A hundred million alerts sounded at once, bringing a hundred million users from whatever they had been doing directly to the video. They of course spread the word to everyone else, and soon it was the only thing on. Julius Paine was broadcasting.

It started with the death of a hurricane.

Four matte-black egg-shaped ships were spinning, pushing dark stormy air from the heart of the storm into its relatively calm eye. Except the eye itself was almost full of oddly-calm storm clouds, the eye-wall was short, especially above the spinning eggs.

Then, in an instant, the eggs were no longer pushing because the storm itself was collapsing; the walls all around the center of the storm falling with their own weight into a still stormy, but much calmer, mass at the center.

Without warning, the camera leapt away from the hurricane, tracking the four ships which were now peeling east with phenomenal velocity. Then, the view of the four ships slipped into the corner of the screen, the main display replaced by an idyllic island view from above.

The camera briefly focused on eight of the egg-shaped vessels, rotating in patrol throughout the island's airspace. A spinning red light at the peak of the island was visible. Some recognized it as an earthquake alarm, but to all it was obvious that it meant danger, emergency, and shelter. Even before five of the ships plunged into the sea around the edge of the island, the entire landmass had begun to shake.

The three remaining ships changed their patrol pattern: it was faster and less organized. A single helicopter rose with shocking speed before being brought down by one of the shadow-colored vessels. The landing was not visible, but there was no accompanying explosion and the camera briefly shifted to show the ship hovering directly over the axle of the main rotor and pressing it down without damaging the blades. Nothing else challenged the remaining ships' command of the skies.

Soon the ocean surrounding the island began to churn. It raged and boiled and then it became clear that the ocean was falling, without it being clear into what it was falling. Trees and radio towers began to visibly shake atop the island. The amplitude of the trees' and radio towers' sway increased, easily visible from the angle of the camera.

The island rose as one giant rock out of the sea; water flooded out of the island like sweat out of every pore.

The sea drained into the void where there was once land.

Meter by meter, the island’s black rocky roots were exposed. The rushing water eroded chunks the size of battleships off the island’s base, but the whole continued to rise. A row of the egg-shaped vessels grew visible rising above the water line, encircling the island like the tips of a titan’s fingers.

As the island continued to rise, the base tapered like an inverted mountain top, and another layer of egg-shaped vessels was revealed.

Whatever camera was feeding the broadcast shifted without warning. The view of ships rushing from the Gulf of Mexico replaced the island as the central display, the rising island relegated to a small box in the corner. The sky around the vessels had dimmed into blackness. The view of the Earth was an expansive curve of blue ocean on black, a large landmass retreating behind the speeding ships. Two of the ships curled away back towards the Earth, while the camera followed two that blasted deeper into the starry void.

The tail ends of the ships started to glow.

The camera began to shake perceptibly, giving further impression of incredible speed.

As one of the vessels pulled away from both the camera and the other vessel, the featured screen switched back to the island.

It was entirely above the surface of the ocean and continuing to rise steadily. The camera itself seemed to rise, changing the perspective so that the viewing world looked down at the small speck of land. Then the camera panned up, zooming to focus on two white puffs which quickly morphed into the matte black of the missing two vessels.

As they approached, the camera zoomed back out and retreated, gradually panning to bring the island back into the edge of the frame, much smaller than it had initially appeared. The vessels appeared to be on a direct collision course with the island.

They did not decelerate.

However, rather than impacting the floating island itself, the ships slammed into the ocean below it. Huge geysers crashed into the bottom tip of the island, but did not visibly disrupt the homeostasis of the vessels holding the landmass aloft.

The camera shook as a wave pushed outward from the source of the impact.

Soon, the sea underneath the island settled.

For a moment, the scene was calm. The camera had approached close enough to see that the sirens were still spinning with their red lights shining.

Then clouds of fog began to rise from the sea: at first gentle streamers of wispy blue-white, but soon great leaping banks of bleach-white steam. Parts of the floating island faded from view, obscured by the water heated into gas.

This continued for a few moments, until the scenes switched again.

The deep black of space was jarring after the sharp, bright colors of the island and surrounding ocean.

The camera was no longer shaking. The craft that was still visible was glowing on the far side now, apparently slowing down. Soon after the scene was reset, the camera began to zoom in on what appeared to be a particular set of three very bright stars.

Then one of the stars blinked out for a second, before popping back into visibility. Several dimmer stars nearby underwent the same process: blinking out for a moment and then popping back into view. The occlusion was moving in the same direction that the faster ship had gone, right to left across the screen.

The camera got closer and the shadow grew, blotting out the next bright star and several weaker ones for a longer count than it had yet. A glint of light shimmered in the middle of the shadow. Another brief hint of substance was followed by a shockingly bright flash, which illuminated uncountable rocky features on an asteroid. A few seconds passed, during which the shadow blocked a larger and larger area of the star-field. Another flash, this one revealing yet more of the surface of the asteroid.

Another flash a few seconds later drew the eyes of everyone on the planet, but this one was immediately followed by a dozen flashes more. A few flashes in, a silent puff of glittering morass appeared at the narrowest point of a bottleneck feature. Then another geyser of detritus erupted near the same spot. After a third impact the bottleneck broke, a chunk of asteroid broke away, and the flashes stopped.

The camera zoomed out, keeping the focus on the now doubled occlusion, before switching back to the terrestrial view.

Steam still rose from the surface of the ocean, but not with the frantic energy of before. The island was now sinking, returning to the sea from where it had been lifted, like dropping the final piece into a nearly completed puzzle. The island sunk slowly, but the camera didn’t move. The world drew a collective breath. It seemed that the madness was almost over.

And then the ocean fell away as a new island rose to meet the old.

It almost looked like a black pancake, or maybe a mushroom, rising out of the sea. Nowhere on the outer surface of the rising island glowed with the red heat of lava, but it still gave the impression of immense heat. Steam still rose from the edges of the growing black mass, but the center of the mass was smooth and gently rounded. The newly risen lava flow spread, growing far wider but still shorter than the original island.

The floating island continued to descend.

Its mountainous base pierced the new mass or barely solid rock with a spray of steam and detritus. As it continued to descend, it cut into the smooth surface cleanly at first, dropping to the first layer of vessels supporting it. They rolled upwards as the line of intersection between the old island and the new rose.

The floating island continued to sink into the hot rock, until a line of black ships near the original surface of the island was all that was visible above the line of the blackness of the molten outflow.

The new island stopped expanding outwards, and the old island stopped dropping into it. The island was still, but the sirens still rang.

The scenes switched back to the asteroids, which were now fully illuminated.

One of the ships was in the center of the screen, pressing against one side of the larger asteroid. The camera panned from one hunk of rock to the other. The piece that had broken off from the main body of the asteroid was peppered with vessels that looked to be identical in design to the others. There were at least ten of the little ships on screen, but there were likely more on the far side of the asteroid.

The camera moved, sliding between the two asteroids and turning left to face the far side of the asteroid. As it rounded the rock, the Earth and and Moon assaulted the screen, vibrant and glorious after the dull browns of the asteroid and the blackness of space. The sun was peeking out from behind the Earth. The shock of the sight wasn’t only from the color and the light of the celestial bodies, it was the size. They were too small. They should have been marbles, but seemed like pebbles instead.

The camera shifted closer to the larger asteroid fragment, still focusing on the Earth-Moon system, until the profile of the Earth was blocked by the bulk of the asteroid. The camera rocked gently; the view split between the Moon and the asteroid.

No one was surprised when the image slid back the corner of the screen, replaced by the odd new hybrid island. It was part-solidifying-primordial rock, part modern civilization: the latter sitting on top of the former like the upper layer of a wedding cake.

Then the camera zoomed into the layer of now-familiar matte-black spacecraft, temporarily motionless.

One by one, those ships pulled away from the edge of the island, returning to fly idle circuits around until only three were visible around the nearly circular island.

Then, instead of shifting back the corner and switching, the island view winked out of the frame leaving only the space vista filling the frame.

It was nearly the same view as before. Soon this frame too winked out of existence, leaving the many who were watching the choice of where to look for that first, all-important spin. But, before Julius Paine ended his broadcast, he made sure to make it clear that the Moon was growing bigger with every frame.

The vessels were bringing the asteroid back.