Quintessence
Chapter 2: First Pass

68 Percent.

There was, predictably, mass panic, counting down the days when the earth would move through the wake of the Dark Star. Religious fundamentalism saw a significant bump in membership, as so many prepared themselves for the end of days. The religious fervor in the west, which had been finding itself progressively more encompassing over the last few decades, rose to a level unseen since the witch burnings.

It was an inevitability, they had said. What else could we expect? The legalization of gay marriage had damaged god’s opinion of mankind to the degree that he had declared November 16, 2017, as the official date of the rapture. Many welcomed this with open arms, as they had desired an end as a vindication of their faith for decades and now, finally, they were to step through the pearly gates.

This caused a rift between the different denominations and believers, as many saw the Star as a test in the path, not the end of the road. The arguments that sprung forth in this era split many families, from all Abrahamic religions to beyond.

The response in the United States of America was not unique. Many countries with high levels of religious faith suffered similar outcomes, with less developed regions often decaying into the violence which used to occur when religious fundamentalism combined with a lack of useful education.

Secular countries were not without difficulties of their own. In the more developed secular nations, such as Sweden and Japan, there was a massive increase in suicides which kept increasing up until the First Pass, after which the collection of statistics became untenable.

Among the upper tiers of government, there was a degree of arrogance, an unwillingness to see the Pass as an actual threat, at least when addressing the public. Grandfather said this was typical of politicians, to appear confident while in actuality they hid behind a veil of willful ignorance, complacency, and even malice. The most detailed warnings told you to simply hide in your house and lock your door, for the sake of avoiding the rioters more than avoiding the effects of the Pass, unknown as they were.

Later it was made public that most of these politicians had spent the Pass locked in private and hidden bunkers. These bunkers were usually remnants left over from the fear of nuclear war, but some were made and hidden because of the direct threat which some anticipated the Pass to represent. Ironically, some of these politicians would die in their bunkers, victims of their own cowardice.

Not all countries were even minimally accepting of the incoming danger. Despite the support of the world’s three superpowers, there was some debate as to the amount of trust which could be placed in the foreign science of foreign devils. Among these distrustful was North Korea. This part of the Korean peninsula was dangerously insulated and run by those with little regard for the lives of their people. When the First Pass occurred the civilians of this nation were living their regular lives, while the leaders had still hidden deep underground. Not so different from the rest.

As November approached the public treated the event much as they would an approaching storm. At first, food stores were overwhelmed and all products of worth were bought up, either by those who wished to stock for their families or by those who wished to sell the goods back to the public at a markup. Once these stores emptied there was still demand from those who had, for some reason or another, not started stocking until just before the Pass approached.

There was desperation in the acts of these people. Some agreed to pay exorbitant prices to those who had chosen to hoard supplies. Others begged, borrowed, or stole from wherever they could and whoever would listen. As the day approached, societies grew increasingly anxious and vicious in their attempts to protect themselves from their vision of what was to come. Looters turned their attention from food and shelter to any items that they predicted might have trade value after the pass. Some, I’m sure, just wanted new television sets.

At 1352 GMT, November 16, the Skyfall began. The reports came from NASA and CNSA, who had been handed operational override control and data streams from most major organizations with satellites in orbit. According to live feeds, there were problems in path stabilization in those in orbit above the moon and the northern hemisphere of the earth. Fifteen minutes later we had lost five satellites, four to earth and one to space. Over the next day, we lost over ninety-five percent of some twenty-three hundred man-made satellites. Most ended up crashing down to earth, falling harmlessly into the ocean, though there were a few exceptions. Chandigarh in northern India had a spy satellite, which no nation took responsibility for, fall into town, killing hundreds and spreading its nuclear cargo over several blocks, poisoning many of the Residents who attempted a later rebuild.

Five hours into the Pass there began a series of electromagnetic pulses, located seemingly randomly on and around the earth, which knocked out most remaining satellite communications. Those few communication satellites which survived were soon lost to the gravity of the Dark Star’s wake. We don’t know what happened to those brave souls who chose to remain on the planet’s various space stations, the hope was that they ended up dying quickly as they fell to earth, safe from a slow death as they drifted, stranded in deepening space, boiled by cosmic radiation.

The loss of satellite communications was considered one of the more predictable outcomes of the First Pass, and as such there were already precautions set in place so that older hardwire cables and radio waves could be used. These older, slower connections ended crippled by the infrastructure knocked out by the electromagnetic pulses, and the delay which arose in locating these problems, and the workers and equipment to fix them.

The internet went down almost immediately and never recovered to anything approaching the degree of cover which it had enjoyed in the decade prior. The Web, as it was once called, was over.

The loss of these communication systems, combined with the human tendency to exaggerate issues of the unknown, was the first core contributor to the mass panic and disasters of the years after the First Pass. The second was the cracking of the moon.

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