Harvest Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

side-view mirror. He turns his head side to side and checks his scalp for any bruising or lacerations. He wants to rule out that he hadn’t hit his head or been knocked unconscious. There is no evidence of injury. A plethora of other possibilities to explore soon come flooding to him, but none of them are pleasant.
    The mirror begins to shake. At first Gabriel isn’t sure if it are tears welling up in his eyes or if it is just another symptom of what had happened to him. Edging towards the mirror he places his palm against the mirror pane. He can feel the subtle vibrations as they course through his hand and up his arm. It is soothing to know that he is not imagining the restrained quakes. Gabriel can trust his hands. His eyes and mind might lie to him but Gabriel could always trust his hands. Whether he was repairing a broken copier or cleaning out a chewed up garbage disposer, Gabriel relied on his sense of touch to tell him when something was right. And now Gabriel’s hands are telling him that something is coming because the vibrations in the mirror are getting stronger.
     

 
    6    Madison
     
     
    If Madison thought that the control room was frantic it was nothing compared to the pandemonium she witnessed in the base’s server room. She had volunteered to visit the server room in hopes that it would a nice tranquil retreat. What she found were technicians dripping with sweat dashing between rows of tall black server towers. They were tossing both fiber-optic cables and profanities to one another. The moment Madison entered the room she could feel the heat emitting off of the servers. It was like stepping into a sauna, only without the anticipated sense of relaxation that she had so desperately wanted.
    One of the lead technicians spots her as she and Lt. Trevers enter the room. He stands up from where he is working on the opened back of one of the server panels. A flashlight is clutched tightly between his teeth. Beads of sweat roll down the man’s bald scalp, dripping down his nose and accumulate in the hairs of his gray-tinged mustache. His glasses are fogged from heavy and sticky exhalations.
    “What the hell do you want?” He stammers. Obviously protocol and rank have been long ignored in this section of the base. Madison doesn’t let it slide. Normally she doesn’t like to throw her rank in other people’s faces, but it has been a long day.
    “I should be asking you!” She snaps back. She erects her back and puffs up her chest highlighting the markings of her station and rank on her breast. “We’re losing our computers left and right upstairs!”
    The man is either too tired or too frustrated to care about all of Madison’s stars and stripes, “Well known of this would’ve happened if you airheads up there had seen this coming to begin with.”
    Madison’s internal temperature rises, to the same boiling level as everyone else’s in the server room. It has an effect on you, being crammed in a small space with dim-lighting. Everyone is bumping into one another and shouting. Lt. Trevers must have noticed this because he tries to intervene but he is too late.
    Madison grabs hold of the sweaty technician’s lapel with two hands and then shoves him backwards, knocking him into a server cabinet. “That’s airhead, sir, to you!” She snarls through her teeth. The lack of rest, food and answers fuels her agitation. It gives her arms strength as she holds the man pinned in place.
    The entire server room has gone quiet as everyone looks on. Perhaps they are waiting for a fight to break out. They need it to, to give them a release. The only sounds come from the buzzing fans of the servers. The blades on the fans spin rapidly trying to maintain equilibrium and blow off the building heat. Lt. Trevers cautiously surveys the room and vigilantly protects his coworker. The two of them are woefully outnumbered should violence ensue.
    Madison notices the tension in the room as well. She needs to do