Flare

Chapter 1

Sunday the 14^th of September, 2014, was unseasonably warm. As per usual August had been a bust and delivered little but warm rain out of a steel grey sky, but September was doing its utmost to make up for it.

I was working from home that day, one of the joys of being a freelance journalist. For months now I’d been putting together an article about humanity, society and the glue that holds it together, having gathered material from dozens of interviews with people involved in the riots a few years before in London. It was, I knew, the piece that was going to get me international recognition, maybe a permanent job with one of the high end magazines and a salary to match.

Pushing my laptop away, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and crossed to the window, trying vainly to open it further.

My tiny square of a back garden below, so lush in the wet August just gone, was beginning to brown like a pie left too long in the oven. The government had declared a heat wave, unheard of in September, but it seemed that every drop of moisture was being squeezed out of the air by the oppressive heat.

Usually, in England, and especially on the south coast, heat equals humidity. Even on the driest days there’s enough moisture in the air to make you feel like you’re taking a shower at the slightest movement.

Not this time. Already they’d implemented the fastest hosepipe ban I’d ever heard of as worried gardeners pumped gallons of water into their swiftly dying shrubberies and flowerbeds.

Maybe, I mused as I headed downstairs to the fridge and its promise of salvation in the form of the water-chiller, I should do a piece on the weather to get a little money in while I finished off my masterpiece.

I was far from broke, but extra money never hurt and my daughter’s birthday was coming up, seemingly more expensive each time as she rapidly approached her teenage years.

Last year it had been her first mobile phone. Her mother, Angie, was barely civil when I called to speak to Melody, so despite the cost it had been a relief to have a direct line of communication with my daughter that didn’t involve the minefield of talking to my ex-wife first.

Nine years of difficult marriage and a messy divorce didn’t make for easy small-talk, but now I could speak to Melody every night without the usual recriminations and demands first.

Just thinking of Melody brought a smile to my lips. Eleven years old going on thirty, and growing more adult every day. Only last night she’d been telling me about how ‘socially inept’ one of her friends was, and how she had decided to take the girl under her wing so that she didn’t have trouble in middle school.

Some of my friends wouldn’t know how to use the phrase socially inept, and I’d had to struggle not to laugh when she’d said it so matter-of-factly.

When the split had finally and inevitably happened, Angie had taken Melody and moved to Manchester, back to her parents and their reinforcement of her view that I was the devil incarnate, while I’d stayed in Hove on the south coast, still living in the small but comfortable house a stone’s throw from the sea.

I fetched myself a glass of water and liberally topped it off with ice cubes from the freezer, then made my way back to the study and sat at the desk once more.

The laptop was surrounded by notepads, random pieces of paper and post-it notes, all covered in my almost illegible scrawl. I’d been working on this piece for the best part of a year, travelling all over the country to interview people on both sides of the riots that had come perilously close to consuming the country after a police shooting in London had inflamed the downtrodden masses.

Interestingly, the rioters themselves had been the easiest to talk to. Using a few of my contacts in the police, I’d been able to track down several people of interest in Croydon and London. After I’d managed to convince them I wasn’t with the police myself, a little bit of respect and a few quid here and there had provided a wealth of information.

They were kids, mostly, disaffected and angry. They’d been looking for any excuse to hit back, to get their voices heard, and once the ball started rolling those too scared to say no had joined in until it got out of control.

My phone vibrated on the desk and I had to dig through reams of paper to find it. The caller ID showed that it was Jerry Cross, an astrophysicist originally from Sussex University, whose wild theories about everything from aliens to other dimensions had earned him the nickname “Crackpot Cross” and had gotten him kicked out of the faculty. He spent most of his time now writing books on UFOs that no one took seriously.

“Jerry,” I answered, leaning forward to peel my wet back away from the sticky leather of my chair.

“Malc. Have you seen the news?” He sounded excited, his voice high and the words tumbling out as if he only had seconds to spare.

“Not today, no, I’ve been working. Can you give me the highlights?” I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice, but it was a struggle. When I’d been young and keen, a couple of Jerry’s less crazy theories had caught my attention and I’d based stories on them, only to be ridiculed by my peers when they didn’t pan out. It wasn’t an experience I was keen to repeat.

“It’s the story about solar flares, they’ve been running it for a couple of days.”

I sighed. “I saw it last night, Jerry, it wasn’t anything special.”

The line crackled slightly and I thought I’d lost him for a second, but then his voice came back on.

“What if I told you they were wrong?”

“What, there won’t be a solar flare?”

“No,” he sounded worried, but then he usually did. To live in a world populated by aliens, spacecraft and world-shaking government conspiracies probably required a great deal of paranoia, not to mention effort. “I mean they’re wrong about how bad it will be.”

“Jerry, look, I’m kinda busy. Are you free next week for coffee maybe?” I genuinely liked the man, for all his craziness, but when he had a bee in his bonnet he was too much and I really needed to get my piece finished and submitted.

“Next week might be too late. Please Malcolm, this is serious.”

“When isn’t it?” I was starting to lose patience now. The man could spin a conspiracy out of thin air and cotton wool, and I wasn’t going to get drawn in again.

The line was silent for a moment and then Jerry spoke, his voice urgent.

“Fine. I understand why you wouldn’t want to believe me, I know the stories I gave you weren’t, uh, too well received, but when you realise that I was right I’m going to need your help.”

“Help with what?”

“Telling everyone! I’ve been trying to contact the government for days, but no one is returning my calls. They know, they must do, and there’s only one reason that they aren’t doing anything about it. Please Malcolm, I need…”

The line crackled and faded again and I pressed the cancel button, taking the chance to end the call while I could. It was low, I knew, but once Jerry got started on the government I could be there all day.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the laptop and a few moments later Jerry and his conspiracies were all but forgotten as I buried myself in my work.