Crash! Boom! Bang!(Kevin Hughes) Everybody heard it. Every where. Even me…and I did not have my hearing aides in.

CRASH! BOOM! BANG !

Okay, maybe I felt it rather than heard it, but I saw all the windows burst into shards, the front door burst open and my car rolling down the street. It was sound with a punch. Like everyone else, I was knocked off my feet. As soon as I could, I scrambled to my feet and raced out the now broken front door. And stopped.

The Sky was falling. Okay, it wasn’t the sky. It was pieces of Space Junk. Lots of them. Later I found out, it was all of them. Every single thing we ever put up in Space. Every satellite, telescope, space probe, camera, heck, even the ISS was falling from the sky. I don’t know why they didn’t just burn up like I was taught would happen in my Physics Classes at University.

They just kept falling from the sky, intact. Well…until they hit the ground, then they kind of broke apart. They were hurtling from the sky at many miles an hour, but whatever their speed was, they didn’t burn up at all. They just got a bit warm. But still they hit the ground pretty doggone hard. You could hear them even without hearing aides:

“Crash. Boom. Bang. Over and over again. Sometimes they banged right through a roof, a building, or a car. Some were as big as a house or car. And then…

It was over.

Silence.

I went to call 911. I couldn’t. Nobody could. Well, Derek, he had a Landline, but he didn’t know the Fire Departments Phone number, and without his Cell Phone he couldn’t look it up. Nobody had gotten a phone book in more than ten years. So he called Beverly. She had a Landline too. She told him her TV didn’t work, and she couldn’t Zoom on her iPad. She told him:

“And my yard is filled with glittering Space Junk.”


Let me tell you, that first year after the Crash, Boom, Bang, was a mess. Thank God that the electric grid didn’t seem to be affected. Just communications, the internet, GPS, Television, Streaming Services, Weather Updates, and anything that flew using any of those things was grounded. You could track some things in the air using ground Radar stations, but believe me, shipping anything by water and keeping track of it, well, that was a thing of the past. No more Amazon, UPS, or FEDX. Ouch.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and NASA, all tried to launch rockets up into space to see what the heck was going on. No luck. Not a single rocket could lift off. They just sat on the launch pad in a ball of fire and smoke, until their fuel ran out. They didn’t explode. They just couldn’t lift off. Same thing happened when Air Forces all over the world tried to get their super Spy Planes or Fighters to the fringe of space. Nothing that could fly…flew.

We were grounded. Cars still worked. Boats still worked. But planes, missiles, helicopters, heck, even drones for crying out loud, none of them could fly. Nothing could leave the Earth Surface.

Landlines were being repaired and brought back online all over the world. Luckily, my house still had the wall jack for a landline, but they didn’t have enough phones, jacks, or connecting wires to set me up. I am scheduled to get one in about three months. If I have to make a call, I just go to Derek’s house. He’s always home now. He was a Captain on a Major Airline…and well, there aren’t any airlines anymore.

Almost everything is Local now. News is spread by word of mouth, mostly over the phone. Although I heard Mr. Benson over at the Local Paper is working on a way to putting out a Newspaper again. Oh, I forgot to mention, for some strange reason, Gasoline Cars don’t work anymore. Nothing that runs on fossil fuels does. The Coal Power Plants went down first, and then the Oil ones. The Nuclear Plants switched to Thorium technology and that worked until we learned how to use the new “Cold Fusion” Plants.

Until then though Electricity was rationed. Nobody turned lights on during the day…and you couldn’t turn them on after Eight PM. Business did turn lights on for their Offices and Stuff (Nobody worked remotely anymore). Lots of people just walked to work or rode a bike. Towns became communities again almost over night. And Farms went back to individuals owning them…Corporate Farms didn’t have the resources any more to mass produce any crops. No Combines, Fertilizer, or massive irrigation machines were available to them.

Grow, live, and... die Local, that became the way most folks existed since the sky fell.

Crash. Boom. Bang.

It was a gift.

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