Earth's Revolution

~17~

"Oi sleepyheads. Get up."
Groggily, I opened my eyes, only to jump up when I noticed the sky was lighter than night. No sun. Yet. I noticed we were in the middle of nowhere. Only one house stood at the edge of a long grassy driveway, surrounded by barns of various shapes and sizes.
"Where are we?" asked Cornelia, jumping out of the car. I followed suit.
"Just past Hamburg if my calculations are correct. And if this car's gps is correct," Alan added as an afterthought.
"We need to get the car in the house for shade," said Max, rushing to open the barn door, "This will do yes." He jumped into the driver's seat with the engine still running and neatly parked the car in one swift movement."
"You didn't tell me you were such a great driver, I would have made you drive," Alan grumbled.
"Well you never asked," he retorted, "Let's get into this house now before it gets sunny."

We walked to the front door, which was quite obviously locked. "Let's try the back door," I suggested. My logic was, even if locked, it would be easier to break down. My logic was right, and soon we were scouring for a basement door or a shady room with no windows. I found a door under the stairs leading to a flight of stairs so we bolted up the half-broken back door and walked down.
There wasn't much to see here, just a couple of couches, a television and a set of drawers. Upon further investigation, we found a remote, but sadly the TV wasn't getting any signal. It was likely, the satellite had probably melted by now. For safety, we put up the tents, without forgetting to steal the comfy couch cushions first, and set up to sleep the day away. We decided one person from each tent would stay up in shifts for extra security; I took first shift with Max, and we stepped out onto the only remaining couch with cushions.

"So, where are you from again?" Max asked curiously. Of course small talk would happen if two partial strangers were stuck on a couch together, but I wanted more interesting conversations. Maybe even answers to some of the questions that had been bouncing in my mind lately.
"We came here from France. What about you?"
"I'm from America, but I came to Norway because the science department was located there."
"There are more bases?"
"I think there are two or three per continent: two in America, one in Canada, one in Argentina, one in South Africa, one in the United Arab Emirates, one in Norway, of course, one in Portugal, one in France, one in India, one in China, one in Japan, one in New-Zealand, and one in Australia."
"Wow... that is a lot. Way more than I expected."
"I was surprised too at first. What's really cool is we managed to coordinate a hack together from each of those countries up there. Every single department. It took us a few tries, but we got there eventually."
"Did you take part in it?"
"I did, actually. Not a big part because we were working on the atmosphere technology, but Norway did it's little part too." His face had pride written  all over it, and frankly, mine probably had awe scribbled in big block letters on my forehead. I was impressed.
"That is amazing!"
"It is. I've never felt more proud of being a part of something."
"I can say the same for the situation we are in right now. This is the biggest thing I've ever done in my life."
"Same goes for me. I doubt anyone out there has ever done greater than this. Not to brag or anything but it's hard to surpass this level of importance."
"Maybe stopping famine or hatred on a global scale would be equivalent of the same importance, though-"

A loud crash echoed into the basement from above.
"Shit, what was that?" exclaimed Max as we both jumped up.
"I don't know." I drew out a sword I had picked out from the training room, beautiful and intricate, but light and sharp, as Max pulled out a set of dual knifes. We crept towards the door, but just as we reached the stairs, it flew open.