Sample #4 of my steampunk novel

The final sample, concluding Part 1 of my WIP novel!
If you've been following along, I am sharing the first part of my WIP steampunk novel. It has been over a year in the making so far, including a medium-sized rewrite, an outline of about 35 pages or so, tons of notes and "aetheric science" creation, etc etc.

Since this is only the first draft, there are characters and organizations that will probably be renamed, for potentially obvious reasons.

Quick recap - I am writing the novel in 2 parts. Part 1 is about 27 pages long (5 chapters), and details the events that lead to the dystopian world. Part 2 takes place nearly 300 years later as humanity adapts to survive the new environment created by the events of Part 1.

If you missed the first releases, I highly recommend checking them out here, otherwise this part will probably make little sense to you. Chapter 1 can be found here, Chapters 2 & 3 can be found here, and Chapter 4 found here.

So, without further delay, please enjoy Chapter 5 of...

CHAPTER V

“...God may forgive you, but the Westberg Baptist Alliance does not.”

With that, a brilliant flash of white... then nothing. The screen snapped back to its default blue, showering the room in its shade of light as the source signal cut off.

Catherine's jaw hung open, the popcorn falling between her fingers to the floor as she tried to process what she had just seen. Did that really just happen?

She jolted forward, stabbing her finger into the right corner of the table's plastiglass surface. The white bowl with yellow floral rim toppled over on the sofa, popcorn spilling across the cushions and tumbling to the floor. The keyboard function of the televiewer lit up the surface before her in a brilliant emerald green. Her fingers danced across the table top and a red-bordered rectangle sprung to life in the bottom left corner of the viewer.

The Global Weather Net, she thought. They always have live satellite coverage.

A few more quick movements with her fingers and a live topographical view of the European Union appeared within the red borders on her screen.

“Maximize!” she ordered, unsure if the urgency in her voice could make the data stream connect faster. The rectangle vanished as the map snapped to the full size of the televiewer screen. “Florida, United States!”

The image before her was barely discernible. A white circular mass that faded to orange, then red and then black in the center. She had to squint to even see that much.

“Reduce by half,” and the image scaled back to reveal the continental United States. The entire state of Florida was covered in a radiant flare, with what appeared to be a pale green and white expanding corona racing outward. The luminous sphere engulfed city after city at a rate that she couldn't even calculate. Nashville, Washington, Houston... all gone. Philadelphia, New York, Dallas, Chicago. As it reached out further, Catherine noticed the trail of chartreuse tendril-like formations following in the wake of the corona, which didn't appear to be losing momentum. The tendrils were carving random, chaotic designs through the landscape. Her eyes squinted slightly to try to make out some of the details.

Pop! The screen turned blue. The spherical energy wave must have interfered with the satellite's transmission.

Catherine inhaled deeply and sputtered, coughing as her lungs were unprepared for the sudden expansion. She realized that she had been holding her breath the entire time she had watched the path of destruction unfold.

“It wasn't slowing down,” she said to herself as her mind raced, catching her breath. “Kennedy to Nashville in about 15 seconds, another 5 seconds to New York...”

Her eyes grew wide and her stomach dropped as the math clicked into place.

“Shit! That's under a minute!” She dashed to the kitchen to collect her emergency medical kit. On the way back, heading for the door, she paused at her cabinet. She threw the doors open and grabbed the antique box, flinging the strap around her right shoulder. 2 rows beneath that was an item she never thought she would have to use: a relic respirator mask. If that wave hit with the same force as it did across the Atlantic, what kind of filth would be kicked up into the atmosphere? Or if the buildings fell around her?

Don't think of it, just grab and go! She tucked the mask under her arm and flew out the door, racing down the 4th-floor staircase, skipping steps as she went. She hit the bottom floor landing with enough momentum that she barely had time to get her foot up to kick the panic bar on the door.

As the door flung open, the evening sky lit up to the west in a pale green hue. She gasped as she ducked around the east corner beside the doorway, closed her eyes tightly and held her breath, awaiting her fate.

It felt warm, like a gentle breeze on a summer day; not at all what she was expecting, considering her quick math put it somewhere about 75 kilometers per second, she had expected to have been vaporized by the impact. However, her body tingled slightly, a warmness washing over her. No, that wasn't it. It was more like a warmness flowing through her.

Something felt different in the air like it was more “alive” than before. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something had just changed around her. She could sense it somehow.

The chaotic peal of an ancient alarm clock bell came from under her arm. Then a second, and a third. She opened her eyes slowly, one at a time, to find that the ancient box was emitting the horrendous commotion. The same useless old box that had lay dormant for 200 years was now more active than it may have ever been since its creation. Gears cranked within, clockwork pieces inside the device almost alive in a chaotic mess of clicking, snapping and ticking. The transistor bulbs atop the device were a hot, bright yellow, crackling and humming with the energy from within the box. Inspecting the dial below the bulbs, the black interior wheel spun furiously, stopping over couple seconds to display a most unusual and unexpected word.

“AETHER”

That can't be possible!

But before she could invest any further thought into it, the ground began to tremble. She heard the groan and strain from the wall that she was leaning against, and jumped away from it. Cracks shot up the wall of the apartment building, splitting into jagged forks that tore through its duracrete structure. Pebbles began to tumble down the side of her home structure, which gave way to gravel-like chunks, which lead further to full slabs crashing around her. She turned and ran full sprint away from the building, slapping the box with her palm a few times until the chiming finally stopped. As she crossed an intersection, she skidded to a turn when she noticed a large metal pipe along the sidewalk. Obviously, the waterway construction that was taking place a couple blocks over hadn't completed yet. She was thankful for that.

The opening of the ridged piping may have only come to her waist in diameter, but it was more than enough for her to fit if she slid head-first into the breach. The walls were easily 18 centimeters thick and while she was confident in its ability to retain strength under almost any kind of weight pressure, she didn't see any other option presenting itself. She lowered her head and lengthened her stride towards the circular vessel.

She was 3 meters away from it when she was thrown to the ground by a tremor unlike she had ever experienced in her life. The earth convulsed and shuddered. She hit the ground with such force that the wind rushed out of her lungs, pain coursed through her chest as she fought to regain her breath. The blood pulsed through her ears so loudly that she hardly heard the surrounding structures being torn apart from the strain that the ground was under.

Eyes closed, focusing on mentally halting the agony within her lungs, she convinced herself that she was no going to die today if she could help it. Gasping frantically, she started pulling herself toward the pipes as the ground violently rattled against her.
She finally managed to pull herself into the iron tube. Wincing from the pain shooting through her chest cavity, she struggled against the violent retching of the ground beneath her her to roll onto her back. Hands shaking from the mix of shock, terror, and adrenaline, she fumbled with the respirator mask under her arm and was eventually able to pull the leather veil over her face. She was able to breathe fine through it, the filters had obviously never been used. She was grateful for that.

The heartbeat in her ears slowly diminished, to be replaced by the noise of duracrete, steel and plastiglass crumbling all around her. The iron tube only served to amplify and echo the shattering of the architecture outside of it and Catherine slapped her hands over her ears in a poor attempt to shut the acoustic pandemonium out.

As she exhaled, she began to see the condensation form into tiny vapor clouds emitting from the filter. The air around her had started to cool, and a thin frost began to form around the inside edges of the circular goggles. She couldn't tell if she was shivering or not among the tremors pounding below her. She quickly brushed away a layer of dust and sediment from the goggles that was falling from the inner layer of the pipe, shaken loose in all the turmoil.

A translucent emerald haze wafted into the pipe, enveloping her. It appeared to shimmer among the particulate matter in the air. She was transfixed on the twinkling for a moment until the box let out a few chimes, then abruptly stopped.

The shuddering of the ground was subsiding, and Catherine noticed that her fingers had started to become numb with cold. She rolled over to her stomach and groaned as the pain jolted through the left side of her torso. She wondered if she had broken one or more of her ribs when she was slammed to the ground. No time to worry about that now.

Pushing herself backward, gently crawling out the mouth of the tube, the frigid air gripped her. Slowly working herself to a standing position, she brushed away as much of the minuscule debris as she could, hands trembling in the bitter climate. She tucked her hands into her armpits and lifted her head to inspect the devastation around her. Havoc wrapped in a translucent green mist. What she observed all around her caused the breath to painfully escape her lungs again. A wave of sorrow washed over her and it took all her resolve to hold back the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

The surrounding structures lie in ruin, mounds of duracrete, metal and shattered building components littered the streets. Signage of the corner convenience store lie bent and twisted under the strain of the savage convulsions. She could only make out one construct that was not completely pulverized, but the significant damage to it was still enough to keep it from being recognizable as a former apartment complex. The despair took hold and Catherine broke into sobs. Her home was gone. Her neighborhood, her city, all of it. Gone. Heaps of rubble as far as she could see... or so she initially thought.

Through her moisture-blurred eyes, she detected something hovering in the distance. It resembled a large mass of earth and rock, hanging in the distance. Maybe a couple hundred yards away, about thirty meters above the horizon. Narrowing her eyes, she could scarcely make out what appeared as further collapsed structures resting atop the chunk of earth, hanging in the sky. How was this even possible?

She spun her head around to take a closer look at her immediate surroundings. Thirty meters south, she had failed to notice that the roadway seemed to disappear. She hesitantly stepped toward where the lane should have continued, stopping a few meters short of the break, astonished by the sight of clouds below the asphalt path.

Catherine slid the respirator up over her brow and ran her sleeve across her eyes and cheeks to wipe the drying trails of tears, drawing a breath. A cough escaped her lungs as she choked in the stinging air. It was thin, her lungs burned as she tried to draw oxygen from the numbing, meager atmosphere. She hastily replaced the mask over her features, the filters of the respirator allowing for full breaths once again.

Her mind scrambled to comprehend what was had occurred over the past hour but failed to find a logical or scientific reasoning that could explain it. She found herself forming a list of questions, but no reasonable answers.
How was her neighborhood seemingly floating in the air? How high up was she? What was that energy wave? Was it responsible for all of this? If so, how?

A distant crumbling noise from behind interrupted her reflections. She whirled about to find the silhouette of an arm reaching out from beneath the remains of a nearby apartment. Her training took over and without hesitation, she darted toward the fellow survivor, continuing to will the aching in her chest away. She popped open the locks on her med kit as she ran.

Perhaps there was a reason she was rejected for the exodus. Maybe destiny had intervened, placing her in a place where her skills truly would best be suited. She didn't really believe in any of that sort of thing. She was a scientist, after all.

“Stay still,” she said to the figure beneath the rubble, as she slid to a halt through the fallen gravel, rock, and ash. “My name is Doctor Catherine Morley, and I'm going to help you. You're going to be alright. We're both going to be alright.”

---

I hope you guys enjoyed the first part of my work in progress! As always, I am open to constructive criticism.

Remember, this is only a first draft, so it may have some upcoming tweaks and doctoring.

Of course, a big shout out to @rhondak @aggroed and the @sft project, all the folks in the fiction workshop, @minnowsupport for all they do, and @nettybot for being awesome!