Forever isn't long enough, he thought. And for the first time in his life since the young age of 16, his gray eyes welled with tears and a crystal droplet of time and emotion fell to the ground, dousing the 'ever' of '4-ever.'

Then it hit, the missile striking no more than 200 yards from its target, the naval base no more than twenty miles from where the man had once sat. Its blast immediately boiled the ocean and disintegrated those within fifteen miles, those beyond that radius exploded from the inside out from temperatures ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 degrees Celsius. Those beyond that range burst into flame, those beyond that range suffocated as the air rushed back to fill the hole made by the explosion, those beyond that range suffered from the ensuing explosion which wiped out the hole city, those beyond the city limits, those unfortunate enough to be looking in the direction of the blast, had their eyes literally melted from their sockets. These people would suffer the worst, their lives condemned to a matter of days where their hair would fall out, where they would go blind, where they would suffer while their skin broke open and bled out, where their organs liquefied inside their systems, where their teeth would fall out, where they would live in hell for all of the time they remained alive. But there was another possibility, they might not suffer. More sinister pin pricks could be seen in the sky.

More missiles were on the way, true in their flight, their targeting systems not caring who lived and died, not caring who gave the people in power the actual power of being god on earth, not caring who had a right to live and die. The small computers on board each of the warheads only cared for striking their target with nominal yield, the radiation didn't bother the computer, nor did the predicted statistics of kills, the annihilation, the death, the pain, it didn't care that most creatures but humans would survive the blast and inherit the earth. It only did what it was programmed to do.

William Davis, born June 17, 1958, died in less than a second, his wife and child and dog and unborn son died in even less time than that. His son never even had his chance at life, like his father did. But maybe his son would have taken advantage of his chance, would have done what would have made him happy. But that test would never be given, the dreams of that unformed mind would never be fulfilled.

And in the west, the night sky promised what it gave, the death of another day, the cool winds of a sea rich in life. It promised no more nor less than what it gave. And in the eastern night sky, laid yet another promise. A promise of a tomorrow, a promise, that if the sun was still there, that if God was still there, that if time still stood and if love still flew, that there would always be a new dawn and a new day.