Chapter 2 - National Crisis

657 15 14
                                    

Manila, Republic of the Philippines

July 26, Gregorian Calendar Year 2025, 6 P.M.

Aguinaldo State Dining Room, Malacañang Palace

Antonio was presently in the State Dining Room which was brightly lit by the 3 chandeliers hanging from its ceiling and the electric wall lamps placed elaborately on the walls of the room. From the right side, there was the Sagisag ng Pangulo ng Pilipinas hanging on the wall and a flag stand hanging the 1993 edition of the Philippine Flag standing beside it. He sat at the end of a long rectangular table and looked at the seated Secretaries of his administration's executive departments, his cabinet, with an expectant gaze. There was tension in each of the secretaries' faces in which Antonio took notice. After surmising that all members of his cabinet were present, he spoke.

"We shall now begin." He paused for a second. "I believe that all of you have something to report."

"Sir..." The first to speak was Secretary Reyes, reluctance written in his tone. "...we are not on Earth anymore."

Everyone stared at him dumbfounded with the exception of Secretary Buñog and General Cabrera who already knew of this beforehand.

"I have no time for jokes Secretary." Antonio frowned in annoyance.

"It is true sir." General Cabrera interjected. He then motioned his assistant to turn on the projector. The projector displayed images of vast wheat fields, and towns and villages looking a lot like those found on the Middle Ages which bewildered the people present.

"At 7 A.M., one our radar stations in Tawi-Tawi detected a massive landmass on what would have been Sabah, Malaysia. The Air Force immediately scrambled two F-4s from Edwin Andrews Airbase to conduct reconnaisance on the unknown landmass with one of them armed with AAMs." General Cabrera explained. Upon the next set of images was something that they could never expect.

"Dragons?! And people riding on it?!" Exclaimed VP Allegante.

The projected images showed winged lizard-like creatures with riders on them with what seems to be a medieval-esque port city in the backround. Everyone in the room had their mouths agape at the images presented before them which further cemented that they are in another world.

Cabrera continued, "The pilots report that these creatures attempted to shoot them down with what they described as fireballs but due to their speed they managed to outrun them."

"If they were intercepted that means...."

"Yes sir, we just violated their airspace." Cabrera interjected. "Anyways, the pilots also report that the horizon is farther which implies that this world is larger than Earth. On another note, one of our P-3Cs spotted a new island about the size of Mindoro 130 kilometers east of Samar. By some miracle, we made contact with the troops we have deployed to the Middle East and on overseas missions on that island."

Antonio only nodded, baffled by his statement.

After Cabrera finished his statement. Secretary Buñog spoke, "To support Secretary Reyes' statement sir, observatories from PhilSA has just detected these."

A news set of images were presented in the screen, depicting 2 spherical astronomical objects with one seemingly larger than the other.

"What you see here are objects that were captured by our observatories."

"I-is that the Moon?!" Alberto Alvarez, the Secretary of the DENR blurted out.

"Moons Mr. Secretary. These 2 moons were spotted by our observatories at about 3 P.M. this afternoon. The larger moon is slightly larger in size to Earth's moon while the other has the diameter of about a third of the Earth's moon. They seem to orbit the planet in a similar fashion to the moons of Mars. Also, we spotted different planets in this new Solar System unlike the planets we are all familiar with." She paused, drinking water from a 500mL plastic bottle.

The Pearl Of The East | Summoning The PhilippinesWhere stories live. Discover now