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White to move and mate in two #427 - not your run-of-the-mill morning, to be sure [1]

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Date: 2023-11-05

The alarm went off at 6:52 A.M. as it did every morning. Groggily, Mark slapped it off, then stumbled wearily to the bathroom. He splashed a bit of water on his face to accelerate the waking process, then began to brush his teeth.

Seeing that it was already a clear, warm day, he peered out the bathroom window to take in the scene as he brushed. The trees were covered in leaves, and the flowers were in full bloom. The trees cast long shadows as the Sun slowly rose in the sky.

When he finished brushing, Mark noticed the odd silence. That's funny, he thought. Why aren't the birds chirping? From the corner of his eye he saw movement. Maybe it was an animal in the yard that had spooked the birds...

Stepping up to the window, he stood on tiptoe to look around the yard. What the -- Every tree was casting two distinct shadows. His morning routine now forgotten, Mark watched in amazement as, for every tree, one of the shadows appeared to be moving, circling around the base of the tree like a fast-motion video of a sundial. Nose pressed to the window, he looked up into the sky, straining to see what could be causing this strange display.

Suddenly, from under the eave, it appeared as if the Sun itself were streaking across the sky. Dazzled, Mark's eyes took a moment to adjust, but it was still not clear what he was seeing. There was a disk of intense white light moving across the sky, faster than an airplane. Could it be a meteor?

It appeared to descend slowly to the horizon as he watched. Then, in the blink of an eye, there was a soundless but all-encompassing flash, so bright his eyes watered. He winced in pain. When he was able to look again, the small bright disk was gone, replaced by a much larger smear of light, fanning up from the horizon. The heat from the thing was palpable, even through the window. It was like standing near a fireplace. As the smudge in the sky expanded, Mark noticed something even odder: did the tops of the trees look funny? Was that smoke rising from them...?

The heat became intense. It began to dawn on Mark that he might be in trouble. As he stood there wondering what to do, a sudden and sharp earthquake jolted the house, knocking him to the floor. It was over quickly, and as he stood up, dazed, he felt the heat more strongly than before as it poured through his now-broken bathroom window. He thought the worst was over, but what he didn't know was that a wave of pure sound and fury tearing through the atmosphere was pounding toward him at 700 miles per hour.

Too late, he saw the face of the shock wave bearing down on him like a tsunami ten miles high. A mighty thunderclap swept over his burning house, pulverizing it to dust with Mark still inside, and the time for decisions was over.

Everything under this wave of sound was stomped flat. Trees that were ablaze a moment before from the heat of the explosion were snuffed out, then torn into millions of splinters. The expanding ring of pressure, already dozens of miles across, screamed past the location of Mark's disintegrated house and continued moving, greedily consuming buildings, trees, cars, people.

Before it was over, the shock wave circled the Earth twice. Seismographs from around the globe registered the event as an earthquake of enormous scale, but no one paid attention to the scientific data for long. They were too busy struggling to survive.

[END]
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