“Something is happening, we are losing contact with our member channels around the world. Are any of our affiliates still capable of communicating?” Mark asked as his small studio lost touch with the outside world.
“Way?” someone asked.
“Seoul! I can hear you Seoul, go ahead” Mark said, slightly relieved “Do you have any information for our viewers?”
“Way Yo?” is heard and then a face appears then shouts “On Day!” and slaps the camera, sending it to static like the others.
All of the monitors were now gray static and then they all went black and that was replaced by images of stars and a close view of Earth from orbit. Studio One was actually an orbiting communications station, like a manned satellite.
Mark Stafford, anchor of Studio One, was the only crew member. He furiously punched the keyboard in front of him. There were some radio stations still broadcasting and he clicked through them to see if anything of value was being reported.
“A bluish cloud has descended upon Miami, Florida this morning. Rioting and large-scale fights have been breaking out since the television stations and phone service went down in the middle of the night for unknown reasons...” one radio station was broadcasting “Similar reports have been made all over the world before we got silence from them. Is it something in the air? Is it a virus? Have we all just gone insane?” then after a moment the radio speaker began mumbling incoherently “That smell...” and then a laugh and then nothing.
Studio One also connected internet systems around the world and Mark Stafford could see traffic on the system falling drastically.
“What is happening down there?” he demanded to know. Of course he was alone up there.
Then chimes sounded and he heard a new voice, something urgent in a strange language followed by a calmer voice.
“This is Shanghai. The madness that has befallen the world is under control here in the People's Republic of China”... the speaker sounded more nervous as he spoke, there was shouting but it sounded distant “The Politburo and our glorious armed forces have everything under control, all is calm and perfect in China...” then laughing the host said “Beijing love the little children, all of the children in this land... nobody believes it, nobody ever believe it...” then a loud bang followed by nothing.
On the monitors Mark watches night falling across the planet. Bright fires where cities were supposed to be. He got the closest images he could. The cities were burning as night fell.
“Whatever is happening is happening fast” he said to himself “What will day two look like?”
….
On board was Mark Stafford, Studio One anchor. He was not an engineer he was little more than a news anchor. Down below was the blue oceans and green vegetation and white clouds of Earth, but it was deathly silent now. Platform One kept its orbit, round and round for days and weeks and months.
After a few days Mark Stafford began shutting down non-essential systems. Turning off monitors and computers that had made broadcasting from space something cool and workable. Now that there was no audience much of this was little more than junk.
The cities had long since burned. Nobody fought the forest fires anymore either. Mark watched for planes duping red fire retardant, but there was nothing. If any broadcast was picked up below the computers would alert Mark, but there had been nothing more.
Over the days and days he noted that some lights were automatic. Street and traffic lights that were solar powered, but even these failed. Maybe a wire shorted out, maybe animals gnawed on them, maybe the batteries no longer held a charge. Even these winked out one by one. No one was fixing them, that was for sure.
Mark might not be a scientist or an engineer or a real astronaut but he knew that something was waiting down there. He had been too frightened to use the escape pod to go back to Earth, afraid the madness or virus or cloud would turn him crazy too. He needed to be able to hear a human voice again before he would get in that capsule for a one-way trip.
Whatever had happened, he knew the human race had been nearly wiped out. There would be signs of civilization, towns with people would have lights wouldn't they?
Solar panels on Platform One failed here and there, or space debris punched right through them. For whatever reasons, even his orbiting bunker was destined to become silent. He had already covered all the major things in plastic sheets and tarps because of a water leak. Water dripped from the center outward, from the life support and other systems downward toward the end of the “arm” where his escape capsule was docked.
A tarp at the bottom was holding back the water but it was now as deep as a decent swimming pool. Condensation made it rain inside the habitats, even after he had closed the hatches, the seals gave out after a while and leaked anyway. Even over just a matter of months technology failed, even something as important as the seals on supposedly airtight hatches.
Mark wondered. Maybe somewhere down there a small collection of sane humans was going to rebuild civilization from scratch. Where? Someone down there needed to broadcast something, the satellites he had links to would alert him. He didn't have a long time to wait, he needed to hear that “go signal”, time was not his friend.
Mark also knew that Platform One's orbit was decaying. That last collision with space debris had made the decay worse. It was only a matter of if the life support or the orbit would last longer.
Still he waited. He needed a sign that humanity still existed and that the madness virus or whatever it had been had died out.
He listened. The spectrum of radio broadcast was so quiet the satellites might detect something as faint and unlikely as a CB radio. Mark did not know if CB radio waves would even pass the high atmosphere, or if the station was low enough to make that question moot.