oldest and dearest friends. The two men had met in high school and had grown up together, sharing the rich mythology of their adolescence together, a history that often re-emerged in secret shared phrases that carried a wealth of meaning between them, but sounded like childish nonsense to anyone who had not lived out the experience they referred to.
They clowned together, and made silly tapes that they stored away over the years in the ‘Eternal Tape Archives,’ a record of priceless moments they had lived together. They shared the same music and appreciation for literature, and an almost mystical fascination for computers that had become so prevalent in the culture these days. It was Paul who had first caught the computer bug, and he quickly persuaded his friend to acquire one of the very first ‘personal computers’ that could be bought in the mid 1980s, a Commodore 64. From there they both graduated to an Amiga 1000 and then jumped on the first 286 series computers that began to circulate as ‘IBM clones’ when the PC age began to gather steam. Kelly went on to specialize in computer networks and the arcane science of Information Technology. They were in their early twenties then, and now, over 25 years later, Kelly was ready to celebrate his 48th birthday, though no one would guess he was that age to look at him. While he carried a little extra weight through the mid-section, he had a full head of dark brown hair, and a sharp, animated intelligence that found him interested in virtually everything. He gave his friend a look of wild eyed surprise, and Paul stopped what he was doing, immediately sensing that there was something very wrong.
“Good Lord,” said Kelly. “You mean you three have been in here locked away in a meeting all this time?”
“Yes,” said Nordhausen from across the room, “and where have you been all this time?”
Kelly slumped into a chair and Maeve was already dabbing at the cut on his forehead. “How in the world did you do this?” her eyes wrinkled with concern.
“It’s chaotic out there,” Kelly burst out.
“Well, I’ve heard of unruly crowds at concerts,” said Maeve, “but for Verdi?”
“Verdi?” Kelly gave them all a disoriented look. “Hell, the whole city is in an uproar! People are running around like madmen out there.”
“What in blazes are you talking about?” said Nordhausen. “It’s just a little rainstorm. People in California get positively silly with a little rain. They don’t know how to drive and they—”
“OK, Time out!” Kelly raised his voice, making the telltale sign of a ‘T’ with his hands as he spoke. “Turn on CNN. You’re not going to believe this.”
“I don’t keep a television in the study,” said Nordhausen. “I barely tolerate my set at home.”
“Then turn on a radio or something, there’s been one hell of an eruption in the Atlantic and the whole east coast is in a panic.”
“Eruption?” Dorland was immediately interested. “Where?”
“The Canary Islands, off West Africa.” Kelly took a deep breath. “Palma,” he continued. “The whole western flank of Cumbre Vieja has collapsed. There was a massive landslide.”
Paul had often talked about the prospect of such a collapse ever since he had first stumbled on the research of Dr. Simon Day around the turn of the millennium. Day, and his colleagues at the Hazard Research Center of University College in London, had been warning about a build-up of groundwater in vertical columns that seemed to be destabilizing the flank of the Cumbre Vieja Volcano on the Island of Palma. The research indicated that it could be some time, many hundreds of years, in fact, before an eruption capable of collapsing the flank would occur. Paul hesitated when he first heard the news, but he immediately began digging for all the information Kelly had. “When did it happen?”
“About three hours ago, from what I could pull in on the car radio. I had just finished my comp cycle and I was rushing to get over here. The traffic is crazy! People are all over the streets and BART stations are jammed. Hell, some idiot walked right in front of my car and just stood there. I leaned on the horn but old guy refused to budge. Then, he just looked at his watch and walked away. In any case, I got curious as to what all the commotion was about and turned on the car radio. Every channel had the same story!”
“Tsunami!” Dorland had already surmised the implications.
“Mega tsunami,” Kelly corrected him. “Remember that book by Bill McGuire we picked up at Borders a few years back?”
“You mean the book on natural catastrophes?”
“It’s happened! The coast of North Africa got slammed an hour ago. A 200 foot wave hit Western Sahara about an hour after the eruption.”
“Thank God that’s a sparsely populated coast,” said Maeve.
“Yes, but Casablanca got hit further north in Morocco and was all but inundated. The water wasn’t as high there. Some reports have it at under hundred feet, but that was on the back side of the event. The main force of the water dome will be directed west across the Atlantic and—”
“The east coast,” said Dorland. He ran over to the bookcase scanning about desperately. “Where’s your atlas, Robert?”
“Bottom shelf; to the right.” Nordhausen was up off his chair to assist. In a moment they had a thick volume of the Rand McNally World Atlas over on the study table and Paul was frantically flipping through the pages for a map of the Atlantic. “I’ll get my shortwave.” Nordhausen ran off and flung open a closet near the entrance. Maeve was still trying to dab the last traces of blood from Kelly’s cheek.
“Did you fall or something?” she asked, clearly as concerned for Kelly’s well-being as anything else. She had come to know him quite well since she joined the project three years ago, and they often worked together running calculations for Maeve’s Outcome studies. She was quite fond of Kelly, though a bit awkward with that emotion and too quick to hide it with the routine of their work.
“Like I said, it’s crazy out there. People are running around like idiots. I jumped on 280 to take it up to the Bay Bridge two hours ago and it was jammed.” Kelly was waving his arms about as he spoke. “It took me an hour to get over the bridge, and when I got up here it was almost nine PM. I tried to call, but couldn’t find my cell phone. Probably left it at the University. I got off at my normal exit and made for the pay phone near a Seven-Eleven. When I got out to make the call, some idiot came around the corner and damn near ran me down. I jumped back and slipped. Hit my head on a god-damned street sign! The guy never even stopped. People are running around like madmen out there. I was so pissed off that I just went back to the car and hurried over here.”
“We need to try and get more time on the Berkeley computers,” said Maeve. “It’s too hard going into the City, especially the night before the project launch. I told you we should have set the meeting later, Paul.” Maeve had a distracted, almost pained expression on her face, and she was still fussing with the towel, maneuvering to press a clean surface to the cut on Kelly’s forehead.