Overture (Earth Song) Read Online Free PDF Page A

artist over here to talk to Prophet Victor,” Harper told a uniformed officer. The man nodded and went to his unit while Victor puffed up at being called a prophet.
    Suddenly a helicopter roared over their heads and slowed to land in the meadow. A temporary helipad had already been constructed by the FBI. Harper was all but certain he saw the unmistakable NASA logo on the tail of the helicopter as it shot by. “What the heck is going on here?”
     
     
     
    “This is just bullshit!” Mindy cried in despair, pointing and rolling her eyes. “I mean look, there’s the Little Dipper! They could at least have made an attempt!”
    “ Dearest, it’s an episode of Star Trek Enterprise,” Jake said from the couch next to her.
    “ But it’s supposed to be on a world hundreds of light years from Earth, and look at the sky! They didn’t even try to change the constellations!” Jake sighed and got up to get some popcorn, leaving his girlfriend grumbling to herself. People had accused her of ruining perfectly good sci-fi by nitpicking, but she had always said that if you spend millions in special effects the least you could do was to spend a little more and alter the star patterns. “Now the movie Stargate at least made an attempt!” she yelled at his departing figure.
    “ Yes, dear,” was his patronizing reply as he rifled through the fridge. She looked askance in his direction and turned back to the TV.
    “ That Scott Bakula, what a hunk,” she said under her breath.
    “ I heard that.”
    Mindy chuckled and went back to watching the show.
    A short time later the show was over and Jake was reaching for the remote to go channel surfing when an announcement came on the television. “Tonight at ten, a special development in New York City where police and the Federal Government have cordoned off part of Central Park.”
    Jake raised the remote to change the channel.
    “ No, wait!” Mindy said and sat up to get a better view. It was a short teaser of the later news broadcast and only showed a couple seconds of a reporter standing outside a police cordon. Snarled traffic circled the park, and a long distance shot followed of the meadow in question taken from the roof of a building. The last shot was probably from the far edge of the park and didn’t show a lot more than a circle of lights, trailers and blurry figures moving around. A metallic wall had been erected around the center of the meadow obscuring the lights’ focal point. Some of the video was shot during the night, and some in the day.
    “ Why do they need all those lights in daylight?” Jake wondered aloud “This must be recent, the sun is still up.”
    “ Probably so they can get close-up detailed imagery. You know, how they use lights to film movies during the day?”
    “ Oh, sure, that makes sense.” The long distance view panned across the scene for a second before switching to the commentator who wrapped the teaser.
    “ What was that, just before they cut?” Jake asked.
    “ What, I didn’t see anything?” Mindy complained and snatched the remote from him. Like most men, he was the remote king of the household so it took her a minute to find the button she was looking for. Accessing the scrolling memory, she backed up the live program and replayed the last ten seconds. Finding what she wanted, Mindy froze the frame and zoomed in. The view was fuzzier now, but the logo on the side of one of the trailers was unmistakably that of NASA.
    “ What would NASA be doing there?” Jake said, speaking the question she had been thinking. After a moment she let it go forward to the present time and some moronic sitcom was now airing.
    “ Can we check out this broadcast when it comes on in an hour?”
    “ Sure,” he said, a little curious himself. An hour later they switched back to the expected newscast from a show on crocodiles they’d been enjoying. The news broadcast was mostly the same boring stuff, about people dying, being robbed, suing over