Wartimus reclined on the roof of his father’s house and watched the stars glitter in the darkness of a moonless night. He had spent the summer making up his own erotic constellations and was languidly masturbating to them when the sky exploded with purple light. He dropped his erection as he tracked the burning band of fire of a meteor streaking earthward. It hit the ground with a boom and another flash of light that burned the silhouette of the trees into his retinas.
Wartimus stood, put his penis away, and ran to the edge of the roof. A column of smoke rose, lit up by the distant city beyond. The meteorite was obviously close, possibly in the forest that made up the bulk of his father’s vast estate. He climbed down from the roof and in through his bedroom window. The phone was ringing before he had even made it inside.
“What was that?” Simon demanded as soon as Wartimus picked up the phone. “Are we being bombed? I told you we were going to get bombed. We live too close to the dam!”
“It wasn’t a bomb, Simon,” he told the panicking boy. He cradled the receiver in his neck and pulled on a pair of thick canvas pants.
“There’s that big military base, where they test those missiles. Did they hit it?”
“It wasn’t a bomb, Simon. I was up on the roof. It was a meteor.” Wartimus set down the phone to tie his boots.
Simon’s voice squeaked from the receiver. “Don’t they have nerve gas at that base? Which way is the wind blowing? WHICH WAY IS THE WIND BLOWING?”
“Simon! Calm the fuck down!” Wartimus said, picking the phone back up. “It was a meteor. Get dressed for hiking and get over here.”
“It’s one in the morning,” Simon said, breathing heavily into the phone.
“It’s a meteor, Simon. You know how much those things are worth if there is anything left of it? Grab your backpack and get over here. I leave in ten.” Wartimus hung up the phone before the other boy could say anything else. Simon dealt best with ultimatums.
Wartimus turned in the mirror on the front of his closet door, shirtless. He flexed a few times and dropped to the floor for a dozen push-ups. His body was naturally muscular from his father’s experiments–the shots given to his mother when she was carrying him and the constant training growing up, but it wasn’t enough; Wartimus wanted to be bigger. All the other 12-year-olds at school looked like children. He had seen some the teachers watching him as he prowled the halls of his middle school like a panther. In a year, maybe two, he’d fuck a couple of them, he knew. Valuable experience before he hit high school and the girls his own age finally filled out.
Wartimus put on a tight tee that showed off his pecs and a loose, heavy black shirt over it. He slipped his father’s Walther PPK into the front pocket of the pants after checking the safety. His father knew he had taken the gun from the compound’s armory. Wartimus could have claimed something more powerful as his personal weapon but he was a good shot with Walther and knew the gun, field stripping it over and over again while blindfolded and timing himself. Flashlight, knife and his communicator clipped onto his nylon utility belt.
Checking the time again, he went back out his bedroom window, dropped to the ground and raided the garden shed for a five-gallon plastic bucket with a sealable lid and asbestos gloves. He was just closing the shed when he heard labored breathing enter the yard. Simon. The boy dropped his bag loudly at the gate into the backyard and leaned over, his hands on his knees.
Wartimus crept up on him and said, “Be quiet. My father is still up.”
Simon yelped in surprise, despite gulping down air.
“I ran over,” he managed, “Like, the whole way.”
“What did you bring?” Wartimus asked.
“Tongs,” he gasped. “Safety glasses,” he gasped. “Flashlight,” he gasped.
“OK, wait here. I’ve got to go back inside for something.”
“You told me to hurry,” Simon said. Wartimus patted him on the back hard enough for the pudgy boy to almost fall over.
“I’ll be right back,” he told the wheezing figure.
Wartimus used the code to open the back yard security door. There was soft music playing in the den, so he used the kitchen stairs to go down to his into his father’s laboratory. The giant vault door leading into the lab was already open.
The imposing figure of Professor Hieronymus Riesigmann loomed before Wartimus in one of his bespoke lab coats. The lab took up the entire basement of the mansion. Rows upon rows of merciless white lights bore down on stainless steel work surfaces and fittings. His father worked in the enormous space alone but the endless cabinets of equipment could have supported a staff of hundreds. It was all familiar to Wartimus from long hours playing here after his mother disappeared: the dials and switches of the interface for the buried reactor, the omnipresent hum of transformers, the hulking capacitors, the black slabs of isolation tanks, the crackling Tesla coils that he suspected were purely for ambiance. His father’s house had many rules but the most steadfast and unwavering was that this space was always referred to as his laboratory, and never his lair.
“You need to learn to sneak better, son,” Hieronymus said. “You’re almost 13-years-old. At your age, my parents had no idea what all I was up to in the middle of the night.”
“Did their house have motion sensors and security keypads everywhere?”
“Not the point, my boy. Not the point at all. Learning to sneak around in a 1950s house would do you no good. Technology never rests and we mustn’t either.”
Wartimus nodded.
“So,” his father asked, “What were you down here to pilfer? I better not catch you pawning my equipment.”
“I was merely going to borrow the Geiger counter.”
“Got a radiation leak in your bedroom? I thought you just masturbated up there these days,” he said with a toothy grin. Wartimus had tried to build a nuclear weapon when he was ten and his father never let an opportunity to bring it up go by.
“No, I was up on the roof and saw a meteor. It impacted somewhere on the estate, I think. I wanted to take a Geiger counter with me.”
“Nonsense. Meteorites have negligible radioactivity. You know that.” His father reached to ruffle his hair but Wartimus backed away from the condescending gesture.
“But what if it’s not a natural meteorite? It could be something man-made,” he said. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “What if it is Russian?” His father was an unreconstructed Cold Warrior, always ready to pit his individual American intellect against the hive mind of communism.
“Space rock or spy satellite, eh? And you are going to look for it? Excellent. A good use for a summer night. I’ll let you have the Geiger, it’s a sensible precaution if the power source is breached. But as rent for the counter and punishment for getting caught sneaking out, I claim all the iridium from the impactor or any photographic film from a satellite.”
“Father…” Wartimus began.
“It’s more than fair, boy. The iridium is of little use to you anyway, we all know who does the high-temperature recrystallization of semiconductors in this house.”
“Yes, sir,” Wartimus said.
“And the photos might be of the estate. Those Soviet bastards have been after me for years,” his father said.
Wartimus watched as father retrieved the Geiger counter. Despite all the late night nuclear safety drills, the painful martial arts training, the experimental weight-training regimen, and the cold knowledge that he might have to one day kill the old man in a struggle for primate dominance, Wartimus still loved and respected his father. And, more importantly to his otherwise jocular father, Wartimus still feared him.
“Here you go, son,” Hieronymus said as he handed over the olive drab counter. “Watch the needle; too many rems will fry your wedding tackle. I’ll accept no bald-headed telekinetic grandchildren in this house!”
Wartimus nodded and turn to go.
“Just kidding,” his father called after him. “Bring on the little freaks. We’ll sell ‘em to the carnival, my boy.”
His father’s laughter chased him up the stairs.
“A WHAT?” the hat screeched in the confines of the vault.
“No, I looked like a regular Hitler hat. A regular German military cap.”
“We can’t get rid of Steve!’ the hat wailed.
“No, man. I need some smack, some tar, horse, China white, some skag, junk, H, some of that sweet White Lady.”
Ever wonder how we are all going to die? 
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton, unpublished draft
I had the same dream over and over again when I was a teenager. I am standing in a field, a wide open field. There were flowers everywhere and I reached down and touch them. I hear a far off sound, a low rumbling, a roar. I am confused, frightened. But then I see the missiles coming up out of the underground silos, like shoots growing from fertile soil in time-lapse. There are dozens of them. I imagine I can feel their flames against my face, hotter than the spring sun. The plumes of their engines fill the blue, blue sky where they stand on thick pillars of clouds. They are beautiful. I lift up out of the field and fly with them up and up and up, through the ever-thinning air and into the darkness of space. The missiles and I hang there, weightless, frozen for an eternal moment, then we slowly begin to fall back to the Earth. Faster and faster we fall, heat shimmering around us. The ground rushes toward us like a lover. And then blinding white light and a sound too loud to even be heard. When I can see again I am back in the field. A greasy black snow of human ash is falling. I hold out my tongue and catch a flake. It is delicious.
From the private journal of Huma A—–
Clinton Election Celebration survivor testimony
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton, unpublished draft