Bleaker

arrived on the new Earth decades before them.
“You mean, do I think it will shake and break?” Westerman asked.
“For lack of better words,” Nate said, “yes.”
“Probably not. It’s only unstable the closer you get to the ocean. Then again, it’s earthquake season.”
“Earthquake season?” Nate questioned. “I’ve heard of tornado season, hurricane season, never earthquake season.”
“Sure, don’t know why. But there is. Earthquake, tidal wave, volcano season…”
Curt laughed. “What about winter, spring, summer, and fall?”
“Them too, but probably not like you remember. Not at least like my dad said.”
Finch thought at that moment how there was so much to learn from the young man. Even basic stuff like weather patterns were more than likely second nature to him.
There were a few more moments of debate on where to land the craft and Finch settled on an area that wasn’t without bumps, but it would work. A long, wide strip of dead land that he knew was once the Potomac River.
Nate Gale, Geologist
The moment Nate stepped off the Omni and his foot rested upon the hard soil, he flashed back to his school days and how he learned every professor and scientist was wrong about Washington, D.C.
D.C. was built on a swamp, they said.
Nate believed that.
They all said one day it would turn back into a swamp. That it would eventually, possibly, sink.
He even had a professor make political humor out of the fact that the government was built over a swamp.
Nate didn’t get into political humor.
Actually, Nate didn’t get into politics, it just wasn’t his thing.
Washington, D.C., long since abandoned, long since slammed by disaster after disaster was far from a swamp.
He stomped his foot a couple times on the soil.
“Are we good?” Finch asked. “It’s not going to sink is it?”
Nate shook his head. “No, we’re fine.”
He pulled out his sunglasses. Not that it was particularly sunny, but they cut the glare on his computer tablet.
He used an old map of Washington and created an overlay of the area the ship photographed before landing.
He lined it up to get an idea of where he was.
Although it wasn’t hard to distinguish the capital and any of the other monuments, he wanted to be able to zoom in if they came across something else, to know exactly where they were. Not every place was a famous landmark.
After peering down at his tablet, he made a note. The area wasn’t as overgrown as it should have been.
That told Nate more than Westerman had known—that the area had been hit a lot. Perhaps by storms.
They weren’t near the ocean, but you wouldn’t know that by the huge ship that was infused with the dirt on the outskirts of the city.
The land had grown around it, the ship was part of the earth now.
“Where to?” Nate heard Curt ask.
“Huh?” Nate peered up. “Are you asking me?”
“I’m asking anyone,” Curt said. “Westie.” He nudged Westerman. “Any thoughts on which way to go?”
“Nope. Never been here,” Westerman said. “This is part of the Verboten zone. No one comes here. So I’m game.”
“How about this,” Finch suggested. “We know where we left the ship. Let’s just not worry about a plan. We don’t have a time frame. We just walk. See what we find out.”
“Like tourists,” Curt joked.
“Yeah,” Finch grumbled. “Like tourists.”
Sandra Anderson, Physician/Surgeon
She had been on the battlefield repairing injuries, but never had something caused Sandra to cry as she did when she saw Washington, D.C.
It broke her heart. It was a reiteration that everything she knew and loved had come to an end.
Sandra was selected for the mission based on her medical experience, her years as a soldier and the fact that she had no one in her life, as far as family went.
Yet, when they learned they had gone ahead to the future through the wormhole, she voted to try it again. To go back through the Androski. Take a shot to see if they could go back home to their time. Wormholes, though, weren’t reliable.
For all she knew she could end up further in the future or further in the past
Her fellow crew member Curt brought up the point. Even if the Androski dropped them right back in the time frame in which they left, was it fair to go back without all the knowledge they could?
Was it fair to go back and say, ‘This is what happens’ instead of ‘Here are the facts, take a look, what can we do’?
When she cast her vote, she had that plan in the back of her mind. She and Curt had discussed it.
In case going back through the Androski was something they eventually ended up doing, Sandra would gather all the information she could before they left. She asked Rey if she could take over the reins of video operator, at least while they were in D.C. Sandra would get footage to serve as proof or historical documentation.
They, like Finch said, were tourists. Albeit in the post-apocalypse, and just like any good tourist, Sandra was hoping to get lots and lots of images.
Curt Henning, Co-pilot
Was it a sign? The tip of Curt’s boot hit what looked like a frosted sea glass version of a whiskey bottle. He lifted it, holding it up to the sun, watching it sparkle due to the colors from the light. It had been crystallized from the ocean salt, but it was a whiskey bottle nonetheless. Almost as if fate was saying to him, ‘Yep, the world ended, but yours pretty much ended via the bottle long before Planet X caused its damage.’
Curt wanted to be on the mission, he really did. He wasn’t Finch’s first choice, and rightfully so. He had lost Finch’s trust long before the mission was assigned.
Curt was an alcoholic. In his mind, he would always be one. Even though he learned to control his drinking, his life of not drinking never lasted long. Mainly because he was merely sober and not living in sobriety.
For the longest time, drinking controlled him. There were fewer days when he wasn’t