A similar situation was seen throughout Africa and Europe, tsunamis pelting coastlines and objects battering the inland like a cosmic shotgun. The people of Africa, poor and many without shelter, incurred the wrath of the event straight on, costing millions of lives.
By the time the event had reached the west coast of Africa, the people of Brazil were hunkering down for round two.
Chapter 9: Post Impact
Rolling thunder and lightning followed the first wave, accompanied by heavy rain that saturated the earth. Dams and levees broke worldwide, and flooding reshaped the land.
Civilizations that took people centuries to build returned to their natural state in days. Man's attempts at control were made feeble by the power of nature.
Everyone hypothesized that upon entering the earth, the Cloud would cling to the atmosphere, and the earth would remain encompassed for several days.
They also believed a second wave would hit the following day, blanketing the land with a second onset. But the Cloud dissipated shortly after the first exposure, leaving sweeping torrential rains.
Three days after the cloud first made landfall, the rains began to subside. By morning on the fourth day, the rains had stopped, the sun was out, and the air had calmed.
People were listening to reports relayed from around the world. The rains had ceased as quickly as they started. The floods drained away, and the tsunami waters receded into the ocean, taking with it bits and pieces of civilization.
Coastal cities spanning the globe had witnessed immense destruction. Structures within two miles of the coast were obliterated and washed inland, replacing organization with chaos and catastrophe.
What was society, was now a wasteland, filled with shattered dreams and unrecognizable debris as far as the eye could see. Vegetation everywhere had been snapped off at the roots, giving the land the eerie look of a head shaved with dull clippers.
There were few cars left, and they were strewn about like bird seed, mashed and crumpled, upside down, lodged in the remnants of deeply rooted high rise buildings.
People began to trickle out of their shelters, simultaneously filled with hope and dread. As they did, they found the earth to have a stillness to it, not one of doom, but a new beginning.
There appeared to be a balance that had not existed on the planet for as long as man has been. The air was calm, clean, and fresh; it felt amazing to breathe enlivened people they inhaled it.
As you stepped outside, the dread faded and was replaced by optimism. With all the death and destruction around you, so much hope lay in its remnants.
People throughout the world began to reconnect. Cities that were further inland survived vastly unscathed, save for those in the various impact zones. Where it could prosper, society came back to life; people made their way back as fast as they could, but there was little transportation.
The electrical storms had fried exposed vehicles, electrical systems, and most communications, and had ignited fuel reserves.
While some had stored and protected vehicles for use after the Cloud, most were reduced to walking. People flooded the roadways in droves, carrying what they could hold, everyone trying to get somewhere.
Hitchhiking with one of the more organized groups was the only viable option. Most were heading back to the city they had abandoned, while others sought a new life.
Choppers flew around to survey the damage, videoing for the world to see the wreckage. The further inland they traveled, the more recognizable things got.
Few significant buildings remained standing, stripped to their bones and heavily mangled, often riddled with stray objects like buses, boats, cars, trees, and even other buildings.
In one such instance, an aircraft carrier had become lodged between two buildings, suspended a hundred and sixteen feet in the air after the waters had receded.
"You see over there, Donna? The boat is implanted into the side of the building."
"Oh wow, Donna," the reporter said in awe, "that has to be at least the fortieth or fiftieth floor there. It looks like it's a tugboat; you can see a little bit of the smoke-stack there. But the boat is jammed into the side of the building with such force, that it lodged in there about half of the way."
"Zoom in there. Get a good shot of it there. See, you can see the tires they tied to the... Good God, is that a man there? Zoom out! Zoom out! I'm sorry folks. There appeared to be a badly mangled man still in there. He wasn't moving."
The chopper spotted the impact area, and zoomed in. "Oh my God, Donna, look at that crater! Have you ever seen anything like that before? What are those things? They're huge!"
"That one in the center has to be three hundred feet tall." The reporter was stunned. "The best way to describe it is..." the reporter took a breath. "If you took a massive redwood tree and stripped it of all of its limbs, that would be the size and shape of the center one."
He looked out at the objects and reached out with one hand while holding the microphone with the other. "You can see that it is very smooth. You can't see any damage to any of them."
"Plus, you can see that it is a shiny, satin silver finish. Now, when you look down around the crater, you can see those smaller ones just like the middle one littering the surface in what can only be described as a particular pattern."
As they approached the crater, the helicopter began to shimmy, the gauges started buzzing and jittering, and alarms began sounding. The pilot yelled out, "Strap in!"
"Something's causing the chopper to go haywire!" The pilot started maneuvering the chopper away from the impact area as smoke began seeping out of the dash.
The unmistakable smell of burning conductors and insulators that earmark fried electronics filled the air. The engines began to wheeze and lose their strength; the chopper was dropping in altitude.
The need to retain professionalism having fled when the chopper began its uncontrolled spin, the reporter yelled, "HOOOLLLYYY SHHHIIIT!!"
"HOLD ON TO SOMETHING!" came the call from the cockpit.
The cameraman continued to roll, first filming the pilots and chaos. Then he shot the reporter as he got tossed around, with a look of panic on his face and the world was spinning ever faster in the background.
Seconds before they hit the ground, the cameraman caught on national television; something astonishing, a true phenomenon of the human brain.
The look on the reporter's face changed from terror, angst, and fear... to serenity and peace. His eyes went blank, a smile broke, and he reached out. "Arie." The screen went static.
~
"Give me some good news, Juan," said the Central United Americas Representative, or "CUAR." "Do we know what these things are yet? What is taking so long?"
The Chief Science Officer looked confounded, looking for the words to explain. "Well, Ma'am, it's proving harder than we thought."
"What's the problem? Don't we have access to them?" the CUAR replied.
"Well, yes, but our on-site tests have been unsuccessful thus far. At first, anything we tried to bring near them would overheat and fry."
The officer continued, "but as it turns out, if you remove the battery, everything works just fine. It's amazing, Ma'am; it's ambient energy, a vast field of it surrounding them. These things are throughout the Americas, ten in Central America, four in South, and six in the North that we've found. With no satellites in orbit, it is difficult to be sure. They seem to form a network, and their power comes straight from the ground."
"So, what are they