I was very young yet in the days of the great unnerving.  Most of what I remember are only flashes of hiding under my desk and being huddled into our schools' underground service rooms in a panic.  Our teachers instructed us to wrap our arms around our necks so they would not be broken by falling debris.  The girl that sat next to my desk was sobbing incoherently, and I had no clue why.  How could I?  I was only vaguely aware of what an Asteroid was from my morning cartoons.  Farbanti wasn't in outer space, after all.  To my mind, we were on the ground, and asteroids floated.  I was very young yet.

----------------------------------------------

A short few years later I was a boy still, but with strong legs and a troublesomely strong will.  I reckon myself to have had about thirteen summers securely under my belt, and still trying to hold on to the last traces of my fourteenth while September marked a return to school.  Mrs. Halloway, a kindly and elderly shopkeep, had a few dollars to spare at the end of the day for what was really my first job.  She offered her space up for evening dancing lessons and I was to move all her chairs up the stairs into storage each evening.

The occupation hadn't dampened her spirits as I had seen it do to my father.  He worked for the government.  Soldiers had always been in the city, but the middle months of that year held more barbed wire and sandbags than I ever thought could exist in the world.  My walk home from the bus stop was near the sunken portion of the city in the crater, with remnants of skyscrapers acting as watermarks.  I always thought them ugly; they were crude reminders.  Great tanks and the mustached men that drove them hid within alleys, hoping the shaded awnings and drying laundry would hide them.  It became a treasure hunt to try and spot them all.  My friends and I would often tear across the neighborhood with a piece of chalk, daring to approach and number the tanks right on the rear side where the exhaust came out.  Of course, I was chastised heavily for this.  My father spoke gravely in those times, in ways he hadn't just a few short months before.  It seemed as if something was always on his mind.  As if he felt someone dreadedly encroaching upon him.

One dusk in my second week of school I descended home towards our house.  I approached and saw father's car still not in the drive.  He worked late often and I noted it little.  Rather, I took it as an opportunity to procrastinate my homework a bit further, and I took to my bike to traverse the streets.  Quickly I rode further towards the water.  At night you could often see the lights from great ships that lie between the sunken buildings in the crater.  On weekends you could see ladders from the vessels leaned against the old buildings.  Inside were campfires and faint music.  I wished to join them with much jealousy, to see those old wretched concrete structures given purpose and life again.

I spent more than an hour in the grass of the lookout, scoungring for quarters to put into the viewfinder  and picking blades of grass to hold between my thumbs as a reed.  I lied on my stomach with my hands propping up my head as my legs kicked lazily in the waning sunset.  The campfires grew brighters with each passing minute in comparison to the horizon.  I felt peaceful.

I knew only that something was wrong when the campfires suddenly went cold.  Men scurried down the ladder with hurried, worriesome movements.  It was less than a minute later that the air raid siren shrieked and droned.  It was drowned out in an instant as a pair of jets flew overhead at less than a thousand feet, forcing me to cover my ears as my shirt rippled in the wind caused by their acceleration as they passed me overhead.  The Eurusian paint on their fins streaked towards the waterline and out into the sea.

A man came screaching to a halt near the lookout edge in his car, radio playing loudly.  He stood, hand gripping the tops of his open driver door as he peered with great dread towards the water.  I asked him what was going on, but was ignored.  It took me yelling twice more for him to peal his attention away long enough to acknowledge me.  The grey-bearded senior citizen bore a leather jacket with some patch on the sleeve, and falling out of his breast pocket were his cigarettes.  He lit one nervously, staring back at the water.

"Kid, you don't know what you're in for here.  This is history you're now entwined in, do you understand it?"

I looked at him questioningly.  After a couple of nervous puffs this warranted more from him as he looked at me twitchingly when he tore himself from concentrating on the sealine.

"Jesus, kid, haven't you been listening to the radio? I've seen him once before, that Mobius One.  He's going to free us all, kid."

"Free us from what?" I replied.

"What, are you kidding me?  What are your parents doing to you?" he twitched again, and took a very long drag. "Aren't you tired of climbing over barricades to get to the swingset?  This isn't a government, it's a cage!  Things were never like this in Osea, let me tell you."  He turned the radio up a bit louder after leaning into the car.  "Just... just come around here, I'll show you."

Closer up I could see that he was a wirey and fidgety man, behaving like a small and apprehesenive lapdog often did.  Although he didn't flinch when distant explosions and clouds of black smoke engulfed the horizon.  In quick succession there were two explosions far off, and then suddenly, another much closer.  Close enough that my eye barely caught the arching turn of the missile streak overhead before colliding with the canopy of a jet, causing it to split directly in two.  The portion where the pilot would have sat was thouroughly on fire and spinning rapidly counterclockwise toward the waves.  Just above the fireball and only a blink after impact I saw it.

"That's him, kid!  That's him!  I know that insignia!  isn't it something, he just swooped right on over! Yeeaaooww!" The man clapped me on my shoulder as he jumped and celebrated.  We spun quickly around to follow his movements.  My eyes widened in astonishment as we watched the same plane spin twice and pull left no more than a few feet off the water, banking hard around the lookout and towards the bridge that led to the next district.  We saw the water surface recede in the power of his jets, and he pulled up only slightly enough to match the bridge.  With no less acceleration than he had when he dispatched the pilot above us, he split the upper support and lower road of the bridge, decimating the tanks that resided there.  Perfectly timed, he broke the sound barrier just afterwards, sending a sonic wave across the ocean surface that barreled towards us.  I felt the force in my chest.

I breathed heavily, my jaw dropped from the sites I had witnessed.  In amazement, and horror, shock and excitement, I watched on.  This pilot betrayed my very understanding of what was possible with every move.  Shouts from the radio became louder, and began to express joy.  Works such as "liberation" and "freedom" became regular vocabulary.  I couldn't help but feel it's influence.  People slowly started exiting their houses.  Some of them in great inspiration and anger!  Crowds ganged up on fleeing Soldiers.  Great fires taller than park trees buildings littered the skyline as the only city I'd ever called home lay ruined for the second time I've known it, but this time there was no great sadness.  My knuckles were white as my balled my fists, I held them at chest level in the commotion.  I did not know why, I was feelingly only the momentum and the heat of the battle.

From the city center approached a formation of helicopters.  To this point the battle had been fought only in jet fighters, but these flew low and fast.  As they made their escape over our lookout I could see clearly the markings and inhabitants.  It had the same markings on the side as my father's briefcase and ID card.  From the rear window, I thought I could make out a face and waving hand.  My calamity calmed, and a well in my stomach grew with worry.  The lead helicopter of the three broke out, darting towards the right, and catching a missle directly on it's top rotor.

The second helicopter rotated suddenly, the missle coliding with it's rear prop.  It was a dud, as it didn't explode, but the chopper spiraled violently into the crashing water, sinking almost instantaneously.

The last helicopter from which I received a wave tilted forward in depseration, trying to gain speed and lower altitude, hoping to hide amongst the water with it's silver paint.  The scalpel-like moves of the execution in the jet pulled him in a high arc, canopy facing us as he dropped speed and seemed to float down towards the remaining helicopter.

There was little chance.  The missle collided directly in the side, blowing anything and anyone in the cargo area out the opposite door.  The helicopter fell like a rock, and created a splash like a volcano.  I felt the gravel in my knees a I dropped.  My stomach felt as if it had been ripped out with an angler's hook.  Overcome with rage, I swatted the man's hand from my shoulder and scrambled over his hood towards the lookout's edge.  I had meant to leap and dive, but I stumbled near the edge, and found myself spinning and tumbling towards the water some eighty feet below.


----------------------------------------

To this day I can still recant the chastisings I took from the nurses who made sure to make me appreciate the luck with which I was struck to have survived.  I was a stubborn kid, I didn't learn to truly come to terms with my fortune until much later.  I am old now, and life has been mostly lived.  I've retired from a career in construction, mostly rebuilding the city.  I took my retirements and bought only few but precious items.  A boat, a ladder, and some firewood.