Chloe At Worlds' End
Chapter 2

When Chloe awoke the next morning, she slid out of bed and went directly downstairs. The smell of her favorite breakfast being prepared, French toast, gave her an immediacy to attend. Dad and Onri were already sitting at the table with their knives and forks jokingly at the ready in both hands upon the table top as they waited for mom to happily serve them. Chloe sat down and also grabbed and positioned her utensils.

“So, you both thought that you would get my share as I slept through our favorite breakfast huh?” Her dad replied

“Well, a guy can dream can’t he?” Chloe’s mom giggled as she turned around from the griddle to look at them. When she saw Chloe’s bed head, she just looked at her and rolled her eyes. Chloe said

“What, I’m proud of my hair… it’s famous you know!” They all answered

“Yes… we know…”

All of the school children throughout modern history read of ancestor Chloe’s wild and messy red hair, and also of her spunky bravery! Chloe always liked to imagine that she could also be as brave… she certainly had that same spunk! When they were all sitting and enjoying their French toast, Dad asked

“Well, what should we do today?” Onri offered

“You and mom never come with me to feed my pets at the dock, would you come today… please…?” Mom answered

“That sounds nice to be out in the fresh air, I’m game.” Dad countered

“Yes, that sounds good to me as well, but lets’ wait until it warms up a little more outside before we go though.” Onri cheered “Yay!”

After finishing their breakfast, they spent some more time together playing interactive games on their Holograph Viewer in the family room. When they were finally ready to go on their planned outing, Chloe went to her room to dress in her favorite colorful outfit. When she was ready she came downstairs to look for Onri and found him in the back yard playing one of his favorite sports… Leviloop. It involved flying through hoops installed high up all around their property, while chasing a small orb that led the way through them. The orb could be programmed to appear as anything one wanted. To annoy Chloe, Onri always had it set to perfectly resemble an animated likeness of her head, complete with her wild hair and talking face. She was sure he did this to goad her into playing, as she couldn’t stand seeing her head flying around like that and would always immediately join in to try and catch it and switch it off…which she couldn’t do so remotely because he always hid the control from her someplace.

When she stepped off the porch, the annoying little orb buzzed right past her nose and blew a raspberry at her as it then shot over the house with Onri in pursuit. Chloe wasted no time in thumbing her suit and shooting after them. The first hoop was mounted at the top of a tall tree on the front corner of their property. First the orb, then Onri, and finally Chloe flew through it. One never knew which hoop was next as it tried to shake its pursuers by suddenly changing course at the last moment. If a player couldn’t change course fast enough and passed through a hoop when the orb hadn’t, then they were deducted points. It was now presently headed to the opposite corner of their lot towards the hoop mounted on the roof of their storage shed out back when it abruptly changed course, causing Chloe to crash into her brother when he slowed to change his direction with it. They both flipped and spun out of control through the air as they laughed and hollered at each other in blame.

Their mom and dad then came outside for their outing, and noticing that a game was in play, they sat to watch and cheer. The orb stopped and taunted their return to the game, saying “Losers can’t catch me… losers can’t catch me!” and blew them another raspberry, which infuriated Chloe… she hated seeing that stupid likeness of her! Their parents whooped and laughed. It then headed to the other corner of the front yard where they had a very high mounted hoop on a pole, as high as was legally permitted with a required flashing red beacon atop it. It shot through the hoop with them in close pursuit as it then made an impossible direction change back towards the tree hoop. Chloe wanted to end this game and get on with their day, plus she didn’t want to get all tired and sweaty before their outing… she thumbed her suit to access the Quantum Duplicator and immediately vanished and reappeared at the opposite side of the tree hoop with her hands cupped. The little surprised head squinted its’ eyes before it impacted and smacked directly into her waiting hands. Onri screamed

“You cheat!”

“No I didn’t, that’s a legal move and you know it… I win!”

Chloe pushed the ‘end program’ button on the orb and it flew off to seat itself onto its’ base control… wherever that was. Mom and dad then joined them above the house. Mom looked upwards.

“It’s a busy day out there, just look at all of the traffic…” There were skydestrians everywhere and going in all directions… as their flight paths were unregulated, but not so for any type of a vehicle, as they were in prescribed ‘lanes’ which were always at a designated further height above them. Onri asked

“What day is it today, Sunday?” Dad thought for a moment

“Gosh, I can’t remember.”

Recalling what day of the week it was in Sanctum was sometimes vexing for many of its’ citizens, as most chose to not hold any sort of employment. Most things that needed doing were taken care of in automation. But if one wanted to work, then they could so in any profession that they chose to. Compensation did not exist, nor did any form of money for that matter. Ever since the discovery of free and boundless energy, which was derived sub-atomically, there was no need for an economy that compensated for the creation of it.

Onri said “Ok, let’s go… come see my pet sea lion and her puppies!” They all held hands and slowly meandered into the sky. The fusion orb was at 1:30 pm, and the faux sky had a few slow moving clouds programed upon it. The temperature was a perfect 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Along the way towards the glittering ocean… which was real… they waved and said hello to some of their friends which they chanced upon in passing. Chloe as usual tried to shoo away her pesky crow friend, which had begun following them.

“Shoo… go away you pest…” Her mom then said

“Maybe one day we’ll finally find out what that bird wants from you…ha ha!” When they made it to the bay, they held their position above Onri’s favorite dock while he scoped for his pets. He pointed

“There they are… I’ll go to Charlie’s and get some bait!”

Just then, something happened that had never happened before in Sanctum. The entire faux sky rapidly flickered off and on a few times. In the moments that it was off, their actual ‘sky’ of a rocky cave ceiling was visible. No one had ever seen that before, and although everyone knew of it, it was very frightening and psychologically distressing to be confronted with the fact that their only known world was in essence… a fake. There was a roar of screams throughout all of Sanctum which was both very loud and seriously horrifying.

Chloe and her family were likewise as shocked as they held their positions with jittering nerves. They watched as the populous… vehicular traffic as well as skydestrians, all slowed and stopped. The feeling of anxious panic was palpable. Then it happened again, and amidst all of the screams, the most unthinkable happened as everyone and everything in the air fell out of the sky. Chloe screamed as she and her family fell while still tightly holding hands. The distance to the ground was far, but it came up to meet them shockingly fast. It seemingly slowed slightly, but only as an adrenaline rush inside her brain as Chloe watched the strange and eerie sight of an impossible amount of people and vehicles simultaneously falling along with them to an almost certain death.

The sounds of impacts from the multitudes were chillingly sickening in the tiny, partial moment of time in which Chloe was afforded to hear them before she herself landed in the water of the bay… just missing the dock. She plainly saw that Onri, as he held onto her left hand also was landing with her into the relative safety of the bay, but to her right as she held her dads hand, she couldn’t escape the horrid sight of seeing her mom and dad hitting the dock as they were wrenched from her hand. The force of the impact with the water was shockingly much greater than Chloe imagined it would be, and as her momentum downwards under water finally ceased, her feelings of panic escalated as she realized she was choking from water up her nose… and she was already out of breath! With her lungs on fire, she fought her way to the surface while trying to remain calm, all the while seeing stars from a feeling of concussion to her head.

When she finally surfaced she choked, coughed, and vomited up water. And as she swam in place for a few moments while recovering, she was alarmed that she did not yet see Onri. She looked right, left, then turned around and there he was… floating on his back just near her… but clearly unconscious! She screamed

“Onri… Onri!” as she quickly made her way to him. She grabbed his shirt collar and frantically tugged him towards the dock. While doing this, the tunnel vision of her personal trauma opened up and she became aware that there were also many other afflicted people in the water all around her and on the dock as well.

As she made it to the dock, a young man reached out his hands to help, it was Charlie, and he quickly hoisted Onri out of the water, then Chloe as well. She knelt on all fours above Onri’s face to see if he was breathing… and he was not! She said

“Charlie, he isn’t breathing!” and he replied

“Let me help!” as he proceeded to push rhythmically with both of his hands on Onri’s chest. Chloe held her hands over her mouth and watched in shock… praying that he would wake up. And then suddenly after just a few pumps to his chest, he did! Chloe physically shuddered in relief as she watched Onri choke and convulsively cough up water as Charlie turned him on his side. She looked at Charlie and said

"Charlie… he’s ok, oh thank you… he’s ok!” She looked up past his face to the sky… it was still unstable and flickering off and on… she said

“Charlie… what is happening to the sky… and to the grid!?” He looked up at it as well and just put his hands to his temples in fright, exclaiming

“I don’t know… I just don’t know!” Chloe then looked to where she last saw her parents as they were wrenched from her hand… and there they were… lying atop one another on the dock… broken and motionless. She screamed

“Dad… mom!” She jumped to her feet, ran over to them and knelt by their side.

“Mom… dad, can you hear me?” she said as she put both her hands on either of their heads. “Mommy… daddy… NOOO!” ‘They are both dead.’ ‘They are both dead.’ ‘They are both dead!’ That thought just kept echoing in her head… it was just too surreal… it wasn’t possible… IT WASN’T POSSIBLE!

She collapsed on top of them… hugging them both tightly while sobbing loudly and uncontrolledly, while not noticing that her awareness of all of her surroundings had faded to a black out. She tightly closed her eyes. Her heart was beating so hard and frantically in her chest as she suddenly realized that she couldn’t breathe… her airway was constricted from the tightening muscle spasms of her throat as she silently sobbed… no sound was coming out. Onri was again conscious and also lying prostrated along with her… hugging and sobbing, as he realized that she was choking. He stood up and pried her off of them. He looked at her face and it was beet red with her eyes bulging out… he shook her by the shoulders

“Chloe… breathe… breathe! He panicked and slapped her across the face. She then focused on his eyes… and started gasping loudly for air. They knelt there and hugged tightly for a time as they both sobbed in shock and denied this reality.

Time had stopped… Chloe heard nothing, felt nothing, suddenly cared for nothing. She wished that she had died as well. As she still knelt there with Onri, she opened her eyes. People were running every which way, people were dead on the ground, and people were sobbing just as she was. She began to start hearing things again as her unwanted reality faded back, and looked around her immediate area and beyond. The landscape was littered with corpses and crushed vehicles.

She looked up at the sky… the fusion orb was still at 1:30 where it had been before, but she was sure it had to have been later than that by now. She also saw that the sky was still flickering, and between the oscillations of a dark cave ceiling and a cheerful blue spring sky, something seemed to be playing a trick on her eyes as she watched. Along with the off and on of the programmed clouds and sky, there was also the forming of some light lavender colored clouds as well. But they weren’t a program… as they stayed visible when the sky was not… they were real…

They began to thicken and turn darker. Onri must have been watching as well, for he pulled himself from her. They both wordlessly watched this strange cloud as it formed from nowhere. Chloe noticed that it became quiet all around her, and she saw that everyone else in the vicinity was also watching it… transfixed. Then, impossible as it seemed, the whole visual of the programmed sky was suddenly replaced with the flickering visage of a sharp toothed, snarling, lashing head of a wolf… which could loudly be heard simultaneously growling like an animal and laughing like a human man! Chloe, Onri, and the populace screamed in terror, firstly from this unfathomable… unexpected visual horror, and secondly… from the realization that this ‘accident’ was not a technical malfunction, but a deadly sinister attack on all of Sanctum! This second realization caused her sheer panic… and to the whole population as well, as the screams of the populous gained in volume and emotional intensity.

Then the horrid, impossible image suddenly vanished and was replaced by a video transmission of the eerie, dark purple cloud that had materialized above them. Could all of Sanctum be sharing this same vision of their cloud? Chloe looked around herself to search the faces for any sign of an explanation, but all seemed as completely perplexed and horrified as she, as they also gazed upwards, cowering.

Then suddenly, as if her brain hadn’t been overwhelmed enough, she was forced to witness even more perplexing horrors! Within the now large purple cloud, something seemed to be beginning to materialize… why, it was an eye! A huge eye with a lavender colored iris… it was the eye of that wolf-man thing! And as it was now completely visible, it looked to and fro… scrutinizing everything it saw with obvious hatred! Chloe looked around as she heard the many frightened wails of fear… and saw that everyone was still motionless and staring up at it. She looked back up and also saw that the spectacle of it was also being transmitted onto the sky as well.

Then, without warning… their world began to end. A continuous and roving stream of violet colored energy spewed forth from it and struck wide swaths of the ground. It first hit old man Taylors’ property, which immediately exploded and burst into flames. Seeing this in duplicate as it was being simultaneously transmitted onto the sky, exponentially amplified the terror! Chloe and Onri added their screams to the melee as people began running in all directions to dodge its movements… colliding and tripping over themselves in a mass of confusion and panic. The plasma stream moved to and fro, vaporizing as it went. People were on fire and running… or just being consumed where they lay.

Chloe grabbed Onri and said

“Quickly, we need to jump into the water… it’s our only chance!” They ran towards the end of the dock, and as they jumped over the edge, they both looked over their shoulders to see the beam of energy just missing them, but obliterating the dock. Chloe felt her reemergence into that cold water again was like a slap in the face, and when she and Onri surfaced, they saw the remains of the dock, and their parents bodies as well, sink out of sight. Chloe sobbed

“Mommy… daddy… we will never see them again…”

Suddenly, the giant eye vanished… and its dark purple clouds lightened, then dissipated. But the present horrors weren’t finished… the replaced image where the sky had been, suddenly changed to a broadcast of another location… it was a view of New Venice in the Italian District. Chloe and Onri both dog paddled in place there in the water… unable to take their eyes from the ‘sky’. A packed crowd of people, all with horrified looks on their faces could be seen there in St. Mark’s square, also staring up at their replaced sky. Then it was their turn as the cloud and eye again materialized. The crowd obviously knew what was in store for them from having just watched what had happened in Chloe’s district, as they screamed and desperately tried to scatter. The eye again spewed forth its destruction.

Chloe looked at Onri

“Onri, I feel so sick… lets’ get out of the water, it looks safe here right now…

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