EARTH
Endith stood in the treeline of the immense National Forest, her keen eyes watching as scores of her fellow High Elves raced for the trees. Far behind them she could see the huge flying hover gunships, their massive chain cannons spewing out death beneath them and chopping dozens of her comrades to pieces. Endith blinked back tears as she and others ushered the wounded and walking wounded deeper into the forest. Many of the male elves carried wounded comrades by themselves, while the female elves assisted in groups of two or three. No one seemed to be without some sort of injury, and Endith's dread increased as she had yet to see any sign of the Queen or her personal guard.
Endith moved to the very edge of the forest and grabbed the first uninjured warrior that was heading towards her. The young female elf came up short at Endith's hand on her arm.
"Where is the Queen? I haven't seen the Queen!" Endith exclaimed.
"She led a small force south of our last position to draw Marcus's beasts away from us!" The young warrior answered." That was several hours ago. No one has seen her since!"
Ice cold fear gripped Endith's heart and her eyes went wide. "There is nothing to the south except wasteland!"
"She ordered us to run Endith!" The young woman spoke excitedly. "She said she would lead them toward the sacred place and make a stand in the ruins there."
Endith's eyes grew even wider." Quickly, you must gather a dozen uninjured warriors with as much equipment and weapons as they can move like the wind with. We can loop to the west through the forests and find the Queen."
The warrior looked at her as if she had gone insane. "Endith she has had hours to move ahead of us. We will never catch her before she reaches the ruins."
Endith gripped the womans arms tightly." The Holy One has been moved to safety! She is our Queen and we must try! Now go!"
The young warrior nodded and made her way into the forest at a run. Endith looked beyond the forest and the hills, looking south." I will find you my Queen." She said softly. "I will find you."
EDEN
COMMAND CENTER
William looked at the faces of the men and women in the room. Some of them were still dirty from fighting the fires or moving the wounded to other clinics within EDENs compound, but they had come quickly and taken seats around the table.
"Sorry to bust up your satisfaction at solving our recent crisis, but I have been informed that we have a much larger problem." William told them.
"What could be larger than the station almost being lost Admiral?" Martin asked from his chair. His hands still wore a layer of bandages, but his genome healing ability was working quickly and the burns would be gone within another hour or so.
"This is Doctor Morrow from the Quantum Physics Lab."William spoke, motioning to the older man with thin rimmed oval glasses propped up on his forehead. "He has some information that all of us need to be made aware of. Doctor Morrow."
The man stood up to his full height of five and a half feet, looking pale and thin. He wore a long lab coat and carried several data pads as he moved around to the front of the table and went to the portable vid screen that had been brought in.
"Yes well I will try to keep this as simple as I can." He spoke activating the screen. It came alive with a graphic simulation of the comet that was finally clearing its way out of the space between the moon and earth." When the comet was first detected several months ago, it was determined that it would pass harmlessly between the earth and the moon. For all intents and purposes it has. However, no one predicted the massive gravitational fluxes originating from the core of the comet. In layman's terms, the moment the comet enter the gravity well of the moon, we stopped rotating around the earth."
"And thats bad?" Dan asked from his chair next to Martin.
Doctor Morrow nudged his glasses further up on his forehead and looked at Danny." Thats very bad". He replied." While we stopped rotating around the earth, the same gravity fluxes that stopped us caused the earth to spin faster. This action disturbed the space/time continuum to such an extreme that major changes have taken place."
"Major changes", Anja asked as she came forward in her chair. While she was a genetic scientist by her schooling, she had kept up on many other fields within the scientific world. "What do you mean by major changes?"
Morrow lifted one of the data pads." I've had our high resolution cameras taking pictures of earth ever since the comet began to clear our horizon."
"And?", Anja continued.
"I'll let you see for yourself". He explained as he plugged the datapad into the screen and touched the control panel.
A view of the North American continent came onto the screen, but there was something very wrong with the way it appeared. There was a long wide stretch of water that began in the lower portion of California and extended up into Oregon that should not have been there. It effectively had created an island of sorts. Where Mexico should have been was now nothing but ocean, as if the Caribbean and Pacific oceans had come together. There were great swatches of what appeared to be burned out land in the central United States, and an entirely new mountain range that ran directly through Kansas and Missouri.
"What the hell!" Martin exclaimed looking at the screen.
"Is this some kind of joke?"Julie blurted from her chair.are focused along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Morrow took a deep breath. "]))))))As you can see from these high resolution pictures, nearly every major city along the eastern coast is gone. Nothing remains except hulks of steel and concrete. It would appear most of them were burned to cinders."
"Burned?" Danny asked.
Marrow nodded. "!If the information we have gathered to this point is accurate, and there is no reason to doubt it isn't, the comets gravity well pushed enough of its tail into the upper atmosphere of the planet, and it started what we call an Extinction Level Event. It set the atmosphere on fire."
"Holy Jesus," Frank Wilson muttered as he sat back in his chair.
Marrow nodded." The burn patterns on the surface of the planet indicate that the fires swept across every major continent. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. The large fissures you see along the western seaboard were where the San Andreas Fault line gave in to the tremendous heat being generated above and caused a cataclysmic earthquake. I estimate a quake at least 12.4 in order to cause the separation of the land masses as you now see. As the fire spread, it ignited refineries across the globe, which would account for the massive burn swatches along the lower portions near the gulf coast. There are signs of at least three major impact craters, which indicate that parts of the comet detached and slammed into the earth. One crater is located in the Atlantic basin, one in central Asia, and one in northern Canada. I would imagine the devastation caused by such impacts was also catastrophic."
"Wait a minute!"Martin spoke up again. "Why isn't the atmosphere still burning? This should be happening right now! Looking at these pictures you are showing us, at first glance the planet doesn't appear any differently."
Marrow nodded. "That is the much worse part". He said slowly." I've checked and rechecked all my calculations, and then my staff did the same thing. The numbers always come out the same."
"What numbers?" Martin asked.
"As I stated in the beginning of this briefing the comets gravity wells disrupted the space/time continuum as we know it". Marrow spoke." The moon stopped rotating while the earth sped up. In other words, time stopped for us, while it continued on earth."
"Excuse me?" Frank asked.
"The reason we do not see the planet on fire and why we don't see these natural events occurring is quite simple really". Marrow told them. "They happened in the past."
"Wait a minute, in the past?" Anja asked.
Marrow nodded slowly". There is really no way to say this, but for the sixteen hours and thirty-three minutes while the comet was passing between the moon and earth time continued to go forward on earth while it stood still here. By my calculations, for every hour that passed for us here on EDEN, twenty-nine point eight years passed on earth." Marrow saw the stunned and shocked expressions on everyones faces.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have come four hundred and seventy-eight years into the future."