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INT. OFFICE - DAY
BIER
Did anybody feel that earthquake?
Donna has a look of terror on her face as if she has seen a mouse.
DONNA
Where?! Now? Oh my god... now?!
She cowers in search for an empty desk where she can take cover under.
Bier
No. Last month. Uhh. I think it was the week of the eighteenth. Monday, at about 3:30PM.
Aaron
I felt it. I heard on the news that it was centered somewhere near Long Beach.
Bier
Yeah, I heard it was four point seven.
DONNA
I didn't feel anything. I probably would've been in my car making deliveries.
AARON
I don't know why, but people who are driving don't seem to feel earthquakes as much as people that are stationary somewhere inside a house.
BIER
It makes me wonder about poltergeists if, when earthquakes occur and the first thing you notice is the furniture jiggling back and forth.
AARON
People can still feel them while standing outside.
BIER
It would have to be fairly strong, centered around the same city, because nothing jiggles outside. Strong enough for a car alarm to go off.
AARON
There was supposed to be a sonic boom last Sunday when the space shuttle came in for a landing at Edwards Air Force Base. Did anybody hear that?
BIER
Nope.
DONNA
I saw that on TV.
AARON
Did you notice how weird the astronauts were walking on the ground when they finally came out of the space shuttle? I was trippin' on that. They looked like aliens expecting something out of the Twilight Zone to happen, like thinking they'd landed on earth only to discover that the people here aren't what they seem to be.
BIER
I didn't get that at all.
DONNA
Were you smoking the funny stuff?
AARON
No, I swear. I was watching the NASA channel and trying to time how long it would take for the astronauts to come out from their spaceship. It must've taken an hour because the landing crew at Edwards apparently wanted to scan their vital signs. I sat in front of the TV watching this funky bus on stilts pull up to the ship where the exit hatch is.
DONNA
A funky bus?
Aaron
Dude, you didn't see it? it had a red stripe running thru it, like an ambulance, but this truck had some hydraulics that allowed it to rise about ten feet from the pavement and it had fins on top like a shark.
Bier looks up from his work a bit distracted by this?
BIER
Fins?
Aaron
Eventually, the astronauts come out and make a routine check around the spaceship. It's tradition, but the moment the set foot on the ground, they're like "Wow, this feels weird" and I'm thinking, after thirteen days in space, it's no wonder they're feeling so awkward. You know, I kinda wish I did have something to smoke. I sat there for an hour watching people going about their business on the tarmac which looked as if they were holding a car wash. There was no narrative by a reporter explaining what was going on.
BIER
How did we start talking about this.
DONNA
The sonic boom. I didn't feel it.
AARON
Neither did I, and I was watching for it. I even thought of digging out my old telescope to try to see if I could spot the shuttle on it's return home to see what it looked like at the exact same moment when the sonic boom occurred.
BIER
I didn't notice anything this weekend.
AARON
Hey, I just had a thought. What if time travel was possible and the earthquake we all felt... except you, was actually a sonic boom from the landing?
DONNA
Huh?
AARON
Yeah, don't you see. The earthquake happened on the eighteen, the astronauts return on the 26, they spend thirteen days in space, which explains their quirky walk, and Julie Payette must've been so nauseous from the landing that, during the news conference, she's the only one missing from the group.
Donna
What? Who's Julie?
BIER
Well, they were playing mad scientist with the Hubble telescope.
DONNA
Who's Julie Boyette?
Aaron
Yeah, you know how people say that the rays of the stars take hundreds, if not millions, of years to reach us, so if a star goes supernova, we wouldn't find out about it until after the fact.
BIER
Yeah, so if we had a telescope large enough to discover life on an orbiting planet from one of those stars, we would be watching their history.
AARON
Exactly. So maybe the astronauts were playing around with landing their spaceship and avoiding a sonic boom by making it happen eight days before they land.
DONNA
Who the fuck is Julie Boyette?
AARON
Payette. I think she's the chick who was the only female astronaut on the hubble mission.
DONNA
Oh.
BIER
Dude, that's freaking me out.
AARON
Yeah? Hey, what do you think about the space shuttle entering the atmosphere in reverse. In other words, free falling from space into the earths atmosphere and, logically, having the spaceship fall rear first since it's probably the heaviest part of the aircraft, and once it's well inside our atmosphere, burning those rockets to slow it down and get the spaceship flying right?
BIER
You mean, like lighting fireworks and instead of pointing them into the air from a stationary point on the ground, throwing it in the air and letting it take it's own course after the fuse ignites the rocket portion of the fuel?
AARON
Kind of. When I was watching the tiniest speck of a plane, I couldn't make out the shape of it and when I heard one of the telecaster say it was falling at a rate of 18,000 miles per hour, I completely spaced out. How can a plane that is falling to earth at that speed slow down with engines that serve as booster rockets?
BIER
Yeah, it's not like it has a parachute to slow it down and it certainly isn't making the landing anywhere near that speed.
Donna
Why wasn't Julie Payette part of the group of astronauts giving the news conference?