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Nativitas
by H.L. Rutkowski
First Place
The creature awoke to a consciousness it hadn't known before—whatever came before. It could hear—feel?—in its mind, its brethren, calling to it from a great distance away. How suffocatingly tight were the confines of its current home! It also felt a ravenous hunger, and it could smell the ore that lay just out of its reach. The voice—voices?—in its mind encouraged it: time to break out of your egg.
The creature unfolded its great body and pushed—hard!—in all directions, and was rewarded with a break above it, a break which let in the rich warmth of iron and nickel.
It drank greedily.
Max Shepard awoke to a tremor so violent it nearly spilled him from his bed. For a moment he imagined he was back in the old staff housing at UCLA.
He righted himself on the edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on hardwood floors, and reached for his glasses. How soon would he feel the aftershocks? An answering rumble shook the house; the framed picture of his daughter, Amy, in her NASA uniform, tumbled from the wall and cracked against the floor.
Max threw on a Penn State t-shirt and hurried down the stairs to his home office. Most of his equipment was at the lab in the Geosciences building, where he was Chair of the geology department, but his laptop was here. He pressed the power button and held on to the edge of the desk as the next tremor hit, rattling the bones of Max’s old house. Car alarms began to blare throughout the neighborhood, answered by howling dogs.
In all the years he'd lived here, he'd only experienced one earthquake, and that one so mild he barely felt it. Sure, the Ramapo fault line ran through Pennsylvania, and it was conceivable that they could experience a 5.2 magnitude earthquake. But as his mind became fully awake he realized that what was settling a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach was the aftershocks. In no scenario should they be getting worse. And as another one rattled the house and two more pictures hit the ground he acknowledged: they were definitely getting worse.
Max logged in to the university’s GeoMap software. Immediately, blood-red alerts streamed down the page: Philly, Fresno, Tokyo, Croatia, Grand Cayman—alerts of earthquakes poured in from around the globe. He had never seen anything like it.
His phone began to ring, and he raced upstairs to answer. It was Paul Gilmore, President of the university.
"Max, what on earth is going on? President Gilmore demanded.
“I’m not sure yet, I-”
" If you don't know, who does?" snapped Gilmore. "I've got students freaking out, parents calling me from all over the world; get down here, Shepard!" He disconnected without waiting for a response.
Max retrieved a pair of jeans from the floor, shoved his phone in one pocket and wallet the other. Grabbing his laptop and car keys on the way out the door, he looked longingly at the empty coffee pot but the next tremor—stronger, again!—encouraged him to keep moving.
His house was only a couple of miles off campus, normally a ten minute drive. But today he pulled up to the first intersection to find that the traffic light was out. The next turn brought a burst water pipe flooding the road. He could get through in his Jeep but it was slow going. What should have been the final turn was blocked by a downed power line, sending him a block out of his way. As he approached faculty parking he was blocked again, this time by a delivery truck lying on its side, felled by a shift in asphalt that left one part of the parking lot a meter higher than the rest. Max parked his car in the protective shadow of the recumbent truck and jogged toward the brick building.
He ran down the concrete steps and pushed through the glass doors. Fluorescent light gleamed off the polished floors as he hurried down the dim hallway.
Dean Gilmore stepped out of the geology lab. "In here, Shepard."
The lab was crowded with machines—mass spectrometers, solvent extractors, other tools of his profession—pushed against dirty-beige walls. Students and faculty alike manned the computers and phones.
Gilmore scowled at him. "Why didn't you people see this coming?"
Max bit his tongue till he tasted blood. If he had a dollar for every time he'd had to explain that no one could actually predict earthquakes…
"Dr. Shepard, you need to see this!" His research assistant, Sylvia Kim, called him over to the main monitor. Her face was pale and he was sure he matched her pallor once he saw the screen.
"That's not possible."
"I know, but-"
"It must be a mistake."
" But Dr. Shepard, 1-"
"Has anyone talked to NP?" he called to the room. "Someone get North Pole Station on the phone!”
"We've tried! We've tried every possible number. And we've confirmed with NASA satellites."
Max studied the monitor. Equipment had ceased recording and the layer of debris was now obscuring any image from satellites, but he studied what they did have. It looked as if an impossibly large volcano had just erupted and blew the top off the North Pole, displacing the ice around it. Of course the fact remained that what he was seeing was impossible. There were a handful of volcanoes in the Arctic Circle, along the East Gakkel Ridge, but nothing large enough to explain the size of this explosion.
"No Christmas this year, kids," he muttered.
His phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket. St. Francis Nursing Home. He answered.
"Mr. Shepard, this is Juanita Ridgefield, from St. Francis."
"Is my mother OK?"
"She's extremely agitated, sir. She wanted me to ask you to come right away."
Max ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. "Ms. Ridgefield, I really can't get away right now. Can you tell her I'll visit as soon as I can?"
She paused, just enough for Max to guess she was thinking he was a crappy excuse for a son, and then said, "of course. I'll tell her," and disconnected.
"How do you explain this, Shepard?" President Gilmore asked at his elbow, startling him.
Max gestured to the monitor, sprinkled with red across the world, indicating earthquakes and volcanic activity. "There are 1,500 active volcanoes in the world. On average we experience one eruption per week. Not like this, of course, but if there were a supervolcano at the pole, one we somehow missed..." one every single geographical survey had missed? "... an eruption of that magnitude could cause a shift in fault lines…” every single fault line, all at once? "... resulting in exactly what we're seeing: earthquakes around the world."
President Gilmore began to ask another question but Max cut him off. "Sylvia, how many expeditions were at the North Pole Station?"
She searched quickly. "Three. Russia had one, Canada…and UCLA.
He tensed. "Who was on the UCLA expedition?"
She began to list names. When she said, "Evelyn Morris," Max sank into the chair behind him.
Sylvia was quiet for a moment; then she said, "Evelyn Morris…that’s not?"
"Yeah.”
Sylvia was giving her condolences and Gilmore was giving orders but one question played on a loop in Max's mind, drowning out everything else: how was he supposed to tell Amy her mother was dead?
Max had tried to talk Amy out of going to Mars. Yes, there had been a few successful missions, but Martian science was still so new, so unproven, so dangerous.
"So exciting," she'd countered with a grin, her cheeks dimpling just like her mother’s, and he'd had to grin back, because with two scientists as parents, what did he expect?
They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. It happens when someone you love dies as well. In a flash he saw Evie on the quad at UCLA, when they were freshman...in the glow of the moonlight the first time he'd kissed her... the tears of joy brimming in her green eyes—Amy's eyes—on their wedding day...the excitement in her voice whenever she spoke of her research…that unique mix of fear and euphoria when she told him she was pregnant... her proud glow when she first held Amy...that same look when she was named Chair of the Geosciences department at UCLA. A million memories flew before his eyes, like Evie and Amy flying by on Dumbo at Disneyland. And finally the fights, and the tears, and the pimple-faced courier who served Max his divorce papers. And the last time he saw Evie—years ago, now—with new lines around her eyes but still that fierce pride as she watched their daughter graduate from MIT.
How could all those memories, that woman, everything she was, be gone? How could Evie—his Evie—be gone?
"Shepard!" Max tuned back in to his surroundings to hear Gilmore barking his name. "I've got every news outlet in the Midwest calling this department. You've got ten minutes to put something together for the press conference."
Two hundred miles away, in Washington DC, a press conference was already taking place. Anthony Malone, White House Press Secretary, stood in front of an army of media and delivered platitudes. Most of the journalists didn't mind; as long as they got their sound bite, they didn't care how it was related to the truth. But Anthony cringed every time C.J. Smith raised his hand.
"Mr. Malone, is this administration withholding critical information from the American public?"
The press secretary pushed his lips into a firm line, much like the line he would not allow Smith to cross. "We are providing as much information as we can at this time, in an effort to assist the American public in preparing-"
"That's not a no."
"Any other questions?" Hands shot up, including C.J. 's, but the cameramen knew to stay trained on Malone. "Thank you for your time." He exited the stage as the journalists were herded through the doors in the back of the room.
It was only minutes later when a knock on his office door preceded his apologetic assistant. “He insists he needs to see you."
Of course he did. C.J. Smith had made it his mission to dissect and eviscerate every statement that came out of this administration. All for "the justice of the American people." Bullshit. It was for a byline and sensationalism, and Malone was done with it. Before C.J.
could open his mouth, Malone said, "Mr. Smith, we are in the middle of an unprecedented worldwide crisis. I will thank you for not wasting my time." He gathered his notes and shoved past the reporter.
"If it's a crisis, don't you think the American public deserves to know the extent of it?"
"No comment. Linda, I'll be in the conference room if you need me." He kept walking, pausing to grip the wall as another tremor hit.
"This administration seems to think it can make unilateral decisions for the country, even the world; don't you think the people should be informed so they can decide for themselves how to proceed?"
If the people knew how bad this is there'd be nothing but panic, chaos, he thought. But all he said was, "no comment." He nodded at the secret service agent standing at the corner. "Escort Mr. Smith to the press room and make sure he stays there?"
The agent nodded in return and took C.J. firmly by the arm, leading him down another hallway. Malone could hear him calling questions even as he was led away, but he ignored the noise.
"We need real answers," President Harrison was saying as Anthony entered the room and slipped into his seat. "Anybody?"
"I've been on the phone with geologists around the world but no one knows why this is happening," answered FEMA administrator Kelly Bowden.
President Harrison arched his arthritic back; he was feeling every bit of his 72 years today. "Who's the best in the world?"
"Yamamoto, Sir"
“And where is he?"
"She is in Tokyo."
"Then get her on the phone!"
"We've been trying, sir; no one can get through to Japan. According to the NASA satellites, a major earthquake went right through Tokyo…fires, tsunami…” she trailed off.
"Ok, who's the best in the States then?" President Harrison asked.
"Dr. Maxwell Shepard."
"In California, I assume?" How was he going to get someone here from the other side of the country?
"Actually, he's at Penn State."
He arched an eyebrow wondering why the best geologist in the US was in Pennsylvania.”Great; get him here."
"Sir, we could get him on the video feed, but with the unpredictable activity, it might not be safe to travel—"
"I want him here, where he can be the face of this administration and answer questions we can't answer! Besides, who knows how reliable the power grid will be; video feed might not be an option soon. Take a chopper, get him here."
As Max returned to the lab from the press conference, Sylvia handed him the phone. "The nursing home keeps trying to reach you.”
Max took a moment to look over the GeoMap updating continuously on the monitor. More and more red dots and lines, more and more eruptions and earthquakes, more and more deaths. Zero answers.
The next aftershock hit harder; Max ducked under the nearest table, covering his head. He could hear stuff hitting the ground all around him, glass shattering. The lights flickered like lightning, but when the tremor was over, they still had power.
He called the nursing home.
"Mr. Shepard, I'm afraid your mother might be taking a turn for the worse...all this shaking and commotion, and she was so weak to begin with... you really should come down here as soon as you can."
Max promised he would. He left Sylvia in charge of monitoring and running simulations; maybe if they could figure out how this happened, they could prepare for what was to come.
The nursing home was another ten-minute drive, slower now, trying to avoid cracks in the pavement and downed power lines. He felt a jolt of shock as he passed a block away from the spot where the Oswald Tower once stood. Now it was just a cloud of dust, obscuring his vision. Sirens blared from an approaching ambulance; he hoped the medical center was still functioning. In the distance Max could see multiple plumes of smoke and imagined the fires that had already started. The red lines and dots on the world map were etched into his brain; this level of destruction was happening all over the world. It didn't make sense! It shouldn't be possible. But it was happening.
The creature was full; it wanted to rest, but the voice in its head said, no—you must continue now. So it began to push.
Max parked in front of the sprawling two-story building and dashed inside, signing in at the front desk and hurrying to his mother's room.
She was seated in her wheelchair, turned to look out the window, a quilt resting on her lap. Sharp blue eyes peered up at him from a face mapped with wrinkles. A breeze from the window carried the chemical smell of her brown hair dye and tight perm. Her wedding ring hung loose on her finger. It seemed to Max that she was shrinking with age, though her personality loomed as large as ever in his mind.
He sat in the chair next to her and took her hand. "How are you, mom?"
Her gaze held his. "Worried."
He patted her hand. "There's no need to worry! I know these earthquakes are unusual—once in a lifetime, I'm sure! But we'll figure out what’s causing them soon, I promise."
"I know what's causing the earthquakes, Maxwell."
"You do?"
“‘...a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth,’” she quoted.
Max groaned inwardly. "This isn't the end times, mom. We'll all be around to talk about it tomorrow. And we'll figure out what caused it. We always do."
"And that's why I'm worried. You think you have all the answers…"
Max felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out. "I have to take this,” he apologized. “Sylvia?"
"Dr. Shepard, the President is sending a helicopter to bring us to DC!"
"What? Why?"
"They want us there and they're on the way now—that's all they would say. But you need to get back here."
Max hung up. "I have to go."
"Wheel me to the chapel first."
"I'll get a nurse to do it. I-"
"I want you to do it." She narrowed her eyes at him and he felt like he was ten years old again.
He let out a frustrated breath. "OK." He wheeled her into the small chapel, and up to the front, where a wooden cross hung on the wall, backlit, glowing in the dim room. Luminescent windows of stained glass played out the days of creation along the white walls.
"I have to go to DC now, but I'll come see you when I get back. Tomorrow, maybe."
"Maxwell, there isn't going to be a tomorrow. I'm not going to see you again this side of Heaven and I worry that I won't see you on the other side, either!"
He reined in his frustration and squeezed her hand. "Mom, I have to go."
She patted his hand and leaned her head back, gazing up at the cross, until her eyes closed.
For the third time that day Max drove.
From the helicopter, he could see clearly the destruction that lay between his hometown and Washington DC. He wasn't sure if it was that ruined landscape or the turbulence that was making him nauseous.
"Sorry about the rough ride," the pilot said through his headset, "these air currents are unusual."
Of course they were. Volcanoes erupting all over the world, disrupting the air flow—how was he supposed to explain the inexplicable? What did the President expect from them? This worry added to the sick feeling in his stomach.
“Look at that, Max!” Sylvia called, pointing to something below, but he shook his head and kept his eyes facing forward. He did not want to meet the President of the United States with vomit all over his clothes.
They landed on the South Lawn of the White House. Max and Sylvia were ushered by two stony-faced Secret Service agents to a conference room where a man they had only seen on television sat at the head of a long table.
President Harrison looked as tired as Max felt. "Have a seat, Dr. Shephard, Dr. Kim," he said without preamble. "Tell us what you know."
Max and Sylvia shared what little they had learned that day.
"And what do you predict for the next 24 hours?"
"Unfortunately, more of the same,” Max said.
“What can we do to keep destruction to a minimum?”
“Normally, we can estimate the maximum magnitude of an earthquake and the successive aftershocks in a given region. We can map the distribution of substrates and give engineering recommendations. But this only helps before you build, or retrofit...we're seeing major earthquakes in areas that are simply not designed for them. There’s not much we can do to mitigate damage at this point.”
President Harrison studied him for a moment. "Dr. Shephard, did you know I used to be an actor?"
"Yes, sir," Max said, furrowing his brow.
"I spent several years living in LA, and in my experience, aftershocks get smaller after a big quake, not worse. Yet ours seem to be getting worse. Can you tell me why?"
Max paused and then responded honestly. "No, I can't."
"If the top geophysicist in our country can't explain what's happening, how am I supposed to help the citizens of our country prepare?"
"I-I don't know," Max stumbled.
The President sighed. "Dr. Shephard, I need you to do your job so I can do my job. Do you understand?"
Max cleared his throat. "Yes sir.”
The President checked his watch. "Good." He gestured to the Secret Service men. "They’ll take you to the lab. Anything you need, ask them. I'll see you back here—with answers—in an hour."
"An hour?" Max blurted.
"The President's gaze never wavered. "An hour, Dr. Shepard; our country is counting on you."
"We just have to look at this logically. What's our working hypothesis?" Max asked, settling into the well-equipped FEMA lab.
"The extreme eruption at the North Pole caused a domino effect, triggering every fault line in the world." Sylvia replied.
"OK. So if the origin event has already occurred, we should be able to predict outcomes."
They studied the map, noting areas where volcanoes perched on or near fault lines. There were many.
"Just pull up the GeoMap software and input all these coordinates," Max instructed.
"I don't know if it'll accept this many variables."
"I don't either, but the only way we can attempt to give the public answers is if we can model this event."
Sylvia got to work. In the end they had to split it by hemisphere and take an educated guess at the overlap of effects between the two. Their pride in running the model successfully was short-lived.
"There's no way to spin this," Sylvia said. "We're looking at an unprecedented, global catastrophic event that will have repercussions for years, maybe generations."
Sylvia was frustrated; Max could tell by the way she furiously chewed at her lower lip. He tried to reassure her. "This is just another scientific problem, what we've done our whole careers. Granted, more complex, but we just stick to working the variables-"
"We don't know all the variables," she exploded.
They stared at the screen for a few tense moments until Sylvia broke the silence. “I’ll run it by region, try to give the President something to tell people...”
“Have you talked to your mom today?” Max asked softly. He and Sylvia had bonded over shared stories of their mothers, one Italian, one Korean, both small but mighty.
“No,” she admitted.
“Why don’t you go call her real quick after you start that model running. It’ll take a few minutes anyway.”
She smiled gratefully and Max headed back to his own computer as she stepped into the hallway.
A few minutes later, Max heard the door squeak on its hinges. He didn't look up, assuming it was Sylvia returning. After a few moments he felt someone looking at the screen over his shoulder and was surprised to see a red-haired young man standing there, eyes wide. "Can I help you?" Max asked.
“C.J. Smith, from The People’s News.”
"I don't think you're supposed to be-"
"This is much worse than they’re letting on, isn't it?"
In his weariness Max just didn't have the energy to make up a convincing lie. "Yes."
"How much worse?”
"Catastrophic.”
"Can I quote you on that?"
"No."
"What are you going to do?"
"Do?"
"You know, to stop it."
Max laughed . “You can't stop it! Scientists study the effects of natural phenomena. We don't control them." They stared at the red-splattered map in silence for a moment until Max said, "I think you should go."
"Right." C.J. tore his eyes away from the apocalyptic vision on the screen and extended his hand. "Good luck, Dr. Shepard."
"You too," Max said, watching him go.
Sylvia returned and they poured over the modeling software, preparing their reports for the president. Suddenly, the door to the lab slammed open. Max jumped, and then scowled at the press secretary.
"What the hell is the meaning of this, Shepard?" Anthony Malone demanded, waving his phone in Max's face.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, snatching the phone out of Malone’s hand.
A video was playing. The logo at the top said “The People’s News” and that red-haired journalist sat in front of a screen showing a still from Max's monitor; he must have snuck a picture. "Damn it," Max muttered.
Malone grabbed his phone back. "In case you haven't noticed, we've been trying not to incite a country-wide riot!"
"What difference does it make?" Max exploded. "Most of them aren't going to survive this. Shouldn't they have an opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones?" His heart hurt, thinking of Evie, his mom, Amy...."
"Is your catastrophe going to kill them today, Shepard? Because if not, you just gave them license to act like animals until the end!" He waved the phone in Max's face. "No one talks to the press but me!" Malone stormed out of the lab.
Max rested his head in his hands, trying not to imagine all the ways humans could act like animals when they had no reason to maintain the vestiges of civilization. All day, people had demanded answers from him. That was the job: provide answers. And he always could; that's why he loved his job, why he was the best: he had faith that if he followed a process to its logical conclusion, he would find the answer there, waiting for him, every time.
But there were no answers waiting for him today.
Conditions were getting exponentially worse all around the world. Every major fault line had shifted in impossible ways. The dust cloud from the explosion in the North Pole was obscuring the sun in the Northern reaches of the Northern hemisphere and making its way south. Other major volcanic eruptions added ash and gas to the air in so many parts of the globe it was impossible to predict where it would all go and when—or if—it would dissipate. He'd stopped trying to keep track of the flooding reports; safe to say every coast around the world was under more water, further inland, than ever seen in recorded history.
Was this really all caused by the unknown volcano at the North Pole? It was the only explanation he had, the only one he could give the President. And as far as reassuring the American public, all they could say was: be prepared for more of the same, until it's over. Because it has to end at some point.
“What are we looking at, Dr. Shepard?” asked President Harrison.
Max had projected the live GeoMap feed to the screen on the conference room wall. He took a deep breath and tried to explain. "This map shows all of the active volcanoes in the world; the likelihood of all of them erupting at the same time is—well, it's impossible."
"And yet here we are," said the President, gesturing at the screen. "So I ask you again: what kind of damage are we looking at?"
“Some of these are measuring a seven on the VEI, and the DRE scale shows-”
"In English please, Shepard!"
"For any of the major eruptions, the initial blast wave killed anything within 600 km within minutes. Add to that the ash and sulfur dioxide and rocks thrown into the air—those will affect anything within 1,000 km, maybe further. And of course the undersea eruptions are causing tsunamis—waves up to 10 meters high—along every coastal area."
"Is that all?"
Max shook his head helplessly. "Collapsing power grids, downed aircraft, permanent damage to the ozone..."
Max stood, fidgeting, behind the President's right side as he addressed the nation, so the President could gesture to him and he could nod in response when the President assured the country he had "the top geophysicist in the US" working on this problem and there was nothing to fear. It would all be over soon.
Max was alone in the lab when the next tremor hit, rattling the building, knocking over any shelves that had managed to stay upright through the previous quakes. He clicked away from the GeoMap software and logged in to the University’s Astrogeology page. Fingers flying, he typed a quick message and hit send.
The entire building swayed back and forth, a giant about to fall. Max heard something explode; the power grid failed and he was alone in the darkness, blind in this windowless room. He stood and began carefully making his way toward the door, shuffling his feet to avoid stepping on broken glass. The ground shook so violently it was hard to tell if he was being hit by debris falling down or being thrown back up from the ground. Then a deafening noise blasted his ears, drowning all other sound. Blind, deaf, Max fell to his knees.
The message Max Shepard sent to his daughter made it to the satellite relay. Seven minutes later, Amy read it to her crew for the first time, after watching Earth disappear from her monitor and wondering if the Martian dust was messing with her equipment again. She tried to send a return message, but by then the satellites closest to Earth no longer had anything to revolve around, so they drifted off to die in the great expanse of space.
The creature pushed, again and again, with all of its limbs, until suddenly the egg cracked neatly down two sides. Freedom! It wriggled slowly out and away from the fragments. From a distant star it could hear the others calling, and the creature joyfully began its slow journey home.
It gave no thought to the shell it left behind.
Winning pieces are published as received.
Fiction Potluck
January 2025
First Place Winner:
H.L. Rutkowski
Heather Rutkowski is a Florida-based writer with a BA in English from Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio. She is passionate about storytelling and educating, and spends as much time as possible reading, writing, and teaching.
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